The House Always Win

One of the joys of social media is reading the comments that people make about you and the stuff you write. One of the most amusing ones came from a piece I wrote about the Donald’s mishandling of the coronavirus crisis. My critic accused me of spreading “Democratic Propaganda and getting my information from ‘Fake News.’” I was also accused of not appreciating the fact that Donald Trump had done a marvelous job in managing the situation based on his “gut.”

I believe in intuition. I’ve been around enough successful people to see how they’ve developed a certain “sixth sense” which cannot be described in a purely logical and scientific manner. I’ve seen successful people act on a “hunch” about things and be proven right. So, in this respect, I should be the last person to dismiss someone who claims to act on a “gut feeling.” One would say that the “successful” businessman that is the Donald would have a pretty good gut feeling for most things.

Unfortunately, people forget that “gut” feelings take a while to hone and more importantly, the successful people who have “made it,” by trusting their “gut-feel” also respect facts on the ground and are open to information. While the “Billionaire” Occupant of the White House, takes great pride in not reading books (other than the one he paid someone else to write for him), the majority of billionaires are veracious readers. Bill Gates, whose fortune is more than ten times the Donald’s, reads widely, as does Warren Buffet and dare I say, Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg. Here in Asia, Li Ka Shing, the “Superman” on Hong Kong, advised one to set a portion of one’s income to be spent on books.

Every piece of advice on how to develop a “rich” mindset tells you to read more and be spend time going through books. There’s a good reason for this. Books or the printed medium (these days, reading of a website also counts as part of the printed medium).

The second habit that the majority of “self-made” people have is that they respect expertise. Robert Kwok, one of the richest men in Southeast Asia (the man who brought you the Shangri-La hotel), once told Forbes Magazine that he made the point of spending time with people who were “smarter” than him. David Ogilvy, the man who founded Ogilvy & Mather explained it best when he said, “When we hire people bigger than ourselves, we will become a company of giants but if we hire people smaller than ourselves, we will become a company of dwarfs.” The world’s rich and successful understand to some level that they need to be challenged and that being comfortable is very bad for them.

Business people do work on a gut feel and they do take a certain amount of risk. Successful entrepreneurs often make the point that the ability to come back from failure is usually the difference between success and failure. However, the really successful business people as a rule of thumb do not disdain facts and all have a thirst for knowledge in whatever they’re chosen profession. The investment guru, Jim Rodgers, once said that getting rich was easy – you just needed to find something you loved and know everything you could know and act on it.

Knowing things and being around people who know things allows you to make better decisions. Having knowledge allows you to make certain “bets” with confidence of success. Successful investors like Warren Buffet and George Soros make it a point to “know” what they’re doing – hence they are investors (though Soros is probably more of a speculator). Look at the gaming industry – casinos as a rule of thumb make it a point of knowing the odds on every game. The “punters,” as a rule don’t usually know what they’re doing. Who is smarter and more successful? Well, the rule of thumb in the gambling industry is “The House Always Wins.”

Perhaps Donald Trump really is a genius. He seems to have a genius for writing instant material for comedians.  Yet, the pride he takes in not reading and his disdain for anyone who “challenges” him (look at his press conferences as an example), is merely setting up the nation for eventual failure.

One of America’s greatest strengths has been its centres of knowledge, places where ideas are thrown around and challenged. People who thirst for the newest and latest knowledge have looked to American universities as the place to be. Silicon Valley, that generator of great wealth and innovation, for example, grew up around Stanford University.  

Unfortunately, the current Occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue thinks that everything centres around his gut, which he fuels with junk. If the culture of anti-thinking and disdain for knowledge continues, it will only be a matter of time before American decline becomes irreversible. The rest of the world should take note.