Society is secretly driven by sales

Every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot.

What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy.

All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

We need more pessimism that the future might be a lot worse, and we need more optimism that the future might be better.

A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It's like telling the world there's no Santa Claus.

By the time a student gets to college, he's spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he's ready-for nothing in particular.