看不懂的sol哥
看不懂的sol哥
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How can you achieve a long-term annualized return of 15%?
Prerequisites:
1. Long-term means no less than 10 years.
2. The target company's price-to-earnings ratio (PE) will revert to a reasonable PE of 25 over the long term.
3. You are within your circle of competence and can select companies with a net profit annualized growth rate between 0-15% over the next 10 years.
4. You do not have the ability to select companies with a long-term annualized return higher than 12%.
Plug these prerequisites into the formula to calculate. g is the net profit long-term annualized growth rate, r is the long-term annualized return, and PE is the purchase PE under the corresponding g to achieve r.
With the data laid out in the table, the conclusion is clear.
For companies with 0-15% growth, as long as PE ≥ 16 times when buying in, it is impossible to achieve a 15% annualized return.
Those who can truly achieve a 20% annualized return are only companies with extremely high growth (>20%) and very low PE at purchase, moderate growth companies, or both.
High PE combined with moderate growth is a long-term return trap.
All of the above can be condensed into one sentence: buy companies with a net profit annualized growth rate not less than X% over the next 10 years at a PE not exceeding X times.
This sentence is the guiding principle and methodology for achieving a 15% annualized return over the long term.
To put this into practice, you must first understand the two hidden prerequisites behind it.
1. The company you want to buy is within your circle of competence.
2. X cannot exceed 15.
The first is easy to understand. If you don’t understand the company, any PE you buy at is likely wrong.
Why can’t X exceed 15? Because companies with a net profit annualized growth rate not less than 15% for 10 consecutive years account for no more than 5% of all listed companies.
If you think you can continuously select companies with a net profit annualized growth rate exceeding 15% over the next 10 years, this is extremely difficult, a low-probability event, which greatly increases investment risk and may result in significant losses.
Smart investors often underestimate their stock-picking ability.
Buffett basically does not buy companies with a PE exceeding 15 because he also has an implicit assumption when selecting companies that, in the long run, he cannot consistently select companies with a net profit annualized growth rate exceeding 15% over the next 10 years.
Acknowledging this implicit assumption is important; once accepted, you will set your strategy accordingly, making it easier to achieve a decent long-term annualized return.
Speaking for myself, even for the top-tier companies, I only dare to assign a maximum net profit annualized growth rate of 10% for the next 10 years.
Therefore, for the top-tier companies, the highest purchase PE I allow is 10 times. The same applies to Moutai, Tencent, and Apple.
Why can Buffett buy his favored companies at a PE of 13-14 times, but I only dare to buy my favored companies at 12 times PE? Because I recognize that my stock-picking ability is not as good as Buffett’s, so I require a lower PE to leave more margin of safety.
Back to the initial question: how to achieve a 15% long-term annualized return?
Within your circle of competence, if you believe a company can achieve a net profit annualized growth rate of 15% over the next 10 years, buy when the target company’s PE ≤ 12.
Within your circle of competence, if you believe a company can achieve a net profit annualized growth rate of 12% over the next 10 years, buy when the target company’s PE ≤ 12.
Within your circle of competence, if you believe a company can achieve a net profit annualized growth rate of 10% over the next 10 years, buy when the target company’s PE ≤ 10.
Within your circle of competence, if you believe a company can achieve a net profit annualized growth rate of 7% over the next 10 years, buy when the target company’s PE ≤ 7.
Condensed into one sentence: buy companies with a net profit annualized growth rate not less than X% over the next 10 years at a PE not exceeding X times.
By continuing to do this, you are very likely to achieve a 20% long-term annualized return (I can’t guarantee it; patience and luck also matter).
How to achieve financial freedom?
Extreme patience + extreme determination.
Buy whenever you have money.
If you don't have money, patiently wait for the AI bubble to burst. In the next five years, the US stock market will most likely experience a correction of more than 30%.
First, work hard to accumulate at least 300,000 chips, wait for the stock market bubble to burst, then buy the Nasdaq index in batches. During the bear market year, sell all your chips, then uninstall the mobile app, and check back after 5 years.
Theoretically, it's very simple, but only one in ten thousand can successfully execute it.
There are two very difficult points:
First, a strong bull market will tempt you to use up your chips too early. Before the bubble bursts, there will definitely be a crazy bull run, one that makes you question reality. The Nasdaq index rose 100% the year before the internet bubble burst. Such a crazy bull market will tempt you to give up your chips. Resisting this temptation is the only chance to bottom-fish.
Second, the bear market tests whether you have the courage to bet. Once the bubble bursts, the entire global economy will inevitably stagnate. News of America’s downfall will flood the internet. The stock market will fall again and again, with even lower bottoms. Even if it has already dropped 50%, you will wonder if it will continue to fall to 60% or 70%.
Your subconscious, your psychology, your friends, and even your family will all try to stop you from investing capital at this time. Whether you dare to catch the falling knife will directly determine if you can achieve high returns.
Why do news about a CEO's private life also affect the company's stock price?
Because the market is never just concerned about the gossip itself, but the operational risks it might bring.
When the incident involves current key executives, corporate governance, compliance reviews, or even potentially implicates national security or core business information, investors reassess three things:
1. Whether the management can continue to perform their duties stably;
2. Whether the company will face additional investigations, regulatory scrutiny, or legal costs;
3. Whether the core business, customers, and partners will be affected.
This is also why the market reacts completely differently to "troubles" involving executives.
If it is a personal matter of someone who has already stepped back from operations, holds limited shares, or is not closely related to the company's business, the stock price may not fluctuate significantly; but if it involves the founder and CEO, who holds substantial shares and controls the company's strategy and key relationships, the market will be more sensitive.
The point worth noting about Nvidia this time is not to rush to judge the stock price's rise or fall in one day, but whether the subsequent investigation will affect governance stability, customer confidence, and business progress.
Currently, Nvidia's board has announced the initiation of an independent investigation and stated that there is no reason yet to believe national security or company secrets have been compromised. Jensen Huang has also expressed his cooperation with the investigation.
In investing, the CEO is not the company itself; but for companies highly dependent on the founder, technology direction, and key decisions, CEO risk is indeed part of the valuation.
So when reading such news, be less emotional about chasing rises and falls, and focus more on three things: the investigation's conclusion, management arrangements, and whether there are substantial changes in the core business.
5 Laws That Will Change Your Life (Recommended to Save)
The Talmud says: There are two things in the world that others cannot take away—wisdom hidden in the brain and the mindset buried deep in the heart.
Understand these 5 fundamental laws to avoid ten years of detours.
1. The 80/20 Law
American physicist Joseph Ford once said: God and humans play dice, but these dice are rigged; no matter how they are played, they must conform to the 80/20 law.
20% of people hold 80% of the wealth; 20% of brands occupy 80% of the market; 20% of customers bring 80% of the profits.
20% of core knowledge determines 80% of the final results.
Warren Buffett said: Distinguishing what is important from what is not is the most important lesson in life.
People should not exert effort evenly or waste themselves on trivial matters.
Learn to focus on the main contradiction, continuously leap from the 80% mediocre base into the 20% core track—this is the essence of how ordinary people achieve life breakthroughs.
2. The Crab Law
Crabs placed in a basket cannot escape even without a lid because when one tries to climb out, the others will pull it down with all their might.
