Why Good Advice Usually Doesn’t Work 

“Who’s this guy?” I asked Giovanna.

“He’s the brother of a person that used to work for you. You said you’d take his call.”

“What brother?”

“I can check.”

“Don’t bother. Put him through.”

We spent an hour talking. He was courteous, intelligent, and affable. I was happy to help him. His question: How to grow his business from $2 million, where it was hovering, up to the next level – $5 million to $10 million.

I asked him the usual questions I ask for a business of that size. He had good answers for some of them, and didn’t pretend to know what he didn’t know. That sort of humility – coupled with intelligence, persistence, and self-confidence – is a formula for success. I gave him some advice and said, “Call me when you hit $5 million.”

After I hung up, I had the same hopeful-cynical thoughts I always have after these sorts of conversations: “I hope he implements my suggestions, but he probably won’t. I’ll be happily surprised if he hits his target.”

I’ve developed this perspective from 20 years of advising entrepreneurs. If they have what it takes, success should be a lay-up. But that is a highly unlikely outcome from informal “consultations” like this one. For two reasons:

First, because my advice was free – i.e., it didn’t cost him anything except a half-hour of his time. The first rule of mentoring is that anything gotten for free is valued cheaply. The value of the “gift” doesn’t matter. The receiver discounts it unconsciously because he didn’t have to do/pay anything to get it.

Second, because my advice was given without any obligation on my part. The second rule of mentoring is that advice given without a commitment by the mentor to follow through with the advisee is likely to be rejected (or forgotten or ignored) when obstacles arise. In this case, I’m quite sure that this young man will put a good initial effort into effectuating one or even several of the suggestions I made. But when he discovers that they aren’t working for him, he’ll conclude that the advice was wrong, and shift his attention and energies in some other direction.

Of course, if this person were an employee or family member, I would have been personally invested in the outcome and our conversation would not have ended the same way. I would have insisted that he initiate a plan of action immediately – within 24 hours. I would have also insisted that he check back with me on a regular basis until he had accomplished his goal.

But in this case, I have neither the time nor motivation to commit myself to doing all that work. So, as I said, I am doubtful that our conversation will do him much good.

But I am not without hope. At least several times a year, I hear from someone with whom I’ve had such short counseling sessions who did, in fact, follow my advice and achieve what they set out to achieve. And that’s why I continue to provide free entrepreneurial advice on occasion. It’s like playing the quarter slot machines when I’m drinking tequila. My investment is de minimis. But the reward, however unlikely, is exhilarating.

Making It Happen… or Not 

The number one reason that most entrepreneurial businesses fail is not because of weak ideas or lack of market research or insufficient capital.  It is because founders/CEOs fail to move forward quickly enough after they have landed on their ideas.

As someone that’s been involved in dozens of start-ups over the years, I feel very strongly about this claim. In fact, in 2008, John Wiley published a book I wrote about it (Ready, Fire, Aim) that became a bestseller.

There is a corollary to this that applies to growing businesses from, say, $1 million to $10 million, from $10 million to $100 million, or from $100 million to $1 billion. It’s basically the same idea: The reason businesses often hit revenue ceilings is that they fail to move quickly enough on testing new product and marketing ideas.

That is the problem my young advisee is going to run into the moment he goes back to his business and lays out some of the ideas that we agreed could bring his business to the next level.

He may begin with all the enthusiasm and determination he seemed to have at the end of our conversation. But his employees – the people he will need to implement those ideas – will not be so enthusiastic.

This is almost universally true. Great employees are always great at doing what they know works well. But they are skeptical of initiating new projects and/or protocols because they aren’t so sure they will work as well as the founder/CEO believes they will. And so, they will raise questions and voice concerns. As they feel they should.

And since these are capable and smart employees, many of their questions will be difficult to answer. And many of their concerns will be well-founded. And because the founder/CEO respects their concerns and can’t easily answer their questions, the process of moving forward will slow down.

That’s not always a bad thing. But smart founders/CEOs should treat it like it is. Because the alternative is the gradual asphyxiation of an idea that could work.

I am going through this exercise now with one of my clients. I’m trying to put into motion an idea I have that will add $10+ million to the bottom line. Not once, but every year into the future.

It’s not a complicated idea. To me, it’s a no-brainer. There is zero chance it will fail. There is a chance it won’t hit the $10 million mark, but – even if problems arise that I am not anticipating now – it will definitely make at least several million.

But a month has gone by since we agreed to work on this objective. In my view, we should be at the point where we are already testing the idea and bringing in dollars. Instead, we are stuck in the think-it-over phase.

I know that if I don’t push this thing through, it’s going to die on the vine. So, I’m going to do what I always do when I find myself in this situation.

It usually goes like this:

* I suggest the idea the moment it comes to me. (Because I know I will forget it if I don’t.)

* The reaction: Silence. Nobody gets it.

* The next time we meet, I suggest it again, but shaped better, to make it easier to  understand.

* They sort of get it, but they have doubts. They express them. I answer them as well as I can, but not to their satisfaction. Silence.

* The third time we meet, I remind them that we should already be moving on the idea, and guarantee them that it will work. I put a number out there (“$10 million net a year in perpetuity!”).

* They don’t know exactly what to say. Maybe I’m right. They don’t know. So, they give me a tepid go-ahead.

* I get to work on it, forming a team and setting an agenda. The first time we meet, the team is excited. They buy in. They want to be a part of it.

* In the weeks that follow, at every juncture there are questions and concerns, which I view, perhaps incorrectly, as passive resistance.

* I say, “Don’t worry. Let’s keep moving. We can solve these problems later.”

* They agree. Sort of. So, they move forward, but slowly and carefully. They are worried about failure. And my confidence makes them even less sure, because they see me as impulsive and possibly reckless.

* I keep pushing until we get the idea ready enough to test. We test it.

* If it fails, game over. If it is a huge success, everyone’s happy. If it’s a modest success, it is met with further doubts and concerns.

* We work through those doubts and concerns, one at a time. Then we test the improved idea. And this time, it usually works better.

* I try not to, but sometimes I can’t resist telling them: “I told you so.” They don’t understand. In their minds, they’ve been supporting me all along.

