Take Risk or Be Quiet
People who are willing to take a risk for what they believe in deserve attention over those who aren’t.
Taking a risk doesn’t mean shouting the loudest on Joe Rogan- it means exposing yourself to potential loss. Thich Quang Duc self-immolating to protest religious persecution in Vietnam, Bobby Sands dying on a hunger strike to protest British oppression of the Irish, these events captured the attention of the entire world. These men were willing to die for what they believed in, and that elevated their beliefs to the world stage.
For a less extreme example, consider a middle-class entrepreneur taking out a personal loan to fund his struggling business vs a nepo baby who is gifted startup funds with no strings attached. The first is taking a genuine risk consistent with a strong belief in the prospects of his business, whereas the second is taking no risk and requires no conviction at all. I know which one I would rather bet on.
Everyone trying to sell you something, from a product to a political view, needs to be asked what they stand to lose if they are wrong. Any fitness influencer can accept a sponsorship from a scam supplement and gladly promote it: how many of them are actually risking anything if the supplement doesn’t work? People who are risking nothing for their views are demonstrating a lack of conviction. And in the modern era of hyper financialization, nearly every view out there can be turned into a bet- meaning there’s no excuses for not taking risks with strongly held views.
Your friend thinks Trump is going to plunge the United States into an imminent economic depression? Your uncle thinks that illegal immigrants are the source of the majority of violent crime in NYC? The pundit on CNBC says the dollar is going to collapse? None of these people are risking anything for their views. It’s all a pretense. Your friend is playing a game of being outraged, your uncle is just afraid of the unknown, and the pundit is trying to get more views on his blog. If they genuinely believed the things they were saying, they could turn to betting websites, financial markets, even Twitter where HF managers have been known to take these bets, and get rich very quickly- that is, if their views are correct.
The next time you hear someone make a bold claim or seem to hold a contrarian view very strongly, merely ask:
Over what timeframe?
What’s a fair and easy way to measure the progress of your view? (e.g. let’s define “economic depression” as unemployment rate > 10%, and suddenly this is now easy to bet on)
How confident are you? What probability do you think this has of occurring?
At those odds, how much do you want to bet?
9 times out of 10, the answer will be silence or backpedaling. The world is full of fortune tellers, economic and political prognosticators who face no consequences if they’re completely wrong. They should be ignored.