This reflects human nature’s jealousy and internal friction: some people don’t want to improve themselves and can’t stand to see others get better.
The "Vegetable Root Discourse" says: Those who lie low for long will surely soar high; those who start early will wither early.
Beggars never envy millionaires, only beggars who earn more than themselves.
You must actively purify your circle. Ten sparrows can’t compare to one eagle.
Walk with tigers and wolves, and you will be a fierce beast; keep company with sheep, and you will slowly lose your edge.
3. The Law of Entropy Increase
Entropy represents the degree of chaos and disorder within a system. The more chaotic a system is, the higher its entropy.
Anything left unattended will spontaneously decline into disorder and decay.
Long-distance couples who don’t meet often will grow apart; a room left uncleaned will get messier; without exercise, the body deteriorates.
Schrödinger wrote in "What is Life?": Life feeds on negative entropy.
The only way to fight entropy increase is to continuously invest external energy and actively do work.
Long-distance couples must meet often; rooms must be cleaned regularly; bodies must be exercised frequently.
If you want to make money, you must keep trial and error, read, reflect, iterate, and regularly kill your current self.
4. The Bamboo Law
Bamboo grows only 3 centimeters in 4 years, but starting from the 5th year, it can shoot up 15 meters in just over a month.
Without those first 4 years, would bamboo grow so fast?
This is a typical example of compound interest thinking.
But the biggest human weakness is impatience. Skipping two meals and wanting to lose weight, learning English for 21 days and expecting high scores, reading for a month and expecting success.
Even watching videos, people want to fast-forward.
Actually, not only people are impatient, even God is impatient. The Bible says God created all humanity in just 6 days.
But there’s no way around it—making money goes against human nature; whoever has patience will succeed.
Patience is the rarest ability a person can have. Even if you improve 1% every day, after a year you will be 37.78 times better than now. But if you regress 1% every day, after a year you will decline to 0.026, almost zero.
The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago; the next best time is now. It’s never too late to change.
5. The Crow Law
The crow is unhappy all day and wants to leave the forest for a new environment. The magpie asks why, and it says everyone dislikes its harsh cawing. The magpie says, if you don’t change your voice, you will annoy people everywhere.
People who only complain about others and the environment will never achieve great success.
Wang Yangming said: When things don’t go well, look inward.
The problem is never the environment but oneself.
A truly mature person faces difficulties by introspection and self-correction, not by running away.
Seek externally and fail; seek internally and thrive endlessly.
In Conclusion
Everything follows laws. The strong follow the laws; the weak are driven by instincts.
Understanding laws is not to see through others but to improve oneself.
Li Xiaolai "The Road to Financial Freedom": 52 Core Concepts Plus Practical Operations (Full Version)
Brothers, do you really understand what "financial freedom" means?
1. The key mindset:
Recognize the goal; the journey's goal is not wealth, but freedom. Wealth is just a tool; freedom of time is our ultimate goal. Do not lose sight of the essence and go in the wrong direction.
2. Three key tips:
Tip 1: Always choose growth over success; growth is the direction, success is just a milestone;
Tip 2: When facing value and valuation, maintain the value baseline; do not let valuation excessively exceed actual value;
Tip 3: The hardest point—when encountering any difficulty, always maintain patience. Patience is more important than anything else. Without patience, all prior preparations will be wasted.
Concept 01: Attention
What is your most precious wealth?
Golden phrase:
Three invisible traps in life: "Joining in the fun for no reason," "Rushing along with the crowd," "Worrying excessively about others."
Practical operation:
You must focus your most precious attention on your own growth.
Concept 02: Paying
Paying is picking up a bargain
Golden phrases:
1. Value order: Attention > Time > Money.
2. Your most precious wealth is your attention.
3. Trivial matters also serve to relax and restore energy; not all chores need to be outsourced.
Practical operation:
1. Turn off useless phone notifications.
2. Dare to let yourself rest.
3. In interpersonal relationships, sincere attention is more important than material things.
Concept 03: Life's Shackles
What is the heaviest shackle in your life?
Golden phrase:
Giving up some security is necessary to progress.
Practical operation:
1. Actively close the all-encompassing information perspective; you don't need to know every piece of news.
2. Outsource part of your attention. Partner with trustworthy people, find reliable ones to share burdens. Focus your mind on important long-term matters.
Concept 04: Foundation of Life
"Living in the present" vs "Living for the future"
Golden phrase:
Only looking at the present leads to stagnation; think long-term with your mind, but work steadily in the present.
Practical operation:
Make reliable predictions for the future, identify the direction and act, review often to train your long-term vision.
Concept 05: Benefactors
Scientific methods to meet benefactors
Golden phrases:
1. Be a benefactor first to meet benefactors: help from benefactors is not luck but attracted by your own value.
2. Benefactors value potential: willingness to help means seeing future possibilities in you.
3. Asking for help is a transaction, not begging; returns are not limited to money.
4. One benefactor alone is less powerful than many benefactors: doing the right thing gains more support.
5. People living in the future attract benefactors more easily; others can see your future.
Practical operation:
1. Refine yourself: be upright and reliable, become someone worth helping.
2. Help others more: lend a hand within your ability, don't always cause trouble.
3. Ask for help correctly: dare to ask, know how to repay with growth and gratitude.
4. Show potential: work steadily, let others see your progress.
5. Look far ahead: don't fuss over immediate gains or losses; attract reliable people with a long-term mindset.
Concept 06: Capital
Do you really have capital?
1. Distinguish funds from capital: don't treat savings directly as capital; assess how much you understand investment.
2. Prepare long-term idle money: set aside money you can afford to lose without affecting daily life; prepare mentally for long-term immobility.
3. Prioritize improving cognition: when money is little, first learn investment knowledge; don't rush to invest large sums.
Reject frequent flipping: avoid short-term quick in-and-out trades; focus on long-term returns.
Concept 07: Falling Behind
What does falling behind mean?
Golden phrase:
Don't take your small circle as the whole world; people easily overestimate their level above average. Anxiety should be transformed into action.
Practical operation:
1. Broaden your reference: don't just compare with people around you; look at a bigger circle to see your position clearly.
2. Relieve anxiety: reduce irrelevant information consumption, don't worry about others unnecessarily, focus attention on self-improvement.
3. Persist in deep cultivation: choose the right direction, use strategy and long-term persistence, strive to enter the top 20% in your field.
Concept 08: Multi-dimensional Competition
What is the best strategy to move from mediocrity to excellence?
Golden phrase:
Always seeking happiness through comparison causes pain; reaching the top in a single track is hard; having one strong skill combined with several ordinary abilities creates competitiveness.
Practical operation:
1. Avoid ineffective comparisons: compare yourself less with others; don't base happiness on comparison.
2. Focus on one strong skill: first train at least one ability to a leading level as your core trump card.
3. Add supporting skills: supplement with two or three adequate complementary skills; build differentiated competitiveness through combination.
4. Accept realistic pace: multi-dimensional improvement is a long-term matter; don't rush; accumulate slowly.
Concept 09: Metacognitive Ability
The most important ability you should have
Golden phrase:
Metacognition is reviewing and examining your own thinking, distinguishing right from wrong and correcting in time; it is the foundational ability determining personal strength.