* We roll out the idea, making refinements as needed. Eventually, it becomes a staple of our business.

* Years later, nobody remembers all the questions and criticism.  In their minds, they always knew it would work.

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Well, Okay. Good Luck With That! 

They wanted to make it a company holiday.

I opposed doing it because I saw it as a passing political fad. Making it an official day off felt like a capitulation. And that’s what I said at the board meeting when the idea was proposed.

“That’s not how it will be perceived,” the head of PR told me.

“How will it be perceived?”

I can’t remember the words she used because it was PR language. PR language is like marketing language, with which I’m familiar. At its best, it means to simultaneously inform and soothe. But her message was clear: “The company will look like it’s being run by a clutch of grumpy old fogeys.”

Still, I persisted.

“And just who would see it that way?”

“Just about everyone. The press. The local community. Even the employees.”

The press? Sure. The local community? I was dubious. But our employees? No way! We are, after all, a Libertarian-leaning publishing company. I’m aware of the fact that many of our younger employees are recent college graduates, freshly baked in gender studies, CRT, and Marxism. But surely the more experienced employees would have a more real-world view. They would see the situation as I did.

I suggested we pick up the discussion at our next board meeting. During that pause, I phoned several of our CEOs, explained the situation, and asked how they saw it. Shockingly, they all sort of agreed with our PR pro.

“It’s a different world, Mark,” one of them (a 30-something) explained. I could almost feel his hand patting me gently on the shoulder.

The night before the next board meeting, I told K the story and asked her what I should do. “Make it official,” she said.

“But it’s a capitulation. A broken link. It’s going to end badly.”

“You don’t know that.”

No, I didn’t know that for certain. But I did feel it. And strongly. It was a contest of intuitions – those of two of the oldest fogeys against a dozen younger people that were actually in charge.

We could have insisted on having our way. But what would that have accomplished? It would have made us feel that were doing the “right” thing. That was certain. And it might have preserved one link of sanity in the future chain of our company’s business culture.

But, again, we didn’t know that.

At the meeting, I voted in favor of the holiday. But in doing so, I told them what I thought: that this was a mistake that would end badly. That this capitulation could lead to others that would eventually do the company harm.

“We will make sure that doesn’t happen,” they said.

I figured they would say that. And I knew they would believe it. So I wanted to leave them with something – the smallest seed of doubt that would, in the future, alert them to what was happening if they were wrong.

I said, “Well, good luck with that!”

“Good luck with that” is an expression I picked up from Jordan Peterson. He’s the Canadian professor of psychology and evolutionary biology who first became internet famous for opposing government mandates on gender-preferred pronouns. That put him on dozens of TV and online programs, where he debates academics, journalists, and celebrities on a host of “woke” topics. Like Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens, he is superbly good at arguing his point. And, when he wants, dismantling the arguments of his opponents.

But there are times, for one reason or another, when Peterson chooses not to dismantle an opponent’s argument. He does this most often when talking to younger people and after they make a definitive statement about carving out a brave new world.

He pauses. Then he smiles and says, “Well, good luck with that.”

The statement is obviously sarcastic, but it doesn’t feel nasty in the way that sarcasm often does. It feels gentler somehow. It feels avuncular. It feels like stoic resignation. Like experience whispering to innocence.

So, that’s what I did. I capitulated on the vote because I wasn’t sure I was right. But I left them with a seed of doubt in case I was.

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What I Believe: About Business Management

Why You Should be Sensitive to (but Not Care Too Much About) Your Employees’ Feelings 

Here’s how I explain it: It’s important to be sensitive to the feelings of your employees. But it’s equally important not to care too much about them.

Your job as a CEO (or entrepreneur) is to grow the business sustainably. And that means giving priority to product quality, customer service, and selling. Everything else is secondary. Including the personal lives of your employees.

The growth of any business, any enterprise for that matter, depends greatly on the knowledge, work ethic, and commitment of its employees – its key executives and, especially, its growers.

In other words, to develop a great, growing, profitable business, you need nothing but good employees and at least a handful of superstars. But good employees are in demand. And superstars are almost always employed by someone else. A competitor that wants to keep them.

That means the only way you can build a great business is to find a way to attract these good and great people. And the only reliable way you can do that is by offering them exciting jobs and paying them as much as they are worth with the promise of much more.

I’ve been around the block on this issue a dozen times. I’ve seen all the gimmicks. You can’t cheap out by hiring mediocre people and making them good, or even by hiring good employees and making them great. In the most important ways, I’ve come to understand after 50 years of thinking about it, people don’t change.

Money is very important. But even more important is the job. Mediocre employees want safe jobs. Good employees want jobs they can do well. Great employees want challenging jobs with the authority to show how great they are.

One thing that won’t attract great employees, however, is fun and games. It’s fashionable today for companies to clutter their offices with stuffed animals and meditation dens and juice bars. Mediocre and even good employees love those sorts of things. But great employees have no time for them. They have work to do.

A distressing aspect of this woke business culture is the preponderance of CEOs claiming, in interviews, that their management philosophy is about making their employees happy. And their idea of making employees happy is to pay attention to them and to care for them as if they were children – to get into their personal lives and, most of all, to care about their personal feelings.

I try my best not to care about my employees personal feelings. I want them to be happy with their jobs. Especially the great employees. And I would prefer they have good personal lives. But I won’t insult them or waste their time by acting as an ersatz psychologist or life coach.

When I hear CEOs boasting about how caring they are, I take such statements as disingenuous. I take them to mean that they think of their employees as children, and that their philosophy of management is to lead by deceit and manipulation.

In my early years as an executive, I was all about catering to my employees’ feelings. I shudder to remember how many times I capitulated to an unreasonable demand or put off firing someone because I didn’t want to upset them.

I was cured of that by JSN, who taught me more about business than anyone else. Upon hearing my explanation of why I didn’t fire someone who had been doing a terrible job, he sat me down and asked me the following questions (more or less)…

JSN: Who benefits from that decision?

Me: What do you mean?

JSN: Do I benefit from it?

Me: No, I admitted.

JSN: Do our customers benefit from it?

Me: No.

JSN: Does he benefit from it?

Me: Well, yes. I guess. He gets to keep working here.

