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Tuesday, 2 May 2023

[New post] Throwing Darts At Popcorn

Site logo image accordingtohoyt posted: " Blame this one on Larry Correia, who got exercised over some internet Marxist (TM) which is totally fair. Unfortunately it hit me with my first cup of coffee when I was vulnerable, and it got me thinking just how stupid that take on entrepreneursh" According To Hoyt

Throwing Darts At Popcorn

accordingtohoyt

May 2

Blame this one on Larry Correia, who got exercised over some internet Marxist (TM) which is totally fair.

Unfortunately it hit me with my first cup of coffee when I was vulnerable, and it got me thinking just how stupid that take on entrepreneurship was. I mean Larry hit most of it, but I'll.... rolls up sleeves... will carry the rest. Because, honestly, you can't hit internet Marxists ENOUGH.

So, this was the snowflake's hot take:

And this is so stupid. For one, kindly look around yourself: How many kids of privilege do you see making it big in... well... anything?

Oh, there are some -- and yes, sorry, Trump is one of them -- upper class kids who manage to make good. I attribute this to good parenting. But most generational wealth goes down a magnitude per generation and is the source of various things like "Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations." (Most take more than three.)

Actually the smart generational wealth? Just don't try to be entrepreneurs. They sit pretty on their piles of money and become professional heirs. The money goes down slower that way.

In writing, think about it -- have you heard of Agatha Christie's descendants? I saw Dickens, the other day in an article, for some celebration of him, but that was it.

Are there "heirs" in writing? Sure, but I wouldn't call them entrepreneurs. Mostly they continue their "ancestors" series. (So do non-blood relatives.) Which is more like inheriting a going concern and being smart enough not to mess it up. (How do you mess it up? Look up sequel to Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, published in the 90s. Or, you know, the fourth of the Earthsea... Oh, wait, that was Ursula, not knowing why the books sold. Never mind.)

And it's sort of the same in other enterprises. There are heirs that do well by keeping up the good thing, but very few that break out wildly and unexpectedly. A few. Sure. A few. BUT not many.

Most of the people I know from a level of comfort (class is appropriate, sort of, for where I was born and raised but not here) above mine (and yes, my parents were very poor when I was little, but they got better) just sort of.... peter out. They don't miss a meal. Which in turn makes it "Why bother to struggle?"

Or as Heinlein would say "Never ruin your children by making their life too easy."

In a way I was lucky I threw all my connections and pull away when I moved here, including my largely useless here but highly respected (in Portugal) degree. I mean, we started out dirt poor (maybe not as poor as Larry, because it wasn't generational. Parents just had the bad luck to be descended from the kid that didn't do well.) But my parents saved and scraped and worked their fingers off and tried everything they could try. And learned to invest even though they started out clueless. And my generation, of which I am BY FAR the youngest made good, and went to college, and made contacts. So if I'd stayed in Portugal, I'd probably have coasted. I'd probably have ended up as some kind of UN delegate or working with one of the embassies.

The one good thing about it is that I'd never have had my hands in dish soap.

The bad... Oh, the bad. Well, I wouldn't be me. And I don't mean that in the sense of I wouldn't be who I'm now. I mean, I'd be an NPC going through the script, in my place in the game.

Luckily -- and I do mean that -- I felt about as comfortable as a fish out of water. So.... well, I fell in love with a foreigner and moved away. Best thing I could ever have done.

Am I better off materially? Oh, probably. Have I achieved more? Undoubtedly.

Glenn Reynolds, who actually comes from a more or less affluent background, years ago, when I met him, at a party, was asked "How did you become instapundit?" and he said "Well, like most important things in my life, more or less by accident."

Looking at my own life, he's not wrong. He's not right either. But he's not wrong.

Because it's not quite an accident. He cared enough to start a blog, and he had a vision for excellence. But I'm sure he had other things he did and started, and that was just the one that took off, through being at the right place, at the right time.

There were probably a bunch of things he did also which vanished without a trace.

Look, I've talked of this before: it's not just being rich or poor. That's crazy Marxist thought. (For definitions of thought.) If you think in terms of rich and poor then the poor have a slight advantage, because they have, again to quote Heinlein, to "root, hog of die."

BUT most of the poor like most of the rich, just... sit and spin where they were placed.

People keep trying to come up with reasons why the poor don't all, as one, spring out of poverty. And there are excuses -- like the stupid beesting theory -- and berating -- like they're just not that hard working -- but the fact is most humans, rich or poor just go on along the same track they were put in.