Practical operation:
Review not only what you did or said but more importantly the thoughts that arose; find deviations and actively correct them; practice deliberately and continuously.
Concept 10: Deliberate Practice
How to effectively improve metacognitive ability
Golden phrase:
Metacognition is like a brain muscle that can be deliberately trained and improved. Emotional agitation, distraction, and inattention are opportunities to practice metacognition.
Practical operation:
Persist in meditation practice; notice emotions as they arise; daily review and analyze different thoughts; distinguish facts from subjective emotions.
Concept 11: Master Key
Giving you a "master key"
Golden phrase:
The key to solving problems often isn't in the problem itself. Use metacognition to step outside and look at the problem, but don't deliberately avoid ready-made solutions.
Practical operation:
Notice your stubborn thinking about problems; when facing difficulties, look for breakthroughs at the root and from different angles.
Concept 12: Persistence
Why do you always "give up halfway"?
Golden phrase:
Relying solely on brute force persistence leads to giving up when inner resistance arises; giving things multiple meanings and seeing pros and cons leads to proactive action.
Practical operation:
1. Before doing things, explore intrinsic value and sort out gains and losses.
2. Set realistic goals.
3. Create an external environment conducive to action.
Concept 13: Missing Out
How did I miss an upgrade?
Golden phrase:
Always thinking new ideas don't relate to you traps you in old cognition. Understanding principles without action renders even the best ideas useless.
Practical operation:
Change mindset; treat new information as external reminders; think and practice objectively, setting aside likes and dislikes.
Concept 14: This World
Actually, this world is alive
Golden phrase:
Your inner thoughts affect the reality you see. How you treat the world is how the world responds; your circumstances depend on subjective interpretation.
Practical operation:
1. Distinguish facts from subjective feelings.
2. Adjust your perspective on the outside world.
3. Find growth opportunities in difficulties.
4. Show more kindness in dealing with people and matters.
Concept 15: Complaints
Completely quit your complaints
Golden phrase:
Complaining doesn't solve problems; it's a sign of powerlessness and makes people give up struggling. Solve what you can; accept what you can't.
Practical operation:
1. Notice your urge to complain.
2. Replace complaints with practical actions.
3. Avoid environments full of complainers.
4. Accept unchangeable realities.
5. Focus on self-improvement.
Concept 16: Others' Goodness
Seeing others' goodness brings new life
Golden phrase:
Not being able to see others' goodness stems from comparison; don't completely deny people with flaws. Don't rush to prove yourself; absorbing others' strengths benefits growth.
Practical operation:
1. Notice inner jealousy and comparison.
2. Distinguish people's strengths and weaknesses.
3. Refocus energy on yourself.
4. Actively learn from others' worthy traits.
Concept 17: Correct Value
The value of being correct itself
Golden phrase:
Being merely correct may not be valuable; precious is being unique and correct. Life's meaning isn't innate; it is lived through action.
Practical operation:
1. Distinguish objective correctness from subjective stubbornness.
2. Don't blindly follow the crowd.
3. Don't rush for recognition.
4. Create your own meaning through action.
Concept 18: Destiny
What determines your destiny?
Golden phrase:
Values > Choices > Effort
Practical operation:
1. Establish your own principles (value trade-off standards).
2. Don't blindly trust experience in decision-making.
3. Review past choices.
4. Understand principles but emphasize action.
Concept 19: Self-Drive
What determines your self-drive?
Golden phrase:
True intrinsic motivation comes from correct urgent needs. Verbal desire is not the same as urgent need; urgent needs can be cultivated; patience is the urgent need for growth.
Practical operation:
1. Distinguish daydreams from inner urgent needs.
2. Give goals significant meaning.
3. Start with small actions to accumulate positive feedback.
4. Cultivate patience, focus on the long-term future.
Concept 20: Urgent Needs
How to recognize, choose, and cultivate correct urgent needs
Golden phrase:
Urgent needs are determined by values. Ambitious people value growth; performative people care about others' current evaluations. Growth is the true urgent need; urgent needs can be selected and cultivated later.
Practical operation:
1. Identify ambitious vs performative thinking.
2. Adjust value priorities.
3. Don't be greedy with limited energy.
4. Repeatedly weigh and solidify urgent needs through practice.
Concept 21: Risk Avoidance
The urgent need in investment is risk avoidance
Golden phrase:
Investment's urgent need is risk avoidance, not risk-taking. Observers see risk-taking; actors focus on risk avoidance. Don't gamble away your chance to turn things around.
Practical operation:
1. First assess worst loss; refuse to follow hype.
2. Control bet size to keep your qualification to re-enter.
Concept 22: Differences
Respect differences in capital scale
Golden phrase:
Face the objective gap in capital scale; don't use emotions as a shield. Different principal amounts with the same strategy yield very different results.
Practical operation:
1. Don't directly copy large capital strategies.
2. Improve cognition first; accumulate capital slowly with small amounts.
Concept 23: Opportunities
Do you really have no opportunities?
Golden phrase:
It's not lack of opportunities but insufficient cognition that blinds you. Seeing opportunities doesn't equal seizing them; recognizing chances requires cognition and execution.
Practical operation:
1. Pay attention to reality changes; don't cling to preconceptions.
2. Improve cognitive judgment.
3. When seeing opportunities, think of feasible plans.
4. Accept uncertainty inherent in opportunities.
5. Assess risks before acting.
Concept 24: Conditions
What are the conditions to start investing?
Golden phrase:
Wisdom > Time limit > Amount
Practical operation:
1. Abandon ideas like "wait to save big money to invest" or "get rich overnight."
2. Prepare mentally for long-term immobility of funds.
3. When principal is small, prioritize improving cognition.
4. Practice investment logic with small funds.
Concept 25: Prediction
Can you accurately predict stock prices?
Golden phrase:
Short-term stock prices are nearly random; long-term can be reasonably judged based on company fundamentals.
Practical operation:
Give up short-term speculation; focus on long-term regular investment.
Concept 26: Greed and Temptation
Can I earn more?
Golden phrase:
Greed is wanting gains that don't belong to you; much greed stems from ignorance. Short-term windfalls rely on luck; long-term returns rely on sustainable capabilities. Protect your principal; rationally resist human greed.
Practical operation:
1. Reject temptations of easy money.
2. Prioritize long-term sustainable plans.
3. Treat protecting principal as an important investment bottom line.
Concept 27: First-Mover Advantage
Is being early decisive?
Golden phrase:
"Early" is not a decisive advantage; the key is doing the right things long-term. Knowledge compounds over time; the biggest difference is doing or not doing, not waiting.
Practical operation:
1. Let go of regrets like "if only I knew earlier"; learn concepts and act quickly.
2. If you miss opportunities, review your cognitive shortcomings internally; refuse to use late start as an excuse; start acting continuously now.
Concept 28: All In
What does going all in mean?
Golden phrase:
The biggest investment risk is losing the chance to play again. Never go all in; also give up some security.
Practical operation:
1. Distinguish "pursuing safety" from "pursuing security feeling"; refuse to bet everything.
2. Avoid leverage; control single investment proportion; keep reserves; preserve your chips to turn things around.
Concept 29: Regular Investment
What is the simplest safe investment strategy?