JSN: So, he gets to keep doing a substandard job. And you are going to have to keep correcting his mistakes and making him miserable. No, I don’t think he benefits from it. I think he’d be better off somewhere else.

Me: Maybe you are right. Nobody benefits.

JSN: Actually, there is someone that benefits. You! By keeping him on, you are putting your feelings of guilt and embarrassment ahead of everyone and everything else. But in the long run, it will hurt you. Because it will make me think less of you as a manager.

Thus, I learned that I should not care about the feelings of my employees. And that meant – or so I believed at the time – that I had to shut off my mind and heart from those feelings. I had to train myself to think about something else the moment an employee began talking to me about their problems.

I had ample opportunity to practice the art of not caring. And I eventually got to the point where my response to someone complaining or falling apart or even getting defensive was not empathy but irritation.

In retrospect, this was counterproductive in terms of advancing what should have been my managerial priority: motivating my employees to work harder and smarter. I got away with it because… well, because I was the boss. And because it was a small company, everyone knew me, knew that I was new at this, and (I think) gave me a pass for being a little rough around the edges.

But in my second incarnation in business, I was involved in growing a much larger business. And what had been working for me no longer did. I was offending people right and left – people I hardly knew and who hardly knew me.

This is one of the many problems with growing a business too big. All of the corporate crap you promised yourself you were never going to get involved in at $10 million or even $100 million becomes unavoidable at $500 million or $1 billion. Like it or not, civility matters.

I am still learning this lesson. I recently ran into a problem with one of the best people I work with. He is very smart, very skilled, and bound for glory. I made some comment – I don’t even remember what it was – that offended him. (He told me so later.) And because it offended him, he pushed back on the idea I was advancing. That wasted time and it diminished an opportunity. Had I any idea he would react that way, I would have happily phrased my comment differently.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think I should care about his feelings so much that I should compromise my critique. I believe his response was wrong. It was egocentric and immature. But I do think I should have been sensitive enough to his immaturity to realize I had to be careful about how I stated my case.

I don’t have to say that this problem of dealing with emotional immaturity is a real one today. Kids are different. A college graduate is no longer an eager beaver, happy to take on whatever challenge is thrown his way. He’s spent four years being told that his feelings matter. And that making someone feel bad is a kind of violence. This sort of brain damage takes a while to recover from.

So that’s my thought for today: If you want to build something big and ambitious, you must hire good and great people. And since you will be hiring and working with sensitive people, you have to learn to be sensitive to their feelings – immature or not – and consider them in your dealings with them. But don’t let those feelings dictate your decisions. Care about feelings enough to be aware of them. But put your true care into how your customers feel about their experience with your business.

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Making New Year’s Resolutions: Is There Any Point? 

It’s fashionable these days to discount New Year’s resolutions as artificial and ineffective. “I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions,” one well-known guru and friend of mine wrote this time last year. “It’s a silly American trend. There’s no evidence that it works.”

It’s hardly a trend. Or American. People have been making New Year’s resolutions for at least 2,000 years. The Romans celebrated the new year by making promises to the god Janus, for whom January is named.

And in medieval times, knights took the “peacock vow” at the turn of the year to re-affirm their commitment to chivalry.

A hundred years ago, according to one study, about 25% of Americans made New Year’s resolutions. Surprisingly, that number has increased since then. Today, depending on what source you rely on, the percentage is between 40% and 50%.

So, a good many people do it. But does it work?

A common criticism of this practice, which my friend cited, is that most resolutions are not kept.

For example: A 2007 study by the University of Bristol involving 3,000 people showed that 88% of those who set New Year’s resolutions failed, despite the fact that 52% of the study’s participants were confident of success at the beginning. Men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting, wherein resolutions are made in terms of small and measurable goals (e.g., “lose a pound a week” rather than “lose weight”).

And: In a 2014 report, 35% of participants who failed to keep their New Year’s Resolutions admitted they had unrealistic goals, 33% did not keep track of their progress, and 23% forgot about them. About 1 in 10 claimed they made too many resolutions.

From 2000 until 2010, I wrote a blog on self-improvement called Early to Rise. During that time, I read dozens of books, interviewed dozens of experts, and wrote hundreds of essays on setting and accomplishing goals.

In 2011, I wrote a book (under my “Michael Masterson” penname) titled The Pledge: Your Master Plan for an Abundant Life.

The Pledge presented, in detail, all of the most important self-improvement discoveries I’d made during those 10 years. It contained, along with detailed protocols, an actual pledge that readers could sign, committing themselves to achieving their self-improvement goals.

The initial response to that book was very positive. We received hundreds of positive reviews as well as hundreds of actual pledges that were mailed into the office.

I had no way of tracking the success of those hundreds that made the pledge. But encouraged by the response, I ran a personal workshop with about a dozen friends and colleagues. They seemed to like it. But how many made significant personal changes? One did for sure. Maybe two.

 

A Disappointing Truth 

There are many reasons why people fail to accomplish the goals they set. Some are perfectly understandable.  Some are incomprehensible. Some are inexcusable. But I’ve decided that reasons don’t matter. The fact is that most people, most of the time, do not change.

It’s Pareto’s Law again. In any self-improvement endeavor, only 20% of those participating are able to achieve any meaningful results. And there is no theory or system that works better than 20%.

I’ve come to believe that this is true not only for such simple things as what time we wake up in the morning or whether and how we prepare for a meeting, but for the kind of things – such as how hard we work – that can truly change our lives.

Does my view seem depressing? Does it feel like I’ve given up?

I don’t look at it that way. My new perspective – that 80% of people will never improve themselves – is actually liberating and inspiring. It relieves me of the Sisyphean task of trying to motivate the 80%. It allows me to spend my coaching and teaching time exclusively on the 20% that are capable of change.

What does this mean for you?

Does it mean that if you have never been able to improve yourself in any significant way, you can never be among the 20%?

Probably. If you’ve spent decades reading books, taking courses, and being coached on self-improvement, but without success, you are almost certainly among the 80% that will never change. If that’s you, don’t despair. The world doesn’t need you to succeed. It will get on quite nicely without you.

The only reason for you to even want to improve is to do it for yourself (and maybe those that depend on you). But the world? The world could care less.

