“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
While some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Get your Free
financial review
There is a scene in David Fincher’s 1995 seminal horror film ‘Se7en’ in which retiring detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) makes one of his regular after-hours visits to the vast city library to conduct some research. As he makes his way to his desk he walks past a handful of security guards engaged in cardplay and he makes the following observation:
“All these books, gentlemen.. a world of knowledge at your disposal – and you play poker all night..”
This is an anecdote from one of the episodes of ‘Founders’ – a wonderful podcast by David Senra in which the host selects personal extracts from the biographies and autobiographies of successful entrepreneurs. Humanity, it would appear, is not well adapted to success in business, especially in self-started ventures. Not only that, but whereas the history of events constantly changes, human nature seemingly never does.
One of the more dismal aspects of human nature is that the work of the entrepreneur is invariably under-appreciated, if not outright reviled. In August 2011, for example, while considering a run for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren made the following statement:
“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
In July 2012 in Virginia, President Barack Obama was evidently channelling Warren when he remarked:
“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t – look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
“The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”
Not only is this an objectionable perspective to anyone who has taken the risk of setting up a new business; it ignores the flip side of centralised Big Government, which is that the State is a disastrous allocator of capital. Consider the data from the US Government Accountability Office: 2018-2022 figures suggest that the US federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually due to fraud. As Elon Musk himself, no stranger to founding new businesses, pointed out on his own platform X:
“Your tax dollars are being wasted to a degree that is hard to comprehend.
“An aircraft carrier costs $13 billion. America could have bought a new navy to better defend the country, upgraded our highways or any one of a number of great things.
“Instead, we got fraud.”
As David Senra frequently observes, the life of a successful entrepreneur is often an unhappy one, involving perhaps the early death of a parent, hardship at a young age requiring uncommon self-discipline and an iron work ethic, constant criticism or nay-saying from sceptics, and heroic perseverance in the face of often universal hostility to one’s product or service.
At a time when the free enterprise model is under attack throughout the West from a newly aggressive socialist Big State, it is almost miraculous that anybody ever commits to the effort. As the economist and strategist Sean Corrigan puts it,
“There are four types of people in the world. There are entrepreneurs – who are the guys who get out of bed in the morning and say ‘How can I make money by making things better for people ?’ There are contra-preneurs – who are all the governments and bureaucrats and regulators who try to stop that happening, make it difficult or ban it. There are the con-trepreneurs.. who pretend to be doing the first thing but are just lining their own pockets, usually with government subsidies, with the help of the second group. And there are the non-trepreneurs – which is all the rest of us, who must be pretty bloody thankful every time we jump out of bed that the first lot keep doing it.”
………….
As you may know, we also manage bespoke investment portfolios for private clients internationally. We would be delighted to help you too. Because of the current heightened market volatility we are offering a completely free financial review, with no strings attached, to see if our value-oriented approach might benefit your portfolio – with no obligation at all:
Get your Free
financial review
…………
Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of ‘Investing through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial markets’. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular ‘State of the Markets’ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com.
Price Value Partners manage investment portfolios for private clients. We also manage the VT Price Value Portfolio, an unconstrained global fund investing in Benjamin Graham-style value stocks.
“Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
While some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Get your Free
financial review
There is a scene in David Fincher’s 1995 seminal horror film ‘Se7en’ in which retiring detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) makes one of his regular after-hours visits to the vast city library to conduct some research. As he makes his way to his desk he walks past a handful of security guards engaged in cardplay and he makes the following observation:
“All these books, gentlemen.. a world of knowledge at your disposal – and you play poker all night..”
This is an anecdote from one of the episodes of ‘Founders’ – a wonderful podcast by David Senra in which the host selects personal extracts from the biographies and autobiographies of successful entrepreneurs. Humanity, it would appear, is not well adapted to success in business, especially in self-started ventures. Not only that, but whereas the history of events constantly changes, human nature seemingly never does.
One of the more dismal aspects of human nature is that the work of the entrepreneur is invariably under-appreciated, if not outright reviled. In August 2011, for example, while considering a run for the US Senate, Elizabeth Warren made the following statement:
“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
In July 2012 in Virginia, President Barack Obama was evidently channelling Warren when he remarked:
“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t – look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
“The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”
Not only is this an objectionable perspective to anyone who has taken the risk of setting up a new business; it ignores the flip side of centralised Big Government, which is that the State is a disastrous allocator of capital. Consider the data from the US Government Accountability Office: 2018-2022 figures suggest that the US federal government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually due to fraud. As Elon Musk himself, no stranger to founding new businesses, pointed out on his own platform X:
“Your tax dollars are being wasted to a degree that is hard to comprehend.
“An aircraft carrier costs $13 billion. America could have bought a new navy to better defend the country, upgraded our highways or any one of a number of great things.
“Instead, we got fraud.”
As David Senra frequently observes, the life of a successful entrepreneur is often an unhappy one, involving perhaps the early death of a parent, hardship at a young age requiring uncommon self-discipline and an iron work ethic, constant criticism or nay-saying from sceptics, and heroic perseverance in the face of often universal hostility to one’s product or service.
At a time when the free enterprise model is under attack throughout the West from a newly aggressive socialist Big State, it is almost miraculous that anybody ever commits to the effort. As the economist and strategist Sean Corrigan puts it,
“There are four types of people in the world. There are entrepreneurs – who are the guys who get out of bed in the morning and say ‘How can I make money by making things better for people ?’ There are contra-preneurs – who are all the governments and bureaucrats and regulators who try to stop that happening, make it difficult or ban it. There are the con-trepreneurs.. who pretend to be doing the first thing but are just lining their own pockets, usually with government subsidies, with the help of the second group. And there are the non-trepreneurs – which is all the rest of us, who must be pretty bloody thankful every time we jump out of bed that the first lot keep doing it.”
………….
As you may know, we also manage bespoke investment portfolios for private clients internationally. We would be delighted to help you too. Because of the current heightened market volatility we are offering a completely free financial review, with no strings attached, to see if our value-oriented approach might benefit your portfolio – with no obligation at all:
Get your Free
financial review
…………
Tim Price is co-manager of the VT Price Value Portfolio and author of ‘Investing through the Looking Glass: a rational guide to irrational financial markets’. You can access a full archive of these weekly investment commentaries here. You can listen to our regular ‘State of the Markets’ podcasts, with Paul Rodriguez of ThinkTrading.com, here. Email us: info@pricevaluepartners.com.
Price Value Partners manage investment portfolios for private clients. We also manage the VT Price Value Portfolio, an unconstrained global fund investing in Benjamin Graham-style value stocks.
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