The idea that UBI reduces the need to work isn't new, but recent studies show that it does not lead to better jobs or more education. I think the issue here is that certain people will spend free time and money to better themselves, and certain people won't, and it's not clear why that is. It's not clear what the actual genius like factor is, but the way forward is basically trying to figure out what that is and not believing in fairy tales like giving away free money will make
everyone ambitious. It does not. And this reminds me of a lesson that's very similar that I learned like 20 years of hiring people, which is exposing people to training and encouragement makes the best people stand out, but it does not turn everyone into the best people. And I've known this because I tried because I tried for like ten years with cohort after cohort where I would just be like, oh, well, my training wasn't good enough. That's why they didn't get it, or they were distracted or
they were busy or whatever. So I just keep hitting him and keep dumping hours and hours and hours and more training and more training and send them into more classes. And you come back to them and you're like, hey, what have you done? They're like, I don't know. I didn't do anything. What should I do? And you're like, uh, no, no. So you've you've got to figure out what you want to do. You've got to I've given you all the training, I've given you all the stuff and, uh, all the books.
And I gave you all the demos. I told you how to set up the demos. I showed you how to set up the tech, and, um, have you done any of that? And they're like, no, what should I do first? I don't I don't know how to do any of that. Can you show me? And you're like, well, I showed you four times. You want me to show you a fifth time? Okay, sure. I'll show you a fifth time. Show them a fifth time. Come back two weeks later. Hey, how's it going? Going with what? With
the stuff we talked about last time. And they're like, yeah I never got around to that. Like, I couldn't find this one driver. Like, there was a driver down low, but the driver download didn't work. It's like, okay, well, did you research that? No. How would I do that? Can you help me? That that ends up being like 50 to 80% of everyone. Here's the alternative. Here's the alternate version of a star. Okay. You're like, hey, um. Hey, everyone. So check this out. This is a class about. And
you see a hand go up. Hey, look, I read the whole document. Um, I looked forward in the class. I've got this thing running, but there's an error. Um, so I fixed it, and I stood up a different version, and it's running. Can I show you? And you're like, okay, so you basically read everything, jumped ahead in the class, built something. It didn't work, but you fixed it, and now you're running a different version and you want to show it to me now. But I just started my
first sentence of the class and they're like, oh yeah, sorry. Yeah. Please continue. Sorry. I was just excited The difference between these two things are so insane. Okay. And what I've learned after all these years is that if you're trying to build a star team and you're trying to build like a group of the best people, what you want to do is throw help and throw training and throw encouragement to a massive group of people and not judge, not prejudge, not do anything. You have no idea. You
have no idea. It's not people who wear yellow shirts. It's not people from Idaho. It's not people from Mississippi. You have no idea what the criteria are like background, ethnic group, you education, background. Are they educated? Do they have a PhD? Do they have two master's degrees? Are they still in high school? You don't know. And that's the smartest thing you could possibly realize is that you
have no idea. You have no idea who's going to just be kind of, like, complete, Completely inert and just unable to learn and unwilling to learn and unable to absorb any amount of effort that you give. Versus some random person who doesn't think much of themselves and are unassuming and quiet and they just absolute sponge. Absolute murderer. Like the the craziest, best IT person you've ever found. And suddenly they just can't shut up about everything. It's like, oh,
and I did this and I read everything. All those books that you recommended. And then I went and downloaded this and I oh, but I changed it. And I want to show you this thing, and you're just like, Holy crap. They were sitting right next to the other person who I gave the same exact training. This is a lesson, incredibly powerful lesson. And to bring it back to this article, I believe the same thing is true with UBI. The same thing is true with social Programs.
The same thing is true with all these different things. So the whole trick and we're going to get a little broad here. The whole trick is to make sure that no one's at a disadvantage, okay. Cause trauma because they're hungry. Because they can't afford coverage. Right. Because there are stars all throughout this entire population. This these 8
billion people that we have. There are stars who you will never know if they're a star because they can't make it to your class because they're working seven jobs and they got an ant and a dog and a and a parent and a girlfriend or a boyfriend who is sick. And so they're over here juggling and they're another Einstein, they're another von Neumann. And you will never know because they got screwed. They got screwed by luck
So the goal and now we're going really broad. The goal is to build a society in which nobody is screwed in that way. And when they do get messed over in that way, we help them. We help them get back into this, remove the obstacles so that everyone has the opportunity to be one of these stars to stand out. But we should not think that everyone who gets exposed to the opportunities is necessarily going to be
one of those stand out people. So if we see variation, which is probably going to look a lot like a bell curve, right, you're going to have most people in the middle. Um, when you see that variation, you should be like, yep, that's exactly what we expect to see. Most people in the middle, some people who don't want to do anything despite any training, and some people who could just hear the first word and write a book. Right.
That's just expected. Now, I would say that there's some nuance here in the sense that, like, okay, if we can identify that grit and self-discipline and I don't know, something that we could try to put into culture, something we could try to put into education systems, something that we could try to put into training, something we could try to put into parental education if we could find those tokens and just like, make sure they're part of
the training and that helps lift everyone or some number of people, that'll be fantastic. But it has to start with realizing there's going to be a distribution and that's going to be based on meritocracy, which is good. However, the whole purpose of society and liberal society, or liberal liberal approach to building a society is making sure that everyone can enter into the meritocracy funnel without disadvantage. That's that's the goal. That's the trick.