On the other hand, there is a small – a very small – percentage of people that improve themselves late in life. I don’t know what that percentage is. Perhaps it’s 4% (20% of the 20%). That could be you.

If it is you, you will definitely benefit from reading The Pledge. Or, if you want to get started right now (a positive sign), start with the following excerpt from The Plague – a simple but very powerful protocol:

The most important lesson I learned came from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. In that book, Covey presents a technique for prioritizing that impressed me greatly and soon became a central part of my planning process.

           Divide your tasks, Covey says, into four categories:

      1. Not important and not urgent.
      2. Not important but urgent.
      3. Important and urgent.
      4. Important but not urgent.

In the “not important and not urgent” category, you would include such things as:

            * Catching up on office gossip.

            * Shopping online for personal items.

            * Answering unimportant phone calls.

            * Responding to unimportant emails.

In the “not important but urgent” category, you would include:

            * Returning phone calls from pesky salespeople.

            * Making last-minute preparations for an office party.

            * Attending a required meeting that doesn’t help your career.

            * Planning for a meeting that doesn’t matter.

In the “important and urgent” category, you might list:

* Making last-minute preparations for an important meeting with the boss.

* Making last-minute sales calls to key clients.

* Solving unexpected problems.

And, finally, in the “important but not urgent” category, you might include:

* Learning how to write better.

* Learning how to speak better.

* Learning how to think better.

* Working on your novel.

* Getting down to a healthy weight.

When you break up tasks into these four categories, it’s easy to see that you should give no priority at all to “not important and not urgent” tasks. In fact, these tasks should not be done at all. They are a waste of time. Yet many people spend lots of time on them, because they tend to be easy to do and sometimes enjoyable in a mindless sort of way. Or they are afraid to get to work on important tasks, because they are afraid of failure.

Even worse than spending time on tasks that are not important and not urgent is spending time on those that are not important but urgent. They should have been dealt with long before they reached the crisis stage.

If you discover that you are spending a lot of time on unimportant tasks, you’ve got a serious problem. Unless you change your ways, you’re unlikely to achieve any of your important goals.

So which tasks should you give priority to?

In Seven Habits, Covey says that most people think they should give priority to important and urgent tasks. But this is a mistake. “It’s like pounding surf,” he says. “A huge problem comes and knocks you down and slams you to the ground.” You are “literally beat up by problems all day every day.”

All urgent tasks – both unimportant and important – are problematic: They are urgent because you’ve neglected something or because they are important to other people (like your boss). In either case, you need to find a way to keep most of them from winding up on your daily to-do list. This means making some changes in your work habits – usually a combination of being more efficient and delegating more chores.

Urgent tasks will burn you out. And turn you into an unhappy workaholic. If you want transformation in your life, you have to give priority to the important but not urgent tasks – because those are the ones that will help you achieve your major, long-term goals.

It’s not easy.

The important but not urgent tasks whisper, while the urgent tasks shout. But there is a way to get that critical but quiet stuff done in four simple steps:

Step 1. When planning your day, divide your tasks into Covey’s four categories: not important and not urgent, not important but urgent, important and urgent, and important but not urgent.

Step 2. You will, of course, have to do all the urgent tasks – at least until you get better at taking charge of your schedule. And you will have to find a way to get rid of the tasks that are not important and not urgent. But make sure you include one important but not urgent task that, when completed, will move you closer to one of your long-term goals.

Step 3. Highlight that important but not urgent task on your to-do list. Make it your number one priority for the day.

Step 4. Do that task first – before you do anything else.

Initially, you will find it difficult to do an important but not urgent task first. There are reasons for that.

* Since it is not urgent, you don’t feel like it’s important. But it is.

* Since it supports a goal you’ve been putting off, you are in the habit of neglecting it.

* You are in the habit of neglecting it because you don’t think it’s important and because you might be afraid of doing it.

* You might be afraid of doing it because you know, deep down inside, that it will change your life. And change, even good change, is scary.

But once you start using this little four-step technique, you’ll notice something right away.

The first thing you’ll notice is how good you feel. Accomplishing something you’ve been putting off is energizing. It will erase some doubts you have about yourself – doubts caused by years of “never getting to” your long-term goals.

That extra energy and confidence will grow, and will fuel you throughout the day. This will make it easier for you to accomplish other important but not urgent tasks.

As the days go by, you will realize that you are making measurable progress toward your neglected goals. In just a few weeks, you will be amazed at how much you’ve already done. And in 52 weeks – a short year from now – you will be a brand-new, much more productive person.

That year is going to pass by anyway. You are going to spend the time somehow. Why not do it by taking charge of your schedule? Why not spend that time on yourself – on what’s really important to you?

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No-Nos for Holiday Office Parties 

There are three social environments when it comes to your career.

At one end is the formal atmosphere of your professional business life. Here, all eyes are on you… and to succeed, you must conduct yourself with the utmost energy, enthusiasm, and decorum.

At the other end is your personal life, which, if you can, you should keep separate from your business relationships so you can behave exactly as you please.

And then, in the middle, are the semi-business/semi-social events that surround business functions – the dinners and cocktail parties that often follow conferences, trade shows, and seminars. And the holiday office party.

Throughout a good part of my career, this middle ground was a challenge for me. I wanted to, and felt entitled to, relax and enjoy myself. But I was conscious of the fact that I was, for everyone else in the room, a boss or an employee. Through trial and error (mostly error), I eventually had to recognize that, like it or not, I was being judged by my behavior at this “social” event. And that virtually everything I did would go down, in some fashion or other, on my “permanent record” as a businessman.