Golden phrase:
Everyone knows "buy low, sell high"; the hard part is doing it long-term. Regular investment dilutes cost through periodic input; it's a simple, feasible safe strategy for ordinary people.
Practical operation:
1. Persist in long-term regular investment; distinguish price from intrinsic value.
2. Treat self-growth as a higher priority, cost-free investment.
Concept 30: Long Term
How long is long term?
Golden phrase:
"Long term" has no fixed duration. The stronger your investment ability, the shorter your long term.
Practical operation:
1. Continuously refine your investment ability to shorten "long term."
2. Have off-market income like salary; reject short-sighted get-rich-quick mentality.
3. Treat learning iteration as part of the long term.
Concept 31: Double
How to double your salary?
Golden phrase:
To get double salary, the core is to learn parallel work. Work "for the boss" and "for yourself" simultaneously; sell the same time twice—once for salary, once for self-growth.
Practical operation:
1. Don't just focus on salary; accumulate your own abilities simultaneously.
2. Think one step ahead; distinguish if tasks can be linked serially or in parallel.
3. Always demand a higher level from yourself; treat the workplace as a training ground for self-improvement.
Concept 32: Time Trading
Be a normal time trader
Golden phrase:
Working is retailing your own time. Don't obsess over time's price; focus on increasing time's intrinsic value. Being over- or undervalued is market normal.
Practical operation:
1. Reject short-sighted practices like slacking or frequent job hopping for arbitrage.
2. Focus on improving your abilities to increase time's intrinsic value.
3. When salary is unfair, use metacognition to objectively view valuation fluctuations; avoid impulsive emotions.
Concept 33: Writing
Why must you learn to write?
Golden phrase:
Writing is an important way for ordinary people to sell the same time repeatedly. Writing forces deep thinking, breaks geographic limits, amplifies personal communication and influence.
Practical operation:
1. Don't pursue fancy writing; start with notes, insights, comments.
2. Parallel writing with learning and work; use output to drive input.
3. Accept no immediate positive feedback; value long-term compounding; keep outputting.
Concept 34: Your Price
What really determines your price?
Golden phrase:
Your price depends not only on your ability but also on real external demand. Don't just bury yourself improving; don't ignore what others truly need.
Practical operation:
1. Before doing things or job hunting, understand others' real needs; match your abilities.
2. Avoid self-indulgent efforts; don't just focus on how much you give.
3. Often ask: Does what I offer truly meet others' needs?
Concept 35: Choice
Methodology about "choice"
Golden phrase:
Values are repeatedly asking yourself "what is more important."
Practical operation:
1. Make choices based on the minimum necessary principle.
2. Use review to train decision-making; don't pursue perfection in all aspects.
Concept 36: Growth Rate
About entrepreneurial choices
Golden phrase:
Wisdom comes from having many clear, accurate, necessary concepts in your mind and clear connections between them. Having corresponding methodology and success experience.
Practical operation:
1. Refine core concepts in your mind; clarify logic between concepts.
2. Prioritize creating social value, then pursue commercial returns.
Concept 37: Improving Growth Rate
Methodology to improve growth rate
Golden phrase:
Most people only have growth; few have growth rate.
Practical operation:
1. Don't just pursue growth; actively pursue growth rate, i.e., growth speed.
2. Iterate and review afterward; build multidimensional competitiveness.
3. Don't just bury yourself in input; value output's compounding effect.
Concept 38: Knowledge
What exactly is knowledge?
Golden phrase:
True knowledge guides us to make better decisions and brings better long-term results.
Practical operation:
To judge if information is knowledge, ask yourself two questions: What decisions will change after knowing? What long-term benefits will it bring?
Concept 39: IQ
How to improve your IQ?
Golden phrase:
IQ is mostly not innate but acquired. IQ depends on clear, accurate, necessary concepts in the brain and clear, accurate, necessary connections between them. Learning concepts without practice won't improve IQ.
Practical operation:
1. Continuously update and correct concepts in your mind.
2. Build reasonable connections between concepts; internalize through practice.
Concept 40: Quick Start
At the start, what is most important?
Golden phrase:
Rapid success is impossible, but quick entry is feasible. Master the minimum necessary knowledge to complete entry; don't wait for everything to be perfect before acting.
Practical operation:
1. When learning new skills, first filter and master minimum necessary knowledge; quickly pass the entry stage (e.g., read book table of contents first, memorize key points first).
2. Once basics are mastered, start practicing immediately; iterate and optimize in action.
3. Let go of perfectionism; don't expect to do well at the start.
Concept 41: Hope
What is the most important thing in your life?
Golden phrase:
Repetition is the only path from clumsiness to proficiency. Many quit learning skills halfway because they underestimate the number of repetitions needed.
Practical operation:
Learning requires short-term, large-volume, correct repetition.
Concept 42: Encouragement
Become the person worthy of hope
Golden phrase:
True hope is believing tomorrow will be better because of today's actions, not waiting for luck. Early progress is often long and invisible, matching the compounding curve. Optimism is a learnable ability; encouragement is a scarce resource.
Practical operation:
1. Don't just fantasize about the future; turn hope into continuous action.
2. Accept the dull early growth phase; endure stages without obvious feedback.
3. Try to be an encourager; avoid energy-draining naysayers.
4. Quietly refine yourself to be worthy of your hope.
Concept 43: Doing
The most important tool for cognitive upgrade
Golden phrase:
The most important tool for cognitive upgrade is practice. Knowing is just the start; truly doing creates huge differences between people.
Practical operation:
1. "Practice makes invincible."
2. Continue thinking and reviewing during action.
Concept 44: Learning Ability
Do you want a life cheat code?
Golden phrase:
Learning ability is life's cheat code. It has three levels: learning hand-held teaching, learning book skills, learning skills no one can teach. Academic degree does not equal learning ability.
Practical operation:
1. When someone teaches hand-held, ponder the thinking.
2. When self-learning, first find minimum necessary knowledge.
3. Start practicing immediately; rely on deliberate practice, record and review, and iterate continuously.
Concept 45: Trend Judgment
The most basic skill in investment—trend judgment
Golden phrase:
To do trend judgment well, first understand cycles. Future judgments must be tested over time; judgment alone has no value; must be verified by market action.
Practical operation:
1. Observe trends across multiple cycles.
2. Don't be swayed by market frenzy or panic.
3. Use data and logical reasoning for predictions.
Concept 46: Mirror World
What does the investment world really look like?
Golden phrase:
Success = Skill + Luck. Investment lies closer to luck on the skill-luck spectrum.
Practical operation:
1. Reflect on how much profit comes from luck; don't fully deny your judgment when losing.
2. Improve your skill part; also do risk prevention and hedge luck-induced volatility.
3. Extend time horizon to verify investment judgments; don't judge by single results.
Concept 47: Smart Time Trading
Be a smart time trader
Golden phrase:
The first personal business model sells one unit of time once, with obvious ceiling. The second model sells the same time many times. To have products sold repeatedly, meet others' real urgent needs, not your subjective needs.
