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Comment by jack_pp | Hacker News Reader

> IMO simply striving to gain power or money is easier than to achieve greatness and mastery

While my ego would want to agree the truth is staying in power and making money exponentially isn't easy either, and you can't lie your way to lifelong power and fuck you money because eventually people figure you out, your reputation plummets and then you have less power and less opportunity to make money.

That said you choose what game you want to play, if you care more about your craft focus on perfecting it even though that's not gonna make you as much money as pursuing money for its own sake.

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Both great points. One way to think about it is that pursuit of wealth simply has more competition—the opportunities for the upper tiers are very few relative to the population that aspires to them. It is objectively hard to get there regardless of whether you lie or not. One thing is certainly true though, you can't get there without incredible social leverage of some sort, otherwise why would tens or hundreds of thousands multiples of per capita GDP be routed to you?

The answer is: you kind of have to bring something uniquely valuable to the table. Exceptional skill with people and general intelligence are certainly valuable ingredients, but to really crack the upper tier some kind of domain mastery is what really pushes you over the top. Bonus points if it's a new domain, fast to monetize and scale, hence the rapid rise of tech in the Fortune 500 over the past couple decades through the web and smart phone revolutions.

I think luck and lying is essentially the method to real wealth. Find me someone who got there without those two elements. Wealth is an expression of your ability to manipulate other people into devoting their labor to your enrichment. You don't get there without some deception.

i.e like your worldview. good to know

> you can't lie your way to lifelong power and fuck you money because eventually people figure you out, your reputation plummets and then you have less power and less opportunity to make money.

Surely we do have very notable exceptions to this.

I'm not saying top earners never lie, I'm saying overall they have to be somewhat trustworthy. There are exceptions to this rule of course but I do believe it's a rule.

Take Elon, he does overpromise and you could say he lies about self-driving capabilities but overall he does deliver

We just need to look at politicians and voters, to know, that it is not necessarily true, that ones power and opportunities vane, when people discover the truth about ones lies.

Also lying is not that easy. Humans have evolved various tools to spot liars. I would bet that the average person is better at detecting lies and liars than they are at lying.

The exceptions people talk about, of people gaining power by lying, are all exceptionally good at lying.

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