Having figured this out myself the hard way, I sent a half-tongue-in-cheek memo to the employees of one of the companies I owned, warning against improper office-party behavior:

  1. Passing out from drink
  2. Telling your boss what you really think of him/her
  3. Telling your boss’s spouse what you really think of him/her
  4. Commenting (positively or negatively) on your colleagues’ body parts
  5. Any form of “dirty” dancing
  6. Telling your boss’s spouse how “hot” your fellow employees think he/she is
  7. Falling in sudden love with anyone at the office party
  8. Finally telling that colleague about his/her body odor problem
  9. Showing anyone your “secret” tattoos
  10. Dancing on, standing on, or toppling over furniture
  11. Yodeling, Tarzan calls, or hyena laughing
  12. Forcibly encouraging people to do that YMCA thing
  13. Disrobing, even if it’s “so fucking hot”
  14. Leading a conga line
  15. Taking the “after party” to a karaoke bar
  16. Doing anything that in any way resembles John Belushi’s behavior in Animal House
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What You Need to Know Right Now About the Metaverse 

Part I: Timmy and the Metaverse 

Timmy agreed to be homeschooled last year, but his parents couldn’t get the 15-year-old to do the work. As a punishment, his father pulled him from his baseball team. Timmy didn’t seem to care, so his father imposed additionalsanctions: No more outings with friends. His TV was removed from his bedroom. And his collection of vintage comic books was put in storage. Timmy didn’t object to any of this. But when his father tried to take away his cellphone, he refused to comply.

These days, Timmy spends virtually every waking hour on his cellphone. He’s out of school. He doesn’t play catch with his father anymore. His social life, such as it is, exists online.

Timmy’s father is worried. “His body is still here,” he says. “But his mind is somewhere else.”

It’s true. Timmy’s body remains in the physical universe, but his mind is no longer a citizen of the country he was born in, or even of the world at large. Timmy’s mind lives in the Metaverse.

In the Metaverse, Timmy can be an adventurer, a warrior, and a rock star – all on the same day. He can go to work as a stock broker, build and decorate his house, develop and profit from a farm, manage a professional sports team, even compete in mixed martial arts.

His Metaverse is not lonely. It is populated with fellow denizens – some avatars of his real-life friends, others beings of his own creation. He can play with them, fight with them, have sex with them, and kill them – all from the safety of his bedroom.

Everyone Is Doing It 

For his 9th birthday party, Cathy Hackl’s son didn’t ask for favors for his friends or themed decorations. Instead, Ms. Hackl told Time magazine, he asked if they could hold the party on RobloxOn Roblox, a digital platform that allows users to play free games and generate new activities of their own, Hackl’s son and his friends would attend the party as their virtual avatars.

“They hung out and played and they went to other different games together,” she said. “Just because it happens in a virtual space doesn’t make it less real. It’s very real to my son.”

 Everyone Is Talking About It 

Several years ago, some of the investment analysts we publish began writing about a development in technology they called the Metaverse. As they described it then, it was going to be the future of virtual reality games. And it was going to be big. The clunky video games of the past were fast evolving to a point where the experience of such games would be indistinguishable from experiences in the physical world.

If you have paid any attention to these sorts of games recently, you know how prescient those analysts were. The animation is natural. The visuals are in 3 dimensions. The audio is lifelike. It is very easy to get lost in them.

And refinements are occurring at the speed of light. It feels like we are just a few years away from fully formed virtual experiences covering all five senses. It’s no longer just about video and audio. It’s about smell and touch and feeling.

Why Facebook Changed Its Name 

I’m sure you’ve read that Facebook recently changed its name to Meta. In an amazing display of bravado, Mark Zuckerman and his team decided to make the change to overtly announce its vision of its future.

Facebook was an amazing business that grew into a behemoth of social media. As Zuckerman sees it – and I don’t doubt it – Meta will be more than that. Much, much more.

In explaining how they chose the new name, Zuckerman defined the Metaverse as a technology to “make everything in life – from business to entertainment and mostly to human communication – easier and more efficient.”

That’s one way of putting it. I’d put it differently.

The term was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash – a portmanteau of “meta” and “universe.” In the novel, humans use digital avatars of themselves to interact with each other in a three-dimensional virtual space (the Metaverse) that exists outside of the real world.

Thus, the Metaverse is a parallel universe that exists digitally for each individual that lives within it. It is Facebook and Instagram and Roblox put together. It is online chatting and texting, gambling, sports, research, education, book clubs, discussion groups, travel blogs, chat groups, online dating, and every other form of social interaction one can think of, including sex.

The Metaverse is the inclusion and synchronization of all of these into an interactive universe of digital communities, each of which is controlled by a pantheon of digital gods.

And Mark Zuckerberg is one of those gods.

Part II: The Metaverse as a Virtual Country 

I think of the Metaverse as a federation of digital nation-states. But to simplify the metaphor, let’s consider just one Metaverse: the Metaverse of Meta, what Facebook is fast becoming.

As a digital nation-state, Facebook/Meta is far along in its development. In terms of population, it is already the largest nation in the world with 2.9 billion users. In terms of GDP, it’s nowhere near number one, but it’s not doing badly. With advertising revenues of $27.2 billion and total revenues of $86 billion, it is tiny compared to the US and China. But it is larger than 98 other countries, including Oman, Luxembourg, Croatia, Jordan, Belarus, and Iceland.

There is a reason that Facebook (and the other major digital nations, such as Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft) are growing so fast.

From the citizen’s point of view, a country is a place where one lives. From the government’s point of view, a country is a place full of citizens that must be given certain products and services, and also taxed and controlled.

When I began thinking about it this way, one thing became shockingly clear. In all the important ways, digital countries are superior to real ones. They are better at doing what they must do and better at doing what they want to do.

They are better at providing the goods and services a government provides. They are better at taxing their citizens. And they are better at controlling them.

The primary purpose of a nation-state is to provide protection for its citizens in terms of their lives, liberties, and property. A secondary responsibility that many governments have taken on is to provide some form of happiness – or, at least, the right to the “pursuit of happiness.”

In all of these areas, the Metaverse is more comprehensive and more efficient than physical nation-states.

Let’s take a look at why I say this.

How Meta Is Meta? 

In the Metaverse, you have not only the right to life, but to the life of your choosing. You can be a doctor, lawyer, farmer, or rock star. You can be six-foot-four or four-foot-six. You can change your race or your gender with the click of a button.

Plus, your right to life isn’t limited to a single life. You can rise from the dead. You can also live duplicate lives sequentially or simultaneously.

In the Metaverse, you have the right to acquire as many digital goods and services as you want. You can be rich. You can be famous. And perhaps most importantly, you can enjoy the love and admiration of everyone in your digital nation-state.

You can have all these things because, as a citizen of the Metaverse, you can design your own life experience.