Practical operation:
1. First be a "normal time trader," improve your unit time value.
2. Try creating repeatable products, e.g., writing books, articles, courses.
3. Discover others' real urgent needs; avoid self-indulgent production.
4. Don't rush; first solve your urgent needs, then refine reusable products.
Concept 48: Paying to Pick Up Bargains
You deserve the best personal business model
Golden phrase:
The highest-level personal business model: buy others' time and resell it. The principle is buy low, sell high, breaking the limit of personal total time. (Ordinary people paying for services daily already use this model, saving their own time to invest in more important things. Entrepreneurship and investment essentially buy others' time to monetize.)
Practical operation:
1. Three models can be done simultaneously. No need to wait to start a company to practice the third model; paying for services, courses, books is buying others' time.
2. Prioritize investing saved time in self-growth.
3. Understand paying is just a carrier; after obtaining, you must think and practice yourself to output and monetize again.
Concept 49: Ultimate Question
What is the ultimate question of life?
Answer:
Values. Values determine most of our choices.
Practical operation:
1. When facing dilemmas, distinguish primary and secondary; actively give up secondary options; focus on core elements.
2. Apply this questioning method to learning, work, interpersonal and other real scenarios.
3. Don't rely on intuition; use layered questioning to clarify before acting.
Concept 50: Principles
Why do you always choose wrong at critical moments?
Golden phrase:
Major decisions are prone to errors because our operating system is imperfect. Establish your own principles (like Ray Dalio's principle system) in advance; use a stable standard for key decisions. Don't rely on emotions and intuition at the last moment.
Practical operation:
1. Pre-establish your decision principles; don't wait for crises to think temporarily.
2. Include but not limited to: mobilize metacognition, listen to outsiders' advice, list and score internal options, set behavior SOPs: trigger A, do B; if B happens, choose C or D, etc.
Concept 51: Questioning
How to get satisfactory good answers?
Golden phrase:
Top students excel not in answering but in asking high-quality questions. Good questions are not demands but come after research and thinking.
Practical operation:
1. Before asking, search and check materials yourself; if you can solve it, don't seek external help.
2. When asking, provide background and context; write out tried solutions; include your own alternative ideas; ask in a discussion manner, not just for answers. Respect others' time and attention.
Concept 52: Execution
Where does poor execution really come from?
Golden phrase:
Execution is knowing clearly how to proceed step by step. Execution is not an independent talent but a natural result of understanding. Everyone has strong execution but often applies it to unimportant things.
Practical operation:
Actively output through deliberate practice to internalize in the brain. Complete first, then optimize.
YouTube expert Dan Koe: How to completely change your life in one year (in-depth long article)
Take it slow, endure for ten years or eight years and things will naturally get better—this phrase is probably overused. When Dan Koe was 29, he was still doing web design, earning a few thousand a month, out of shape, with a messy mind, and just enough money in his account to get by.
One year later, he was making millions of dollars annually, had over a million followers online, and had gotten back in shape.
He publicly broke down his one-year plan—no motivational fluff, just concrete methods. The first thing to dismantle is that phrase about change coming slowly.
1. First, let's talk about the idea of enduring for ten years to succeed
There are many people like this around. Gym memberships gather dust, vision boards plastered with pictures of making a million a year, hundreds of growth videos watched, and at the end of the year, hundreds of bookmarks in the phone—but life hasn’t changed at all.
People are taught a narrative: change comes step by step, and if you endure long enough, it will happen. But most people who endure ten years just repeat the first year's experience ten times. They get older, their waistlines grow, they make more compromises with reality, but nothing else improves.
Before 2021, Dan Koe was one of them. During the day, he revised web pages for clients ten times, working until midnight; after work, he collapsed on the sofa watching videos until his eyelids drooped; weekends were spent at drinking parties with colleagues. His health check showed three upward arrows, and his savings wouldn’t last three months without work.
He didn’t endure ten years—he used 12 months. His body fat dropped from 28% to 12%, followers grew from zero to 300,000, and annual revenue exceeded $3.2 million.
Saying change depends on long-term accumulation is mostly comforting talk among people. With that phrase, spending three hours daily on short videos and another three hours enduring boring dinners feels justified, and you can fool yourself with "I'm slowly working on it." When ten years later peers have left you behind, you realize your time was already fragmented.
"Slowly is faster"—I don’t believe that. Gathering scattered energy and focusing it on one thing can make 12 months equal ten years of muddling through. That’s what Dan Koe says.
One year equals ten years—not by staying up late and working hard. Just reclaiming 90% of the energy wasted on junk information and putting it into things that compound is enough.
2. First step: Use reverse vision to clearly write out the worst days
Vision boards were popular a couple of years ago. Print pictures of sports cars, mansions, tourist spots, stick them all over the wall, look at them three times every morning, and tell yourself you want to make a million a year.
Dan Koe says this is fake dopamine. Staring at those pictures gives only a brief moment of happiness; then you turn around and watch ten minutes of funny videos, and that energy is gone—people still don’t want to move.
His method is the opposite: don’t write what you want, write a script of the worst days you can’t stand—he calls it the hell script.
Don’t write about the good life you want ten years from now; write about what it will be like if you continue living like now for one, five, and ten years.
Take an A4 sheet, don’t spare yourself, the more detailed the better.
What will it be like one year from now if you keep living like this?
For example, gaining another 20 pounds, getting winded climbing three flights of stairs, a new high cholesterol item on your health report, the doctor warning you’ll have serious problems if you don’t take care, no raise this year as promised, new graduates in the same position nearly catching up in salary, still collapsing on the sofa watching videos after work, and your bank balance two thousand less than last year.
What about five years later?
Company layoffs hit, and the first to go are the 35-year-old employees who haven’t been promoted. No responses to job applications, mortgage payments come on time every month, children’s tuition and parents’ medical bills pile up, sitting in the corner at reunions unwilling to speak, all the bragging you did before has become a joke.
Ten years later?
Lying in a hospital bed with chronic diseases requiring long-term medication, unable to afford a down payment for your child’s wedding, while peers are traveling everywhere. Only then do you realize your life has just passed by with no story worth telling.
This isn’t meant to scare you. Spending three hours daily on short videos and two hours at boring drinking parties is exactly walking step by step into that script. People avoid pain much more than they pursue happiness—by about 2.5 times. The reason you couldn’t get moving before is probably because you never really pictured that kind of life in detail.
Write this out and stick it above your computer. When you open your eyes in the morning, the first thing you see is yourself ten years later unable to afford medical bills—not a sports car. No one needs to push you; you’ll get up on your own.
3. Second step: Monk mode—take back the energy you’ve lost
Dan Koe did the math. People are awake sixteen hours a day, at least seven hours are wasted: two hours on short videos, one and a half hours scrolling feeds, one hour enduring unwanted social events, and the rest fragmented by pop-ups—barely an hour of full focus.
Laziness is often blamed on weak willpower. But energy has already been drained; even lifting a book feels exhausting.
A method that doesn’t rely on willpower: clear distractions in thirty days.
Monk mode has nothing to do with becoming a monk; it’s a very specific subtraction method to block useless information.
1. First week: decline invitations to gatherings that are just bragging sessions leaving headaches, uninstall TikTok, Kuaishou, and games, close off WeChat Moments, turn off all push notifications.
2. Second week: unfollow accounts among the thousand you follow that only feed emotions, jokes, or anxiety. Leave only three types in your feed: useful content related to your goals, insightful long articles, and content about exercise and health.
