A bit about me and why I am very happy to discover Steemit

I'm new to this site and happy to have found it, so here's a total rant that I hope gives a glimpse into a who I am for those who may be interested. If you find it interesting following me on instagram and twitter @andrarchy.

That Time I Was a Lawyer

After spending 3 years going to law school and passing the New York and New Jersey State bars (which are not nearly as hard as people, primarily lawyers, like to make out) I discovered that being a lawyer isn't about yelling "Objection" in court and instead simply means reading lots of extremely boring documents, the overwhelming majority of which are of no consequence. Instead of doing that, in 2008 I started a LearnWithoutStudying.com that would begin as an online course for teaching the law through Khan Academy-esque videos (which I don't think really existed at the time) which I referred to as "live action tutorials." The idea was to teach the law through what was essentially "Law and Order on Steroids." What I failed to consider was that creating video content with scripts, actors, and locations is too time consuming and expensive to scale, plus it's not like a loved the law, in fact I was rather disillusioned with it, so why would I enjoy teaching it? The answer? I wouldn't. Though I still think the idea is a good one, and given the subsequent popularity of such educational tools it wasn't totally misguided, I decided it wasn't for me.

Then Came Real Estate

After that I went into my family's business of managing residential real estate and did that for 5 years where I learned that real estate is gambling (i.e. investing) and it's all about buying properties when the market is low. Everything else people talk about is pretty much bullshit. Ok, that's not totally true. I came to believe that there was an actual product we could offer to people beyond merely a place to live. You see, we were in a relatively unique position of both owning residential real estate in New York City, and managing it. Typically those two roles are separate and that creates some shitty incentives. Property Managers are a dime a dozen in this city, so they have to compete hard on price. That means those guys and gals have to squeeze every last dime out of the properties they manage and manage as many properties as possible to make up in volume what they lose in competition. Meanwhile, the landlords are just real estate investors. They don't know or care about who's in their buildings, they just want to maximize revenue. Furthermore, in NYC revenue is only a secondary concern, the first being sale price. That's because revenue is often zero. So not only do property managers not make much money, but landlords don't make much money on rents either. If you don't make money on rents, what incentive do you have to be good to your tenants? In NYC rent is just a way of minimizing your LOSSES until you SELL. So the goal can't be to treat tenants well and keep them for a long time. In fact, since you're going to kick them out eventually, there's incentive to treat them badly. For us, on the other hand, we owned properties for decades since we were a family business, which meant we actually did make money on rent. The other way we made money was by NOT using a property manager. Lastly, I realized that our single largest expense was vacant apartments! Property managers don't care if a tenant moves out because they still get their fee and what's one tenant out of thousands? Landlords don't care either because it gives them a chance to hike the rent and increase their potential sale price. But for us missing a month of rent meant we lost thousands of dollars. And what if it takes us a few months to rent the apartment? And what if the new tenant is a piece of shit? We were incentivized to keep good tenants and the two best ways for doing that were by treating them well and not raising their rent too much. Crazy right?! New York landlords set the bar pretty low and after running the numbers I found it wouldn't actually cost anything to become "The Nice Guy Landlords." We could treat our tenants well which would increase our ability to attract quality tenants and keep them while increasing positive word of mouth which was already our primary form of marketing! This strategy would have reduced vacancies, enabled us to charge a small premium because I believe there would be strong demand for landlords who weren't pieces of shit, and enable us to expand our holdings. Even in a family owned business, or perhaps especially in one, good ideas just aren't enough. They had their business model (pinching pennies and treating tenants ... mediocrely), it had worked for 35 years and they weren't about to change it now. And that was my first lesson in the "status quo bias." The logic and economics of my arguments withered when confronted with "that's just not the way we do things."

Becoming an "Investor" (in Tesla Motors)