And there's us.... the few, the broken few. The ones who can't help pushing. The ones who want something different. The ones who need to try and do.

Broken? Well, hell yes, because think about it. In prehistory, the overachieving bunny who goes out and kills more animals than he'll eat is just depleting the game game and ensuring the tribe starves next winter. I think that's instinctively, why normal people hate those who stick out.

But eventually one of those broken people invented smoking meat. And that changed everything. Which is what entrepreneurs do.

For the record, I don't think of myself as one. I keep trying to retool mentally, since I realized I am one. But for me it was just "Must tell stories. Must find audience." I'm still confused as to how the blog got here. But it did. And there is posting at instapundit, which sort of still shocks me, even, because-- How did it get there.

Though the blog was one of about a hundred side things I tried. Writing was just the one thing I continued to try because that's my particular insanity. However, there's art, and crafts and... well, and it all feeds back into the writing.

Which if you read Larry's post you'll find is part of it. You try and learn, and try and learn some more. Often led by dire need. (I have said many times, I'd have quit, if baby didn't need shoes. And food.) Sometimes simply because "Effe this, it's not working."

People keep trying different things. And each time you fail, it does make it more likely you'll succeed. (Provided you're not failing at the same thing in the same way every time. Because the burned hand teaches. And besides learning what not to do, you pick up abilities, knacks, knowledge, ways of doing things. And all of that makes it more likely you'll succeed next time. Because you're a better, improved, more knowledgeable version of you.

The Marxists are wrong. I've succeeded (I know, but you should see the other guys) in writing, despite no contacts, no money, beginning with no clue, and writing in my third language. So, you don't need "privilege" to succeed.

And husband and I started with nothing. We've had some help in dire need, from my parents, but not ... significant (and mostly for the kids.) Not in the sense you'd think. For one, my parents live in a much poorer country, so they might make sure we had a decent Christmas, but they couldn't buy us a house. All we have is ours, made by us. And we're okay. Except for that scary bit when we were moving (And if my brain had been functioning, I'd have realized I was spending more than I could in getting the house ready for sale. In addition to having made some things worse, I swear) we've managed. Yeah, sometimes we lived on rice (or pancakes) but we've never gone on public assistance. And we've managed.

One of the things that makes me relatively confident on the kids' future is that they seem to have the same bug we have. They keep trying. They sometimes fail upwards, into a completely different thing. Already, they've taken kicks to the teeth, and came back stronger and trying something else, harder. So, I think they'll be okay.
Because you can never give your kids enough materially or enough preparation to know they'll be all right. But if they're broken and keep trying, you know they'll be okay. Maybe no rich. Maybe not star-successful, but okay.

Which brings us back to idiot Marxist. Yeah, success is like throwing darts at a moving target. In pretty much everything. Because success is the intersection of you and the world. And the world gets a VOTE. Like becoming a mega bestseller, you can only control "write a good book" but its finding a market depends on where the world is at at the time, and seemingly random things like "seen by the right person." (J. K. Rowling is a study in this.) All you can do is write a good book and KEEP TRYING. Which means you'll succeed at SOME level, but the mega type? Yeah. Moving target.

However, it has zero to do with social class. To go with his analogy, the kids working the carnie have a better chance of hitting the target, because they know things and have seen how things work, so it's not just chance.

Where he goes wrong is the usual Marxist thing: fixed pie. There's only one center target and you must HIT what is there. You can't create more targets, more opportunities and hit those.

Well, I prefer Kevin J. Anderson's analogy to express the intersection of effort and luck:

Success at least in writing is like popping popcorn.

You can take one kernel, selected for looking perfect. Put it in just the right amount and temperature of oil. And coddle it to popping.

And if it is a dud, you got nothing. And if it's a good kernel? Well, you'll have ONE perfect popped kernel. How long will that last you?

Or you can grab a pot about the same size, throw some oil in it, shake a bunch of kernels into it. Put lid on, turn on the gas and listen for the pops.

Sure, some kernels won't pop. Some will pop halfway and be weird and crunchy. And some will just burn. But you'll still have a lot of perfect kernels to eat on.

Which is the right analogy for entrepreneurship and market. (Which includes writing.)

Because entrepreneurs create their own "targets"; their own success. Which is why we're not all competing for three stone tools and some lizard someone caught for dinner.

Most of the people who got very rich created a market that didn't exist before.

And same goes for books. You write it, and people realize it's the book they can't live without. But they didn't know that before. The target wasn't there.

And your chances of doing that improve the more things you try, the more things you do, the more things you learn.

Laugh at the Marxists, and go pop some corn.

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