Some ask, what if I uninstall and can’t resist reinstalling? Dan Koe says you don’t need willpower for this; it relies on the brain’s default network mechanism.
The default network only reacts to things within reach. After uninstalling, to watch again you have to go to the app store, enter your password, wait for installation—those extra thirty seconds kill the urge. Most times you’ll pick up a book nearby instead and not watch.
With distractions cleared, the seven hours saved daily are enough for three things: consuming good content, thinking clearly, and taking care of your body.
No need to force yourself to study twelve hours a day. Without distractions, your brain calms down naturally; sitting focused for three hours is common and produces more than working distracted all day while scrolling your phone.
4. Third step: Turn chores into leveling up
Many give up after half a month because they treat this as suffering. No videos, no fun, suffer first, then enjoy after you succeed.
Thinking this way won’t last a month; you’ll binge-watch for ten hours in revenge and be back to square one overnight.
Dan Koe treats it like a game. Like playing an MMORPG, every task you do adds attribute points.
Make a visible attribute table
Use Excel to make a table with four columns: cognition, body, skills, wealth. Record points every time you complete a task.
1. Finish reading a professional book, cognition +10
2. Train strength for an hour, body +8
3. Write a decent piece, skills +12
4. Earn your first $1,000 passive income, wealth +20
Spend ten minutes every night reviewing; watching the numbers rise bit by bit, slowly surpassing those around you feels much more solid than watching ten short videos.
Seeing yourself get stronger means you don’t need willpower to keep going. You’ll get annoyed by wasting time and won’t need anyone to push you.
He kept this record for three months. Later, just thinking about watching an hour of videos and not gaining points, or losing ten cognition points, felt like a loss.
5. Fourth step: One-person company—take back your money
After three months, your energy, mind, and body are far ahead of 90% of people around you. Next, don’t just think about a raise; you need to figure out how to sell your skills yourself. This is the final step.
Dan Koe isn’t some original genius; others have walked this path successfully. No need to lock yourself away to create unique content; just reorganize good information, write down how you thought, what you did, and the pitfalls you encountered during the year, and share it. This will attract a group of people who also want to grow fast. Later, you can monetize through courses, consulting, and paid communities.
How to proceed in twelve months without enduring many years
1. The first three months are the ghost phase; no one watches, which is normal. Record your journey daily; even ten followers don’t matter. This phase is about getting your writing feel right; teaching what you’ve learned means you truly understand it. Ninety percent get stuck here; getting through means you’ve already won a group.
2. The next three months are the breakthrough phase; about a thousand people watch you steadily and trust you. Launch a $99 product; dozens will buy. The first money earned outside a job gives you the drive to keep going.
3. The last six months are the explosion phase; your content has its own style, followers grow from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and consulting, annual communities, and advanced courses become possible. Dan Koe did this half-year, growing monthly revenue from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, totaling millions annually.
Don’t wait to become a guru before you start writing. The most valuable period is precisely the climb from ordinary to better; people confused like you at the start will see themselves in it. Famous bloggers can’t tell this story.
6. Finally, step out of the crowd
Looking back at this whole set, none of the steps require background, resources, or a big upfront investment.
All you need is one decision: from today, stop wasting time with people who say "slowly endure ten years."
Don’t wait until you’re ready—there is no such day. Spend an hour tonight writing out your worst days, uninstall entertainment apps tomorrow, and you’ve started your first year.
Woke up to Huang Renxun admitting to an affair!
The whole internet exploded... Nvidia launches an investigation
Who would have thought that the man wearing a leather jacket, chatting and joking on stage, revered as the "AI Godfather," would suddenly become a global trending topic in this way.
Several follow-up speculations:
1) The affair itself isn't a big deal; the focus of the investigation might be whether export restrictions were violated.
2) If it's minor, it's just private life and splitting billions in assets. If it's major, it could be treason, which would affect AI supply.
3) He might have admitted it proactively to downplay the issue.
4) If they divorce, his wife will take half of his black leather jacket...
In-depth Analysis of the Nine Major Schools of Economics: Understanding the Underlying Logic of How the World Operates
Many people find economics obscure, dull, and full of formulas, seemingly far removed from everyday life.
But the truth is quite the opposite.
Every price fluctuation around you, every round of policy adjustment, every trade competition hides the underlying logic of different economic schools.
The world we see today is the result of centuries of collision, iteration, and competition among the nine major economic thoughts.
Today, we will explain these nine schools clearly in one article.
Once you understand them, you will see society’s operation, market rules, and human nature from a completely different perspective.
1. Classical Economics: The Golden Rule of the Free Market
The starting point of modern economics is Adam Smith’s "The Wealth of Nations." It established the core tone of classical economics: freedom, spontaneity, and self-healing.
Imagine a city without government control or regulations, yet everyone has a job, food to eat, and a stable life. This seemingly contradictory picture is the core belief of classical economics: everyone pursues self-interest, ultimately benefiting the whole society.
A baker bakes bread not to do charity but to make a living. Yet this selfish choice allows the whole street to enjoy warm bread. Merchants seek profit, workers labor for wages, and while everyone works for themselves, they silently support the operation of society. This is Adam Smith’s famous "invisible hand."
Classical economists firmly believe the market has perfect self-regulation and needs no external intervention. When bread prices rise and profits increase, more bakers enter the market; competition intensifies, and prices naturally fall. When wages soar, many newcomers seek jobs; supply and demand balance, and wages return to reasonable levels. All fluctuations are automatically corrected by the market; any human intervention disrupts the balance.
Building on this, David Ricardo further perfected the system and proposed the core theory defining global trade: comparative advantage. Even if a country outperforms others in all industries, trade is still necessary.
England is more efficient than Portugal in producing both cloth and wine, but England is better at cloth, and Portugal is relatively better at wine. Each country abandons its weaker side and focuses on its strength, then trades to maximize mutual benefits.
The ultimate conclusion of classical economics is that the market has a perfect order, and intervention is destructive.
2. Behavioral Economics: Overturning the "Everyone is Rational" Myth
Classical and neoclassical economics are based on an idealized premise that humans are perfectly rational and calculate costs and benefits precisely. But in reality, humans are never cold calculators.
In the 1970s, Daniel Kahneman overturned traditional views with extensive experiments and data, giving birth to behavioral economics. It revealed a truth: human thinking is biased, flawed, and habitual; our irrationality is predictable, summarizable, and exploitable.
Everyday life confirms this. People impulsively buy expensive gym memberships at the start of the year, knowing they won’t persist. Losing 100 yuan hurts more than gaining 100 yuan feels good.
People will cross half a city to save 5 yuan but ignore a 5 yuan price difference on a several-hundred-yuan item. They buy unnecessary goods just because of a 50% discount. Our consumption, decisions, and judgments are always driven by emotions, biases, and habits, not absolute rationality.
More importantly, behavioral economics not only exposes problems but also offers practical solutions, already integrated into modern social rule design. Organ donation uses default registration, requiring no active sign-up but voluntary opt-out, greatly increasing donation rates.
Pricing items at 9.9 yuan instead of 10 yuan uses visual illusions to reduce consumer resistance. Hotels inform guests that 80% reuse towels, leveraging social proof to guide behavior.
