37 Noise

I tend to think in similar terms to you regarding that list and thinking in that way got me out of a slump. I thought being a techie or an entrepreneur was a waste of time because of all the disadvantages, but I realized that if you're creating technologies or anything that helps others push the species forward, you're part of the good side of life.

Given the chance to really change the world you should grasp it with both hands and run with it.

Too many people still treat money as a goal in stead of as a tool, there really is no point in being the richest guy in the graveyard, if you do not apply it to something useful you might as well never have had it in the first place.

Read "I, Pencil" by Leonard Reed sometime. Its available online for free.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

Then give some thought to how the invisible hand is really doing your point 3 on such a massive scale across all of society that it enables not only points 1 and 2, but also just about everything else anyone might think is worth working on.

Its not a stretch really. Its a natural by-product of people having freedom to choose and pay for the things that are most important to them. If that's what's most important to you then that's great. But that doesn't mean nothing else is worth working on.

Also, I have always found the get-rich-so-I-can-do-good mantra to just something people tell themselves to rationalize their blind pursuit of wealth. The chance of this happening is hilariously remote. Anyone who is playing the odds would be far better off taking a job as a social worker, teacher or relief worker.

Not to mention the fact that you don't exactly need millions to make a difference. I have a friend (http://www.qfund.org/) who took $50,000 and built a school for 500 children in Africa. She has made more of a difference in people's lives than the next 500 nerds in they Valley who are trying to strike it rich so they can build a spaceship, combined.

As for working toward building some capital in order to do grand things... I'd love to see someone work up some stats on how many of the people who get rich from flipping a start really go on to spend a significant part of their time/wealth on #1 or #2? Or is that just some bullshit line that people tell themselves to justify all the time they're spending pursuing the almighty dollar (or euro, yen, etc). Once they're rich, do they try to make the world a better place? Or do they just buy a big "crib" with a pool?

The point in life is not to avoid suffering and discover but to live and procreate. If you're not sure whether this is true do a split test on two families and measure which sets of characteristics do best in 100 generations.

Science and medicine may be what separate us from the animals but for most people they are enablers for the rest of life, not the point in life itself.

Working in entertainment and anything that furthers our ability to enjoy and "live" life is just as valid as your first two. It may not sound as good in a manifesto but making people happy is an extremely worthy pursuit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

Read it and never again use that kind of sentence, unless you actually want to make constructive discussion harder.

So I don't buy the ulterior motive angle. Jason Fried must by now be seriously regretting choosing Mint in the way he did to make his point. He's lost a lot of credibility while trying to argue something that actually needed to be said.

Let's get passed the point of the Mint exit being VC driven, and let's look at the larger picture he is painting, because I do believe it is correct.

I hope I don't need to argue that 37s is a brand. They do sell basecamp and books. Forgetting basecamp for a second, Getting Real is a very opinionated book (and they just published another) and it has an implied "ideology": do less without investment, make it look nice and charge money. The only "supporting argument" for that is that it worked out for 37s.

They sell more books by promoting that ideology.

Now, this is unfounded, but I suspect it is true: people hoping to imitate 37s use basecamp and I'd venture that at least ~5-10% of their users are trying to imitate them. So, ideology -> sales.

I would like to be able to do these quantitatively to have a real founded argument, but that is out of the question. The whole thing is just my perception of the situation.

April fools posts should be done around April 1st, if not you're burning up one of your most valuable resources.

In case you mised it:

Somebody someday has to have the balls to stand up to the status quo and sit it out all the way to the end instead of cashing out at some point.

The problem with that is that:

  - cashing out is very very lucrative

  - you yourself will become part of the status quo if you 
    don't sell out at some point

  - vcs really are looking at the 'exit', it's just that 
    they prefer a 'late successful' exit over an 'early' 
    exit (because once you are a winner you might as well
    win big, the chances of scoring a winner being as low
    as they are).

  - sticking it out for the long run isn't 'sexy'

Only very few companies are immune to that, I think right now Google and Microsoft are the few companies that are not going to be sold in the foreseeable future, they're here to stay. And Microsoft is as much a part of the establishment as you can be at this stage. Maybe facebook too, but I think they might just be hooking for a tremendous exit at some point.

Almost everybody else is up for grabs if the price is right.

We need many more googles, companies that are in it for the long haul.

And barring that, if you do cash out do it like Elon Musk did, and plow your newfound fortune in to something absolutely amazing instead of lounging around and throwing parties and buying baseball teams, and writing long blog posts about how everybody is doing everything wrong.

Weren't there? It seems to me there are always ulterior motives. That doesn't mean he was conscious of those motives when he wrote the article, or that they were in any way sinister, but when selling a philosophy is your bread and butter then there is a very strong tendency to turn a blind eye to any realities that don't jive with that philosophy. Even those of us who aren't selling anything do this all the time, so imagine when your livelihood is on the table.

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch01_Caveats_disclaimers_an...

Or is your complaint that they don't find it necessary to preface every single post on SvN with such disclaimers? In fact, this complaint would be addressed by that same link.

I'm not trying to defend the Mint post by any means (although I do think, as someone else already mentioned, that the larger picture being painted by the post - once you get past the drama that has been generated - is interesting), I'm sure that post (and probably a few other posts) could have been handled better by Jason. But please, let's stop parroting the same old hyperbole about 37S.

Better be a bit more careful, even if you feel strongly about a subject (or maybe especially then).