List of Aphorisms
1. Entrepreneurship is safer than getting a job.
Entrepreneurs control their income and company, and are solely responsible for their success.
The employee does not control where his company goes, if it will keep him, how much it will pay him, etc.
2. Humans are not equal in society.
Once an individual acquired a certain prestige due to extraordinary deeds or performances (stars, athletes, artists, billionaires, politicians), they won’t be punished the same way the lambda citizen will be punished.
Eg: when your dad commits a crime, he ends up in prison. When Bruce Willis commits a crime, he goes to prison for stars. When Nixon commits a crime, he is pardoned.
“If you don’t go to prison for it, it’s only forbidden for the lower classes”.
3. Things don’t scale.
The rule of law in the West does not scale outside of the West, even if it’s the same people we are talking about.
Here’s an example.
In Belgium, the government can’t just bomb Belgians with a military airplane. There is a whole judicial process that needs to be respected.
But in other countries, it’s a whole other story.
“Sympathy for all would be tyranny for you, my good neighbor”
Nietzsche
4. Everything you have (success, money, etc) in life depends on the value you provide.
Everything you have is as a result of the value you have given first.
Eg: you do good work for a client -> the client pays you money -> you buy an iPhone with the money.
You got the iPhone because you delivered good work to the client.
5. Sugar and cigarettes bankrupt societies
According to studies reported by worldobesity.org, obesity costs the world $990 billion each year.
BMJ further reports that smoking costs the planet around $1 400 billion each year.
Together, that’s about $2 390 billion.
Governments would be much better off taxing sugar and cigarettes instead of funding pharmaceutical companies.
Will they ever?
6. The world is a giant dictatorship.
You’re not free to go where you want. Besides in Antarctica or on the ocean, you are always subjected to rules you did not agree on by an authority that will imprison you, take away your belongings, or kill you if they desire to.
Your right to go somewhere is further determined by where you’re from, which is determined by imaginary lines everyone agrees on (although not always).
7. Laws and money only exist as long as there are more than one person in society.
Without other people to sell and buy stuff from, or to attack or be attacked by, there is no need for laws nor money in society.
It’s the ultimate freedom.
But at what cost?
8. Charities worsen society
- The documentary “Poverty, inc”
- The book “The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster”
- The book “Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa“
All make the same point: charity is a business, it has no aim to help those in needs whatsoever.
9. Hospitals kill more people than they save.
Ok, maybe it’s slightly exaggerated, but Johns Hopkins nonetheless reported how medical errors are the…third leading cause of death in the United States.
10. The rich give. They don’t take.
Bezos gave you Amazon.
Gates gave you Windows.
Musk gave you a Tesla.
If you want to be rich, you need to give.
11. Time is scarce. Money is infinite.
This man printed more than $5 200 billion of money since March 2020.
How many seconds of additional time has he created?
12. Modern slavery still exists. It’s called having a job and paying taxes.
Companies own you to the extent that they tell you:
- What to do and when
- How to dress
- Where to be and when
- What you can say on social media
- How you treat your body (drugs, tattoos, piercings)
- When you go on holidays
Governments own you to the extent that they can:
- Throw you in prison
- Take your possession away from you
- Take your kids away from you
- Kill you if they deem it necessary to do so
Unless you’re living independently on your farm, you’re a slave.
13. Only a very small amount of what you do will be responsible for your success.
The last rep is the one that makes you gain muscles at the gym.
Most books have only one or two sentences that are truly valuable.
If you are an entrepreneur, you will likely fail many times before founding THE ONE company that will make you rich.
One article on this blog is bringing me 80% of my traffic.
Everything works according to Pareto’s principle.
14. Most successes are exponential. The few others are linear.
People that make it often make it because they stick long enough.
15. Vegetables kill.
They’re full of antinutrients that will destroy your body if you don’t have an immune system strong enough to fight them.
16. Human’s optimal diet is meat-based.
We’ve been eating it for millions of years.
17. Schools are the worst places to learn stuff.
Real learning happens in the real world with real practice.
Schools weren’t designed for real practice. They were designed for testing theoretical knowledge.
18. Reality is all that matters.
At the end of the day, the real world is where everything happens.
19. Extraordinary results are achieved with extraordinary actions.
The silver bullet does not exist.
20. The extreme right hates others. The extreme left hates themselves.
Both see the world as hierarchies. The extreme right often leads genocides against those they deem to be “under them”, while the extreme left often leads genocides against those they deem to be “over them”.
It’s two different faces of the same coin. In the end, people die.