The core of behavioral economics is to accept human irrationality and optimize choices through rules rather than idealize human nature.
3. Marxist Economics: Seeing Through Exploitation and Class Behind Capital
While classical economics indulges in a harmonious, self-balancing market vision, Marx saw the harshest truth of the market.
Consider a simple calculation. You work 8 hours in a factory, producing 10 items daily, each sold for 50 dollars, creating 500 dollars of value, but your wage is only 80 dollars. What happened to the remaining 420 dollars?
Marx believed this was not accidental or an error but systemic appropriation, the core concept of surplus value. Workers create most value; capital owners appropriate the surplus profit. Society is divided into two opposing classes: workers and capitalists. This silent class struggle is the underlying logic of capitalism and the root of growing wealth inequality.
Marx compared capitalism to a pressure cooker. The faster the economy grows, the more monopolized capital becomes, the greater the wealth gap, and the stronger the social contradictions and tensions. When pressure reaches a critical point, the old order inevitably collapses.
Thus, he proposed historical materialism to change the world. Feudalism was replaced by capitalism as an inevitable era. Similarly, capitalism will eventually be surpassed by a fairer system, ultimately eliminating private capital, class antagonism, and exploitation.
The core of Marxist economics is that the market is never harmonious; capital’s essence is harvesting labor value.
4. Game Theory: The Survival Game of Mutual Checks and Balances
Previous economics mostly studied isolated markets and rational individuals. Game theory studies the checks and balances and confrontations between people and opponents.
The classic Prisoner’s Dilemma reveals the absurdity of human nature and competition.
You and your accomplice are held separately, unable to communicate, and can choose to betray or stay silent. Rationally, each prioritizes self-preservation and chooses betrayal, but the result is both get heavy sentences, a lose-lose outcome. Individual rationality leads to collective disaster.
This is game theory’s most disruptive insight: success or failure depends not on what you do but on what your opponent does.
Life, business, and international affairs are full of Prisoner’s Dilemmas. Competitors could cooperate to maintain prices and profit together but fear price cuts and market loss, leading to cutthroat price wars and shrinking industry profits.
Countries could cooperate on environmental protection and development but fear free-riding and losses, resulting in delays and shirking. Arms races, business competition, and public opinion confrontations share the same logic.
Game theory’s core breakthrough is the Nash equilibrium. At this balance point, as long as others don’t change strategies, no one can benefit by unilaterally changing their choice. Everyone is stuck in fixed choices, knowing the outcome is bad but no one dares to break the deadlock first.
Today, game theory has transcended economics, deeply influencing politics, military, business, and social interactions, becoming a universal tool to interpret cooperation, competition, and conflict.
5. Public Choice Theory: Breaking the "Government Serves the Public" Illusion
Our ingrained belief is that businesses pursue profit selfishly, while governments are neutral, fair, and serve the public interest. Public choice theory shatters this idealized assumption.
James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock proposed the most realistic view: politicians and bureaucrats are also self-interested ordinary people. Politicians seek votes and terms; bureaucrats seek bigger budgets and more power. Most policies are driven not by public interest but by personal and group interests.
This is the most common social imbalance: concentrated benefits, dispersed costs.
A universal subsidy policy costs each citizen only 20 dollars annually but benefits a few industries and interest groups by millions.
The public barely notices or opposes, but interest groups lobby fiercely to maintain policies. Ultimately, a small group hijacks the interests of the vast majority. Many regulations, subsidies, and industry rules appear to protect the public but actually protect monopolies, nurture interest groups, and eliminate market competition.
Public choice theory offers a remedy: limit government power and introduce competition among governments. Power cannot expand indefinitely; people can "vote with their feet" by moving to fairer regions if taxes are too high or rules unreasonable.
The core of public choice theory is not to overestimate human nature or sanctify power; all actors pursue self-interest.
6. Neoclassical Economics: Redefining Value with Marginal Utility
At the end of the 19th century, to solve the value paradox of classical economics, neoclassical economics emerged, completely reconstructing human understanding of value.
The classic water-diamond paradox puzzled scholars for years. Water is essential for life, irreplaceable in value, yet cheap and abundant. Diamonds have no practical use, are luxury goods, yet are as expensive as gold.
Classical economics couldn’t explain this; neoclassical economics provided the answer. Value is not determined by the item itself but by people’s subjective feelings and marginal utility. Marginal utility means the value of an item depends on the satisfaction the next unit brings. The first slice of pizza is delicious and brings great happiness; the third slice is bland; the seventh makes you feel sick.
Water is everywhere; marginal utility diminishes infinitely; one more or less cup makes no difference, so it’s cheap. Diamonds are extremely scarce; each additional one brings high satisfaction and value, so they are expensive.
Neoclassical economics thus established the underlying logic of the modern market. Consumers seek to maximize satisfaction; businesses seek to maximize profit; supply and demand compete, automatically forming price equilibrium. Its core model is perfect competition, which rarely exists in reality but serves as a compass to judge market imbalance, monopoly, or failure. Since then, supply-demand relations and marginal utility have become the universal language of economics.
7. Keynesianism: Markets Can Fail, Government Must Backstop
Classical economics believed markets always self-heal, but the Great Depression shattered this myth. Economic collapse, factory closures, millions unemployed, famine spreading; the market not only failed to self-repair but fell into a vicious cycle and continued decline.
Keynes proposed a revolutionary theory: markets can fail; laissez-faire cannot save the economy; human intervention is needed.
He proposed the famous paradox of thrift. Individuals saving money and living frugally is rational self-protection. But if everyone saves simultaneously, avoids consumption and investment, societal demand collapses, and the economy halts. Individual rationality causes collective destruction.
Keynes likened government to firefighters: no intervention needed normally, but when the market is on fire or the economy recesses, active firefighting is necessary. When businesses hesitate to invest, the government supports infrastructure and creates jobs. When residents hesitate to consume, policies stimulate demand and revive the market. Through the multiplier effect, every government dollar circulates through wages, consumption, business income, and economic gears, gradually resolving the crisis.
For Keynes, austerity during recession worsens the situation; counter-cyclical stimulus is the solution. This is the core theoretical basis for modern countries’ counter-cyclical regulation, infrastructure-driven growth, and interest rate cuts to stimulate the economy.
8. Supply-Side Economics: Activating Producers is the Core of Growth
Keynesianism focuses on stimulating demand, while supply-side economics, born in the 1980s, advocates activating supply and empowering producers. Its core view is that economic downturns stem not from lack of consumption but insufficient production incentives and weak enterprise vitality.
The iconic Laffer Curve was born on a napkin. Excessively high tax rates shrink corporate profits and residents’ incomes; people are unwilling to work, invest, or even evade taxes, causing total tax revenue to fall. Moderate tax cuts reduce burdens, activate investment, entrepreneurship, and employment, leading to overall economic growth, expanding the tax base, and increasing total tax revenue.
This gave rise to the trickle-down effect. Tax cuts increase corporate profits, expand production and employment, raise residents’ incomes, upgrade consumption, and promote overall prosperity. Theoretically, this is a perfect positive cycle.
