Give Me a Lever

Fortunes require leverage
Business leverage comes from capital
People and products with no marginal cost of replication

Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
(and I will move the Earth)

Leverage is critical
We all know what leverage is when we use
A seesaw or a lever
We understand how that works physically
But I think what our brains aren't really well-evolved
To comprehend is how much leverage is possible
In modern society
And what the newest forms of leverage are
The oldest form of leverage is labor
Which is people working for you
So instead of me lifting rocks
I can have 10 people lift rocks
And just by my guidance on where the rock should go
A lot more rocks get moved than I could do myself
Everybody understands this
Because we're evolved to understand
The labor form of leverage

Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
(and I will move the Earth)

And so what happens is society overvalues labor
As a form of leverage
This is why your parents are impressed
When you get a promotion
And you have lots of people working underneath you
This is why when a lot of naive people
When you tell them about your company,
They'll say, "How many people work there?"
They'll use that as a way to establish credibility
They're trying to measure how much leverage
And impact you actually have
We just automatically assume that more people is better
But I would argue that this is the worst form of leverage
That you could possibly use
Managing other people is incredibly messy
It requires tremendous leadership skills
You're one short hop from a mutiny
Or getting eaten or torn apart by the mob
It's incredibly competed over
Entire civilizations have been destroyed over this fight
For example, communism, Marxism,
Is all about the battle between capital and labor
"Das Kapital", that's labor, right?
So it's kind of a trap
So you really wanna stay out of labor-based leverage
You want the minimum amount of people working with you
That are going to allow you to use the other forms of leverage
Which are much more interesting

Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand
(and I will move the Earth)

Give me a lever long enough and I
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and I
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and I
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and I
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and I
And I will move the Earth
Give me a lever long enough and I
And I will move the Earth