Take on Accountability
Take on Accountability
Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.
To get rich, you need leverage. Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code or media. But most of these, like labor and capital, people have to give to you. For labor, somebody has to follow you. For capital, somebody has to give you money, assets to manage, or machines.
So to get these things, you have to build credibility, and you have to do it under your own name as much as possible, which is risky. So, accountability is a double-edged thing. It allows you to take credit when things go well and to bear the brunt of the failure when things go badly. [78]
Clear accountability is important. Without accountability, you don’t have incentives. Without accountability, you can’t build credibility. But you take risks. You risk failure. You risk humiliation. You risk failure under your own name.
Luckily, in modern society, there’s no more debtors’ prison and people aren’t imprisoned or executed for losing other people’s money, but we’re still socially hardwired to not fail in public under our own names. The people who have the ability to fail in public under their own names actually gain a lot of power.
I’ll give a personal anecdote. Up until about 2013, 2014, my public persona was entirely around startups and investing. Only around 2014, 2015 did I start talking about philosophy and psychological things and broader things. It made me a little nervous because I was doing it under my own name. There were definitely people in the industry who sent me messages through the backchannel like, “What are you doing? You’re ending your career. This is stupid.”
I kind of just went with it. I took a risk. Same with crypto. Early on, I took a risk. But when you put your name out there, you take a risk with certain things. You also get to reap the rewards. You get the benefits. [78]
In the old days, the captain was expected to go down with the ship. If the ship was sinking, then literally the last person to get off was the captain. Accountability does come with real risks, but we’re talking about a business context.
The risk here would be you would probably be the last one to get your capital back out. You’d be the last one to get paid for your time. The time that you put in, the capital you put into the company, these are at risk. [78]
Realize that in modern society, the downside risk is not that large. Even personal bankruptcy can wipe the debts clean in good ecosystems. I’m most familiar with Silicon Valley, but generally, people will forgive failures as long as you were honest and made a high-integrity effort.
There’s not really that much to fear in terms of failure, and so people should take on a lot more accountability than they do. [78]
承担责任
拥抱责任，以自己的名义承担商业风险。社会会回馈你以责任、股权和杠杆。
想要变得富有，你需要杠杆。杠杆可以来自劳动力，可以来自资本，或者可以通过代码或媒体实现。但是这些杠杆，大多数像劳动力和资本，是别人要赋予你的。对于劳动力，有人得愿意追随你；对于资本，有人得愿意给你资金、资产去管理，或者机器。
所以要获得这些东西，你必须建立信誉，而且尽可能地用你自己的名字去建立，这很有风险。因此，承担责任是一把双刃剑。当事情顺利时，它能让你获得荣誉；而当事情不顺时，你也必须承受失败的代价。[78]
明确的责任非常重要。没有责任，就没有激励；没有责任，就无法建立信誉。但承担责任就意味着冒险。你可能面临失败的风险，面临被羞辱的风险，面临以自己名义失败的风险。
幸运的是，在现代社会，不再有债务监狱，人们也不会因为亏损他人的钱而被监禁或处死，但我们依然在社会上被深深地编程，不能在公众面前以自己的名义失败。那些能够在公众面前以自己名义承受失败的人，其实会获得很大的力量。
我举一个个人的例子。在大约2013、2014年之前，我的公众形象完全围绕着创业和投资。直到2014、2015年，我才开始谈论哲学、心理学以及更广泛的话题。这让我有点紧张，因为我是以自己的名义在做这些事情。确实有业内的人通过私下渠道发信息给我，说：“你在做什么？你在毁掉自己的职业生涯，这太愚蠢了。”
但我还是坚持了下来，我冒了险。同样在加密货币领域，早期我也冒了风险。但当你把自己的名字公之于众，去做某些事情时，你冒了风险，但你也能收获回报，得到相应的好处。[78]
在过去，船长被期望与船共存亡。如果船在下沉，那么最后一个离开的人必须是船长。承担责任确实伴随着真实的风险，但我们这里讨论的是商业环境中的风险。
在这种情况下，风险意味着你可能是最后一个取回资本的人，是最后一个获得报酬的人。你投入的时间和资金是有风险的。[78]
要意识到，在现代社会，风险的下行空间并没有那么大。即使是个人破产，在良好的生态系统中也能抹去债务。我对硅谷最为熟悉，但总体上，只要你诚实并付出了高道德的努力，人们会原谅你的失败。
在失败方面，其实没有那么多值得恐惧的东西，因此人们应该比现在承担更多的责任。[78]