In the 1980s, the U.S. implemented large-scale tax cuts, boosting short-term growth but causing soaring fiscal deficits and widening wealth gaps, forcing the government to raise taxes again, shattering the myth of tax cuts’ omnipotence.
Supply-side economics proves activating production is the foundation of growth, but practice shows tax cuts alone cannot solve all economic problems.
9. Development Economics, Austrian School, New Institutional Economics: The Ultimate Code to Understand Wealth Gaps
1. Development Economics: Poverty’s root is never lack of money
Many think poor countries are poor because of lack of funds and factories. But reality offers counterexamples. Argentina was wealthy a century ago but stagnated into poverty. Singapore, starting from scratch and lacking resources, rose to developed status.
Development economics reveals the truth: wealth gaps stem not from capital but from institutions, education, infrastructure, rules, and social structure. Farmers can’t afford fertilizer, yields are low, savings scarce, and poverty persists—a poverty trap. Without education, healthcare, infrastructure, and with corrupt institutions and chaotic rules, no amount of investment or aid can achieve sustainable growth.
Breaking poverty cycles requires more than money; it needs microcredit, education subsidies, basic livelihood improvements, and institutional reforms. True prosperity is built bit by bit on rule of law, security, education, and fair rules.
2. Austrian School: Rejecting formulaic economics, respecting market spontaneous order
While mainstream economics obsesses over formulas, curves, and data models, the Austrian School states economics is not algebra; human hearts and choices cannot be quantified or predicted.
Its core economic cycle theory overturns conventional wisdom. Economic crises are not market failures but consequences of human market interventions. Central banks artificially lower interest rates and release easy money; markets seem prosperous; businesses blindly invest and expand. When money tightens and rates normalize, bubbles burst, projects collapse, and crises arrive as expected.
This school firmly opposes central planning and excessive regulation. No bureaucrat or system can predict billions’ needs or plan everyone’s life. Market prices are the truest signals, aggregating everyone’s demands, preferences, and expectations, forming spontaneous order. Any human manipulation disrupts balance. Less intervention means more freedom and efficiency.
3. New Institutional Economics: Institutions are the ultimate dividing line between rich and poor nations
Two countries with identical resources, climate, and population can diverge over decades, one rich and strong, the other poor. New institutional economics says the difference is institutions.
All market transactions have costs: negotiation, contracting, enforcement, supervision consume resources. Laws, companies, rules, and social systems exist to reduce transaction costs and improve efficiency. Without institutions, making a movie requires separate contracts with hundreds of workers, making it costly and unfeasible. Without rule of law, private property is unprotected, contracts unenforceable, rules change arbitrarily; capital won’t invest, and industries can’t root.
It also proposes path dependence: once an inefficient institution forms, it gains inertia and is hard to reform despite flaws.
This explains why Silicon Valley leads tech long-term and why some countries remain poor despite aid. The real gap is not money or resources but trust, rules, rule of law, and stable institutions.
Conclusion
The nine major economic schools have no absolute right or wrong; they fit different eras, scenarios, and social stages.
Classical economics shows us the power of the free market.
Behavioral economics makes us face human irrationality.
Marxist economics reveals the essence of capital and class.
Game theory helps us understand the logic of competition and checks and balances.
Public choice theory breaks the illusion of power.
Neoclassical economics defines the underlying rules of value and supply-demand.
Keynesianism teaches us that crises need backstops and regulation.
Supply-side economics points out that production vitality is the foundation of growth.
Development economics, Austrian School, and new institutional economics ultimately show us that institutions, order, and human nature are the ultimate answers to economics.
Top 20 Must-Have Skills in the World, Young People Use AI More
1. superpowers (by obra), starred 302K at the time
It breaks development into four steps: brainstorming, planning, test-driven, code review, forming a complete development process. Install it before working on medium to large features; AI won’t just start writing code randomly.
2. skills (by mattpocock), starred 298K at the time
When requirements are unclear, it will ask you questions to help clarify the architecture. Best used for debugging and refactoring legacy projects.
3. andrej-karpathy-skills (by multica-ai), starred 221K at the time
A set of project rules: AI thinks carefully before acting and only changes what needs to be changed. Place it in the project root directory; it takes effect while coding.
4. skills (by anthropics), starred 182K at the time
Official skill library that works directly with Word, PPT, spreadsheets, and PDFs. To write your own Skill, just modify its template.
5. ponytail (by DietrichGebert), starred 168K at the time
Makes AI think like the laziest senior engineer: avoid unnecessary abstractions. After coding, let it review to identify over-design and technical debt.
6. ui-ux-pro-max-skill (by nextlevelbuilder), starred 138K at the time
Includes complete color schemes, font pairings, and interaction guidelines. Install before making landing pages, backends, and app interfaces to make pages look more like a designer’s work.
7. graphify (by Graphify-Labs), starred 129K at the time
Converts code, documentation, and database structures into a knowledge graph. When taking over unfamiliar projects, build the graph first, then ask "Who calls this function?" to quickly understand.
8. caveman (by JuliusBrussee), starred 114K at the time
Makes AI answer with the fewest words, cutting out verbose explanations. Install when running agents for a long time to save a lot of tokens.
9. agent-skills (by addyosmani), starred 109K at the time
Engineering standards compiled by Google engineers covering interface design, context management, and quality checks. Use it for consistent coding style in team projects.
10. taste-skill (by LeonxLnx), starred 99K at the time
Adds aesthetic sense to AI: typography, reference images, and animations are all considered. Use it for homepage and portfolio design to avoid templated looks.
11. Understand-Anything (by Egonex-AI), starred 87K at the time
Turns code into clickable interactive graphs and explains business processes clearly. Saves time for newcomers onboarding projects or reading open-source code.
12. impeccable (by pbakaus), starred 83K at the time
Specifically enhances AI’s design skills by checking spacing, hierarchy, and details. Let it review pages first, then polish according to suggestions.
13. awesome-claude-skills (by ComposioHQ), starred 77K at the time
A skill collection with over 800 Skills categorized by scenarios. If unsure what to install, start here.
14. last30days-skill (by mvanhorn), starred 65K at the time
Gathers discussions from Reddit, X, and YouTube from the last 30 days. Use it for topic selection, trending research, and competitor analysis.
15. humanizer (by blader), starred 59K at the time
Removes AI traces from text, such as clichés and fixed phrases. Use it to polish public account posts, voice scripts, and emails.
16. diagram-design (by cathrynlavery), starred 58K at the time
Supports over 40 chart types and outputs directly as web files. Use it to draw architecture and flowcharts for technical documents and presentations.
17. i-have-adhd (by ayghri), starred 58K at the time
Makes AI give conclusions and next steps first, then details, avoiding answers buried in long paragraphs. Install it for technical questions when you want quick results.
18. marketingskills (by coreyhaines31), starred 56K at the time
Covers marketing skills like copywriting, SEO, and data analysis. Use it for writing promotional copy and improving website search rankings.
19. academic-research-skills (by Imbad0202), starred 53K at the time
Links the whole process from literature review, paper writing to peer review simulation. Useful before writing theses or submitting to journals.
20. scientific-agent-skills (by K-Dense-AI), starred 53K at the time
Turns AI into a research assistant by connecting to databases and tools in biology, chemistry, and other fields. Use it for experiment analysis and professional data lookup.