 If the Metaverse is better for its denizens, it is equally better for its governors.

What does a government want from its citizens? Two things, primarily. It wants obedience to its laws and regulations. And it wants the ability to tax them.

The Metaverse satisfies both of these needs well and efficiently.

Let’s look at taxes.

Taxation in the Metaverse 

 In the US and other nation-states, you have to pay income tax on the money you earn, property tax if you own a home, and – if Elizbeth Warren has her way – a wealth tax if you have wealth.

These taxes are mandatory.

In the Metaverse, the only tax you pay is a sales and usage tax on the products and services you buy in the Metaverse. Individual taxation, in other words, is voluntary. And for many experiences, such as games and gaming, you have options. You can pay with money or you can pay with time.

In either case, there is no way to avoid paying what you owe. Every transaction in the Metaverse is tracked and sent to the cloud and recorded on the blockchain.

Business and property taxes exist in the Metaverse, but they, too, are optional. As a citizen of MetaLand, you don’t have to have a business. Nor do you have to own property. But if you do, you pay a fee for that. That fee is also tracked and sent to the cloud and recorded on the blockchain.

In short, the taxation system of the Metaverse is superior to the tax system of the US (or any other nation-state) because it is both voluntary and impossible to evade. It is easy and unobjectionable for the private citizen and 100% efficient for the government.

Law and Order 

In the physical universe, it is possible to reduce your taxes through myriad tax code loopholes (if you have the right lawyers and accountants). It is also possible to cheat on your taxes. But if you get caught, you are likely to end up in jail.

Likewise, in the physical universe, there’s the risk of punishment if you engage in any other kind of criminal activity – from cheating your customers to abusing your spouse to rape and murder.

In the physical universe, order is possible only when the government has the capacity to enforce its laws. And that enforcement is only possible with coercion. The threat of punishment (sometimes extreme punishment) for citizens that break the law is reasonably effective at deterring crime, but it is far from perfect. Not only does crime continue, the fact that the government allows itself to use physical force puts it always in danger of being overthrown.

But in the Metaverse, there is no need to resort to the threat of punishment to enforce the law.

The digital nation-state has no need to intervene in the physical lives of its citizens because it cares nothing about their physical lives. The only thing that matters to digital nation-states is the digital attention of its citizens. When they act improperly, they can be punished by temporary or permanent banishment. No guns. No breaking down doors. No bloodshed.

And 100% compliance.

In Summary 

The digital nation-state is better than the physical nation-state both for the citizens and for the government. And because everything is or seems to be voluntary, the digital nation-state can exist without fear of rebellion or revolution.

The Metaverse is not a fantasy. Nor is it a prediction. It is already here, today. It is where Timmy, and Cathy Hackl’s son, and many of their friends live. It is where millions more people their age are living every day.

Whether in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), or simply on a screen, the promise of the Metaverse is to allow a greater overlap of our digital and physical lives in wealth, socialization, productivity, shopping, and entertainment.

These two worlds are already interwoven, no headset required. Think about the Uber app telling you via location data how far away the car is. Think about how Netflix gauges what you’ve watched before to make suggestions. Think about how the LiDAR scanner on newer iPhones can take a 3D scan of your surroundings. At its core, the Metaverse (also known to many as “web3”) is an evolution of our current internet.

“You’ve got your goggles on, 10 years from now, but they’re just a pair of sunglasses that happens to have the ability to bring you into the Metaverse experience,” says John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity Technologies, maker of a video game engine that is increasingly used to develop immersive experiences on other platforms. “You’re walking by a restaurant, you look at it, the menu pops up. What your friends have said about it pops up.”

Yes, you heard it here first. The Metaverse is here. And it’s here to stay. It is not a part of our world. It is its own separate world. And it’s a world that is, in most ways, preferable to be a part of. Metaverses like Meta or Apple or Google will eventually be richer and more powerful than nation-states. Zuckerman understands that. So do his fellow meta-gods. They are doing their best to keep us distracted by talking about customer experience. That’s not the goal. The goal is universal, voluntary domination.

I’ll have more fun thoughts – such as why the Metaverse will result in a drastic decrease in human population – in upcoming blog posts. Stay tuned!

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What’s in a Word? 

In Elements of Style, authors Strunk and White define the standard for modern English prose. One of their many rules: Avoid fancy words. “Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute,” they say. “Do not be tempted by a 20-dollar word when there is a 10-center handy, ready and able.”

It’s true. In most cases, it’s better to:

* Use lucky instead of fortuitous.

* Use lie instead of prevarication.

* Use ideal instead of optimal.

* Use possible instead of feasible.

* Use read instead of peruse.

* Use question instead of interrogate.

* Use argument instead of altercation.

* Use substitute instead of surrogate.

As James Michener said in his autobiography, The World Is My Home, “the challenge is not to use big words, but to accomplish extraordinary things through ordinary words.” And he added that he, himself, always tried to follow “the pattern of Ernest Hemingway, who achieved a striking style with short, familiar words.”

I like Hemingway too. He may be the most influential prose stylist of the second half of the 20th century. But there are others that I like as well. Like Faulkner, Joyce, Nabokov, and Isak Dinesen (whose prose style, by the way, Hemingway greatly admired).

As for nonfiction… I’ve been editing and coaching professional writers for nearly 40 years. And along the way, I’ve done a lot of thinking about how to explain what good, nonfiction writing is. This is what I tell writers now:

Good nonfiction writing is good thinking, cleanly expressed.

I will save an explanation for what I mean by “good thinking” for another time. The second part of the definition – “cleanly expressed” – bears on the issue at hand. By cleanly expressed, I mean succinctly and without ornamentation.

You take a good thought and you present it to the reader laid bare of verbal makeup or clothing. If the idea is truly good, it is also beautiful. And if it is beautiful, it should be shown naked.

And that is why, when writing or speaking to educate or persuade, we should make our syntax and diction simple. We should prefer simple sentences over compound and complex sentences, and monosyllabic words over synonyms of three or four syllables.

But that does not mean that there are not times and cases where fancier words should be preferred.

There is an expression in French: le mot juste. It means the correct word, the precise word. It means that sometimes good writing (and speaking) requires us to stretch a little to fetch the less common, more colorful, multisyllabic word to convey exactly what we mean.

