SCALE SURPRISES
7/20/2021
I didn’t begin to develop an intuition about how big the world economy is until I started working at a startup.
School does a good job of putting facts in your head about how much is out there. You learn that there are 7 billion people on the planet. You learn there are over 150 countries. You learn about exotic cultures. But few experiences can help make the world's true scale intuitive. Even being in a crowded arena or flying into Mexico City can't do that.
It gets stranger: most people will only ever meet a small fraction of their fellow countrymen, and see a small percentage of their nation's landmass. It's odd that we can't really comprehend the scale of the very societies we live in.
The reason working at a startup helped me grasp all this is because you begin to pocket other people’s cash in such an informal, small-scale way. You see transactions up close and realize this human-to-human exchange of value is the fundamental unit of so much around us.
Everything I own was paid for using money someone gave me in exchange for something. All my money then flows out in exchange for other things, and that cycle keeps snowballing until it props up the entire edifice of modern life.
Most of you know this, but it's one thing to know something and another to understand it intuitively. I know there are trillions of stars in the sky, yet I can't truly fathom it. But making money appear in small amounts really does help you understand, in a deep way, the awesome ability to make it appear in the larger amounts required for building skyscrapers.
If a series of transactions props up your entire lifestyle, think about the sheer volume and complexity of those necessary to make something like New York City possible. Thinking about the world this way is surprisingly uncommon, yet it's necessary to grasp the way things really are.
Ironically, working at a mediocre company sometimes helps you understand the scale of things better than working at a great one. This is because a mediocre company can survive, even thrive, by capturing a tiny piece of a very large pie. I made great money while working at a mediocre startup, living prosperously from a small slice of a small slice.
People say all the time "there's a lot of opportunity out there." But what does that even mean? It means the sheer volume of economic activity in the world should excite you, but it doesn't because its scale isn't easily comprehensible.
Sometimes when I drive through a nice neighborhood with someone who doesn’t share these intuitions, they ask questions like “What do the people who live here do? How can they afford all this? Are they all movie stars?”
They’re probably not movie stars. Some are doctors and lawyers. But many have high-level positions at companies you’ve never heard of, selling things you never think about.
Scale means you should always be surprised about what exists, not just in the wider world but immediately around you. You should realize that you’re probably not being imaginative enough about what’s possible.
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