First, reaching a useful Pareto frontier still isn’t easy. For the sort of examples in the post, we’re talking about effort equivalent to two or three separate PhD’s, plus enough work in the relevant fields to master them. You’d have to clear a certain bar for intelligence and diligence and financial slack just for that to be an option.
Second, “super rich” isn’t quite the right metric. Academics usually aren’t measuring their success in dollars, for instance, and status is unfortunately more zero-sum than wealth. Same for lots of people in government or nonprofit roles. That said, there are clearly an awful lot of people not picking this fruit.
Third, this whole strategy inherently involves trailblazing. You have to do something which nobody has done before—that’s kinda the point. That means there’s not going to be an established career path, an established ladder to climb. It also means there’s an inherent element of risk: it’s entirely possible that your particular frontier won’t have anything useful on it.
I think the first and third are the main factors. There’s a high barrier just to try this sort of strategy, and even once you pay that toll, there’s a high risk of finding nothing. On top of that, you inherently need to beat your own path; there’s no set formula for which combinations of things will work (otherwise those combinations would already be exhausted). Put those two together, and it’s not something that most people will pursue.
To make it a bit more concrete: suppose you’ve just wrapped up a PhD in monetary economics from a decent school. You’re neither rich nor famous, but you’ve got a pretty comfortable life ahead of you—you can easily get a good-paying job in industry, or you can write a few grant applications and stay in academia. Are you really going to walk away from a comfortable life and restart from square zero in proteomics, just to have a chance at a major breakthrough? For Pareto frontiers involving even more specialties, will you walk away from a comfortable life and restart from square zero multiple times?
″ Third, this whole strategy inherently involves trailblazing. You have to do something which nobody has done before—that’s kinda the point. ”
But more than that, you need to blaze a new trail that still fits in with the needs of the world around you. A new trail to the cliff no one wants to be on doesn’t get you much but a rather long fall I think ;-)
But in general I like the observation you’ve made.
I think different people are just using status to mean different things. Some people think it obviously means “the literal pecking order”, and others mean something more like “how much respect people have.” Something something prestige vs dominance hierarchies?
Dominance is more zero sum, and plausibly has to be 100% although I haven’t thought it through in full.
I think any take of what people mean by “status” has to include both prestige and dominance, respect and pecking order. Even a dominance hierarchy, communities are founded on the middle being illegible, which allows for non-zero-sum dynamics.
This is why I think it’s about 50⁄50, but of course if you think of only literal pecking order and only the bits that are legible, I could see that bit being 0 sum. IE, there’s usually only one leader.
Multiple reasons:
First, reaching a useful Pareto frontier still isn’t easy. For the sort of examples in the post, we’re talking about effort equivalent to two or three separate PhD’s, plus enough work in the relevant fields to master them. You’d have to clear a certain bar for intelligence and diligence and financial slack just for that to be an option.
Second, “super rich” isn’t quite the right metric. Academics usually aren’t measuring their success in dollars, for instance, and status is unfortunately more zero-sum than wealth. Same for lots of people in government or nonprofit roles. That said, there are clearly an awful lot of people not picking this fruit.
Third, this whole strategy inherently involves trailblazing. You have to do something which nobody has done before—that’s kinda the point. That means there’s not going to be an established career path, an established ladder to climb. It also means there’s an inherent element of risk: it’s entirely possible that your particular frontier won’t have anything useful on it.
I think the first and third are the main factors. There’s a high barrier just to try this sort of strategy, and even once you pay that toll, there’s a high risk of finding nothing. On top of that, you inherently need to beat your own path; there’s no set formula for which combinations of things will work (otherwise those combinations would already be exhausted). Put those two together, and it’s not something that most people will pursue.
To make it a bit more concrete: suppose you’ve just wrapped up a PhD in monetary economics from a decent school. You’re neither rich nor famous, but you’ve got a pretty comfortable life ahead of you—you can easily get a good-paying job in industry, or you can write a few grant applications and stay in academia. Are you really going to walk away from a comfortable life and restart from square zero in proteomics, just to have a chance at a major breakthrough? For Pareto frontiers involving even more specialties, will you walk away from a comfortable life and restart from square zero multiple times?
″ Third, this whole strategy inherently involves trailblazing. You have to do something which nobody has done before—that’s kinda the point. ”
But more than that, you need to blaze a new trail that still fits in with the needs of the world around you. A new trail to the cliff no one wants to be on doesn’t get you much but a rather long fall I think ;-)
But in general I like the observation you’ve made.
Status is 100% zero sum I’d say.
How do we know it isn’t negative sum?
What makes you say that? I’d say it’s about 50⁄50
I think different people are just using status to mean different things. Some people think it obviously means “the literal pecking order”, and others mean something more like “how much respect people have.” Something something prestige vs dominance hierarchies?
Dominance is more zero sum, and plausibly has to be 100% although I haven’t thought it through in full.
I think any take of what people mean by “status” has to include both prestige and dominance, respect and pecking order. Even a dominance hierarchy, communities are founded on the middle being illegible, which allows for non-zero-sum dynamics.
This is why I think it’s about 50⁄50, but of course if you think of only literal pecking order and only the bits that are legible, I could see that bit being 0 sum. IE, there’s usually only one leader.