When you want to describe that very human (but shameful) experience of feeling good about another’s bad fortune, for example, there is no better or even other word for it than schadenfreude. Or when you want to describe how the conversation felt after someone left the room, halfhearted or lukewarm may not be exactly right. But desultory might.

There are also times when you might want to use an uncommon word precisely because it is uncommon. When, for example, it would be stronger to say “gobsmacked” rather than the more tepid “amazed.”

Good writers and public speakers understand the primacy of thought and the importance of simplicity of expression. But they also understand the occasional need for le mot juste.

Here are some thoughts from seriously good writers (and thinkers) on the subject of words and how we should use them:

* “I like good, strong words that mean something.” – Louisa May Alcott

* “I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you’re dead.” – Tom Stoppard

* “Language. I loved it. And for a long time, I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.” – Maya Angelou

* “Our choice of words often reveals the depth of our knowledge… or ignorance… or that of our desire to be deemed knowledgeable.” – Mokokoma Mokhonoana

* “Short words are best, and old words when short are best of all.” – Winston Churchill

* “A writer need not be bound by flat statements like ‘It was a rough sea,’ when verbs like tumble and roil and seethe wait to spill from her pen.” – Rebecca McClanahan

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Culture, Civilization, and Women’s Right

There was a time in my life when I embraced the notion that, despite differences, all ethnic, religious, and national populations were ethically and morally equal. No one was any better or worse than any other.

This felt like a fair perspective. It made me feel good. Even virtuous.

When, for example, K and I were invited to Arosi’s house for dinner – K’s first dinner in a Chadian home – K was disturbed to discover that she was welcome to sit at the table with Arosi and me, but Arosi’s wife was not. Her job was to serve us dinner.

I told K that I felt we had no right to judge Arosi for that. We were in his home. This was his culture. It was an ancient culture, one that had survived millennia. And it would be wrong for us to presume that it was inferior to ours. We should respect Arosi’s culture, just as we would want him to respect ours.

That was my belief then. Forty-plus years later, I still believe that we have no right to impose our values on other cultures. But I no longer believe that we need to simply accept behaviors and practices that, by our standards, are uncivilized.

When confronted, directly or indirectly, by such things as burning heretics or stoning sinners to death, for example, I believe that I have not just the right, but the obligation to speak out. And I extend that to include barbaric attitudes and behaviors towards groups and individuals with respect to human rights, social status, freedom of expression, and other human liberties.

The Reality of Cultural Hierarchies 

There are many ways for a society to be more – or less – civilized. One criteria, mentioned above, is how a society administers punishment for crime. I believe drawing and quartering is a less civilized form of execution than, say, electrocution. I also believe a prison sentence for theft is more civilized than chopping off an arm.

If we wanted to measure the relative civility of different cultures, we would need a complex matrix to track dozens of practices and beliefs. But we can shortcut that by looking at how they treat their women. Because I believe there is a direct relationship between the status of and rights accorded to women in a society and that society’s general moral sophistication.

In the most barbaric cultures, women have neither social status nor human rights. They are essentially owned by their fathers and husbands. They have no say about what they will do, where they will live, and whom they will marry. They do not even have sovereignty over their own bodies.

At the same time, these women have enormous responsibilities. They are charged not only with keeping their homes, raising their children, and catering to their husbands, they are expected to do most of the income-producing work. In contrast, men in such cultures have, at best, two roles: fighting and fertilizing (i.e., defending their homes and impregnating their women).

Five thousand years ago, almost all human societies functioned in this way. But gradually, over the centuries, women acquired certain rights. First the right to life, then to liberty, and then to such things as the right to own property, to work, to get divorced, to vote, and so on.

An Inconvenient and Uncomfortable Thought 

We’re okay with calling a culture “primitive” if that culture existed in the long-ago, but not when we are talking about cultures that exist in the present.

And yet, how should we describe a contemporary culture that bans women from higher education, that dictates their clothing, that forbids them from refusing sex to their husbands, and that executes them for having extra- or pre-marital affairs?

Most of the discussions about women’s rights today are relegated to the countries where women have near or full rights and status. It’s easy, for example, to argue about whether women have more rights in Europe versus the Nordic countries or in China versus the US. But it’s hard to have a frank discussion about primitive practices in countries where they are most egregious.

I’m talking about such countries as Niger, Sudan, Mali, Congo, Chad, and the Central African Republic in Africa; Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Afghanistan in the Mideast; and then North Korea, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. There are dozens of studies that rank countries according to the status and rights of their women. Take a look and you will see these at the very bottom.

But the argument I’m trying to make here is about cultures, not countries. So, it’s important to recognize that even in those countries at the ethical apex of those studies – the advanced Western countries, mostly – there are countless pockets of micro-cultures where the status and rights of women are severely restricted.

The most obvious examples are fundamentalist religions, including fundamentalist Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

The experience of women in such micro-cultures – even if they are living in the US, Canada, England, or Norway – is very much more restricted than is the experience of women in the mainstream. In some cases, it is nearly as bad as it is in the countries at the tail end of the rankings.

Still, in a bizarre twist of reason, contemporary political correctness – which purports to be at the forefront of civilized thinking – requires us to pretend that such micro-cultures are not less humane and less civilized. That they are simply, as I once tried to believe, different but equal.

(I’m sure it’s evident that I haven’t entirely figured this out.  I’ve got other ideas about how these inequities fit into the general zeitgeist of contemporary thinking that I’ll get to in future blog posts.)

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In Praise of Useless Information 

I have, in the past, argued that though you may need an MBA or other technical degree to be accepted for certain jobs, it’s really a waste of time. As I explained in one essay: “Anything you learn will be outdated or simply useless when you get into the ‘real world.’ You’ll get a job and you’ll have to learn on the job.”

I have also argued that the only course of study that makes sense is Liberal Arts. It’s the best (though not the only) way to develop what I consider to be life’s three essential skills: thinking, writing, and speaking. It also introduces you to a wide range of subjects that will help you distinguish yourself in any activity that requires a whole lot of information that is otherwise useless.

I am, for example, enjoying Quiz Daily, a website that gives me the opportunity to show off – if only to myself – how well-rounded I am.