21. Capitalism doesn’t like competition.
McDonald’s, Apple, Windows, Google, and even your hairdresser don’t have any competitors.
Capitalism is driven by profit, and profit happens in situations of imperfect competition.
22. Poor people don’t produce anything of value. Poor countries don’t produce anything of value.
The richest countries produce the most (valuable) stuff. This is why they’re rich.
Countries that don’t produce anything valuable don’t get rich.
23. Employees produce a lot of value, but capture only 1/5 of it.
It’s true. Your company pays you 1/5 of the value you create for them.
24. We don’t live in a capitalist society.
Capitalist societies don’t have central banks, social services, pensions, unemployment offices, or public schools.
25. Nice guys finish last.
26. “Women wait at the end of the line and f*ck the winner.”
Women don’t care about how much you’ve suffered. All that matters is the value you can provide them with (fun, feelings, etc) at instant t.
27. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Comfort zones expand as you stretch them.
Your muscles and skills do too.
Seek the uncomfortable.
28. You are either moving forward, or moving backward. Standing still doesn’t exist.
When you stop going to the gym, your muscles shrink. When you go to the gym, they expand.
Nothing EVER stays still.
29. Most people mistake pleasure for happiness.
This is why the nightclub is full on Saturday night.
30. Our brain has been getting smaller due to a diet made out of grains.
It’s true.
But most scientists have not yet understood it’s diet-related.
31. Countries are like companies. They fail or succeed because of their culture.
Collective-oriented Northern cultures VS individualistic-oriented Southern cultures.
I call them collectivist individualism VS selfish socialism.
32. Having kids is the meaning of life.
It’s the only thing, with eating and breathing, that we have been doing forever.
It doesn’t get more “Lindy” than that.
33. Being happy isn’t an end-state. It’s a consequence of pursuing a meaningful goal.
It’s been known forever, and yet…
34. Humans are goal-based.
Our brain is constantly fulfilling a goal and loses itself once we run out of goals to achieve. This is why a lot of people die when they retire.
35. Taking care of others brings more joy than taking care of yourself.
Spend €10 on yourself, then spend €10 on someone you like.
And see.
36. Real capitalism has never been tried.
Since sedentarism, societies have always had some sort of authority to oversee the system.
37. Women tend to be interested in people while men tend to be interested in things.
Evolutionary psychology.
38. A girl will try to transform her boyfriend into a beta male while secretly hoping he won’t become so.
This is the story of Beauty and the Beast or Fifty Shades of Grey. A young girl finds an alpha male, tames him, then they get together.
However, it’s a fantasy. In reality, the girl gets disappointed if she manages to tame her partner.
Taming happens through tests. Women test their boyfriends to make sure they’re still as alpha as they were at the beginning of the relationship. If the boyfriend fails the test, attraction is broken.
Hence the following principle: girls try to make their boyfriends beta and become disappointed if they succeed.
39. Taking care of others is easier than taking care of yourself.
We can’t be objective about ourselves.
40. Girls don’t want nice guys.
They never did.
41. Men are hopeless romantic that fall in love fast and get attached to their girlfriends. Women want to have fun, fall in love slowly and are not as attached to their boyfriends.
42. People are driven to what looks like them.
This is why the two hottest girls in the classroom are best friends, why the geeks hang out together, and why the tall people hang out with the other tall people.
43. Consumption and production is a zero-sum game.
It is the influence of leisure on consumption that makes the [five-day] workweek so necessary. The people who consume the bulk of goods are the people who make them. That is a fact we must never forget, that is the secret of our prosperity.
Henry Ford
When you’re not producing, you’re consuming.
That’s one of the reasons why the supply chain got so messy. When people stopped working, they consumed much more.
In a way, the 4-day workweek is just a way to infuse more growth into the economy.
44. A religion is a set of beliefs that someone believes in and does not challenge even in the presence of proof discrediting the beliefs. Religion has never been as present as now.
You find it in diet, politics, “science”, gender studies, and other disciplines that doesn’t welcome discussion, debate, or questioning.
45. Participation trophies cultivate mediocrity.
No customer will ever buy from you if you don’t do your best.
Losers don’t deserve to win. That’s why they are losers.
46. You make more energy as you need it.
The more you move, the more you will have energy.
47. Soap weakens your immune system. Deodorant gives you cancer.
Neither soap nor deodorant are Lindy.
49. Communism can work.
It depends on the scale. In a small group like a tribe, communism can and will work much better than a traditional capitalist system. Capitalism is much better suited to large-scale groups.
50. Good hairdressers are rarer than good engineers.