I’ve shared some of these quizzes with you in the past. They cover everything from science to literature to history to… just about anything you can think of. And I love the challenge.

So, this being Hanukkah week, I dove into the quiz they sent about Hanukkah traditions.

I had scored very well on a quiz about another Jewish holiday, Passover, so I fully expected to do well on this one, too. Sadly, I got only two right – and one of them was a wild guess.

I attribute my success with the Passover quiz to the fact that, although we were Catholics, my mother was an Ecumenical Catholic, which meant (at least for her) that we celebrated Passover with some of the customs associated with the Seder (the holiday meal).

Alas, we didn’t celebrate Hanukkah.

If you want to try your hand at the Hanukkah quiz, click here.

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What Would You Do?

Equal vs. Equitable, Part I

You have two adult children. Alissa and Tony. They are twins. At the time of their birth, you had set up a trust account designated to go to them when they turned 30.

They are 29 years old now – happily married, each with 2 children. As twins, they share many of the same traits. But there is a significant difference between them. Alissa is a neurosurgeon, making $400,000+ a year. And Tony is a violinist in a regional orchestra, making an eighth of that.

Alissa has already developed a net worth of $1 million and will likely become a decamillionaire before she turns 40. Tony has a net worth of zero and zero prospects of ever making a lot of money. He isn’t complaining. Nor is he jealous of his sister. He’s comfortable with the life he chose. And his wife and children are happy and thriving.

The trust account is worth $1 million. If you move forward as planned, Tony and Alissa will each be $500,000 richer on their next birthday. That will give Tony a net worth of $500,000 and Alissa a net worth of $1.5 million.

That’s a good outcome for both of them. But is it fair?

Because of the advantages Alissa already has, one could argue that the right thing to do would be to give Tony the entire $1 million. That would leave them each with the same net worth: $1 million. They would be even.

Is that what you would do?

You know the answer. You would not. You would give them each $500,000. Giving Tony a million and Alissa nothing would achieve an equal outcome – i.e. they would both end up with an equal net worth. But it would be insanely unfair.

It would be unfair to Alissa who worked her entire life to get into and through medical school. She would feel, justifiably, that she had earned the net worth she has. And it would send the wrong message to Tony: that he is entitled to have the same net worth as his sister, even though he chose a profession that is poorly paid.

This little mental exercise is meant to illustrate an ethical and social argument that is raging in American culture today. And though it is unnoticed by many, it’s beneath and/or behind some of the most important issues affecting every US family, almost every US company, our military, our educational institutions, and even the entertainment industry.

I’m talking about the distinction between equal and equitable.

Two similar words that have come to mean two very different things 

The first principle stated by the Declaration of Independence – as every citizen knows – is that “all men are created equal.”  And when Thomas Jefferson penned those words in 1776, he was talking about equality in terms of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Of course, he didn’t mean all men exactly. He wasn’t suggesting that slaves had those equal rights. And his usage of “men” in this case did not include women with respect to such things as voting and property.

Some of these disparities were addressed in 1863 with the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation and in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment. And during the Civil Rights era, the term “equal rights” was used to include access by minorities to education, public facilities, and job opportunities.

This tells us something we should keep in mind: The original, constitutional definition of equality has been expanded to include additional rights that our founding fathers never even thought of.

Like equality, equitable derives from the Latin for “uniformity, impartiality, fairness.” And like equality, its meaning has evolved over the years.

Here are two simple dictionary definitions:

* Equality: The quality or state of being equal; having the same rights, social status, etc.

* Equity: Fairness or justice in the way people are treated

It’s easy to understand what equality means. But equitable is a slippery fish. Going back to the mental exercise above, giving Alissa and Tony $500,000 each would be, by definition, an equal action. But not necessarily an equitable one. And this difference, as I said, underpins arguments we are having today about just about every aspect of our lives.

Affirmative action is one example.

At one time, African-Americans were not given equal opportunities for employment. The establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson helped, but the situation improved only marginally.

To remedy that, some businesses and educational institutions introduced their own affirmative action policies. The argument was that factors other than raw intelligence and hard work were holding minorities back. To make it fair, it was necessary for them to make adjustments to standards for minorities. The idea was something like, “Just give them a leg up. They will get the rest of the way themselves.”

I don’t have a problem with that thinking. I have promoted affirmative action efforts in my businesses and in my personal life. Giving help to people that want help seems like a sensible course of action in all areas of human interaction. (How well affirmative action works, however, is a subject for another essay.)

But in recent years, the definition of equitable has expanded beyond “equal” or even “more-than-equal” opportunities and treatment. Today, when you hear equitable used in political or social debates it means equal outcomes.

It’s not enough that everyone has an equal start. We must also guarantee an equal finish. And for those that espouse this line of thinking, that means equal outcomes in everything from childhood competitions… to test scores… to hiring and promotions… and – what is most precious to leftists – wealth.

That is a problem.

The only measure of achievement that makes sense 

If our objective is equal outcomes, we must disregard all the factors that determine success in the real world. Such as aptitude. And ambition. And hard work. And persistence. And intellectual and emotional intelligence. And we must admit that affirmative action – and all laws, regulations, and protocols that provide disadvantaged communities with extra help and second chances – is not enough because it does not result in equal earnings.

Equal-outcome advocates are like parents that believe the fair thing is to give Tony the million and Alissa nothing, because they want their children to have equally happy and fulfilling lives. And for them, that means having an equal net worth.

They don’t understand that giving each of them the same amount is giving them the same opportunity. Tony is every bit as smart and savvy as Alissa. He can invest and grow that money as well as she can. But they also know that Alissa has a big head start with her existing net worth and a much better financial future because of her income.

They don’t want to face the reality that, unless something terrible happens to Alissa or Tony decides to give up music and get a job as, say, a plumber, Alissa and her family will continue to grow richer while Tony and his family may very well grow poorer.

They can’t change those facts. But what they can do is make their children equal for a moment in time. That, and that alone, they can do. So, they will do it.

What they refuse to see is all the damage it will do – to both children and to the relationship between them. In Part 2 of this essay, I’ll dig into this very bad idea of equity and explain why it has never worked and will never work, no matter what we do to try to make it work.

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