Around the same time I started working in real estate I came across a budding electric car manufacturer named Tesla Motors that was making an electric roadster. To many the roadster was an expensive toy for the rich. But I was in the unique position of having been a gear-head in my youth, who then transitioned into an interest in alternative fuel vehicles. The problem was that gasoline engines had stagnated. In the 70s and 80s companies were putting out cars like the Toyota Supra, Nissan Skyline, 300zx, which you could modify for a couple of grand and make into a super car. But due to a number of factors, that stopped being the case. Part is probably overregulation and computerization, but part of it also seemed to be that the automakers had just gotten very good at squeezing every last ounce of power out of engines. Electric cars at least seemed to have the potential to lead to something new and exciting. Most of us interested in that field knew that electric drivetrains had unique characteristics that had the potential to revolutionize the automobile, primarily that they had maximum torque at zero RPM, the engines were small and had few moving parts, and the batteries could be contained within a large plate on the bottom of the car (the "skateboard") to lower the center of gravity and enhance rigidity. At car shows concept electric vehicles advertising such platforms were common. In the media "breakthrough" battery technologies promised to lead to cars that would go hundreds of miles on a charge. Our imaginations were tickled by the horsepower that could be generated by these tiny electric motors. And I haven't even mentioned hydrogen fuel cells.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. But the electric cars that were put out (most of the "concepts" never came close to production) were even more boring than the gas cars they claimed to replace. 100 miles of range seemed to be the most anyone could hope for and a 0-60 of "never" seemed like the necessary compromise. Then one day I hear about an electric car that can go 267 miles on a charge and 0-60 in 5 seconds. Excuse me? No, this must be vaporware. I've heard promises like these before. They come out with some snazzy mockup, claim that have some special patented battery technology, and then take a shit on my hopes and dreams. But no, they were actually making this car. It existed. Like, in the real world. How was this possible? The answer that had escaped so many of us was that it wasn't about chemistry, it was about economics. And thus began my journey into that field. What I learned was that the people at Tesla were not counting on some miraculous future technology that would somehow circumvent the obviously linear progression of battery cell technology. Energy dense and inexpensive battery cells already existed, they just weren't being made FOR cars, they were being made for computers. Whereas as every other automaker was using (or more accurately "planning to use") big batteries designed by other companies specifically for cars, the people at Tesla said, "Fuck it. Batteries are batteries." By stringing these low cost batteries together they could make a car that could go fast AND go far. What they realized (one of many contributions made by one of its co-founders the now super-famous Elon Musk) was that electric cars needed to be compelling. They needed to be awesome. Not "awesome for an electric car" just awesome. Given the economic and physical constraints they made the wise choice of starting with a sports car. From my perspective I was seeing the first legitimate proof that a company could produce a compelling electric car and actually intended to produce it (after all, they were already producing it). I think many of us had come to understand that the major automakers would never seriously pursue electric cars because that would be killing their golden goose (gasoline cars). The more I learned about economics the more I understood the dynamics at play. The major autos had decades of R&D invested in gasoline cars (sunk costs). They had established supply chains, loyal customers, brand recognition, and they were selling literally millions of cars a year. Why commit serious resources to a product that would only be niche compared to their other offerings and require tons of new R&D? But the same logic didn't apply to Tesla. It hadn't invested anything into gasoline cars and while the market for electric cars was niche for major multinational conglomerates , it was still a big market.

Everyone said I was wrong

Believing in Tesla Motors required believing that a small band of passionate people with little real world experience in an industry could build an incredibly complicated machine. This was, and still is, an unpopular belief. People are dumb. People without degrees are dumb. People must spend decades earning degrees, then leverage those degrees to acquire a career in a large corporation, then work in "the field" for a few decades. Once they've become vice presidents THEN maybe people will give them the respect they deserve and the corresponding ability to spearhead projects. If people want to build something, they can't just BUILD it! That would be ANARCHY! Of course that's not to say that we should believe anyone who announces bold plans. What was so staggering about Tesla Motors was that people were treating it like they were just making bold claims. But the cars were OUT THERE! The mileage claims were true! Owners weren't complaining, they were effusive! The speed claims were true too. In fact, watching videos of people driving their roadster made me realize something I hadn't fully appreciated. Power is one thing, but power ON DEMAND (at zero RPM) is a whole other thing and when you watched people accelerate in that car you could see the difference on their faces: pure, unadulterated JOY. They had done the impossible and they planned to do even more. I could go on for ages about Tesla Motors, but to skip to the end I became convinced this company was going to be huge. Not because it had some super technology and not because of Elon Musk. In fact, people should remember that back then Elon Musk was not viewed as a positive for the company. He wasn't "Elon Musk: founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX" he was, "Elon Musk insane startup founder who believes he can go to space and make electric cars." I did, however, view him as a plus. I listened to every speech and interview he gave and recognized that this wasn't just an ordinary entrepreneur. First, he was clearly a genius. While obvious now, few seemed to agree at the time and understandably so--it's a deceptively subjective judgement. But I tried to examine it as logically as I could. Did he have a history of lying? Was his logic sound? Does he seem to have a grasp of the technological issues involved? Over the years I've come to certain conclusions with respect to what is now safe to refer to as "genius blindness." Why was it that so few people recognized in Musk the genius they now do? He didn't hide it whatsoever. I knew a lot about electric cars. He knew more. I mean, he was a nerd. He didn't even talk well. He talked like an engineer. Which I suppose is probably part of what people didn't like about him. Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he basically just embodies the old school definition of a "business man." Musk was happy to talk about the technical details of the cars (and rockets) which nerds like me were more than happy to ravenously devour, but as Trump is currently demonstrating to the world, people don't give two shits about the technical details. They care about what OTHER people think. They care about what AUTHORITY thinks, and every journalist, every PhD in physics, every car manufacturer, and every normal person was convinced that 1. electric cars couldn't be good, 2. big car companies couldn't make them or make them good, and therefore 3. a small startup headed by an eccentric millionaire certainly couldn't do it either.

A slave to logic

But for me the logic of it all just seemed incontrovertible. There was no reason it WOULDN'T work. Don't get me wrong, I never put the odds of Tesla succeeding ABOVE 50%. In fact, I placed it at around 10%. But people were acting like it was a guaranteed failure. Of course, I knew there was a good chance they would fail, starting a car company is one of the hardest things imaginable, but I also knew that Musk had a few hundred million dollars in the bank. Having seen his passion and commitment for the company I knew that it didn't matter if the company lost money, all the mattered was if it lost more than he had in the bank. If it could successfully get to the point where it was producing its mass market electric car, the company would be profitable. This was another thing I would tell people to which I would get a bewildered gaze. Didn't I get that Tesla Motors was just a cynical attempt to get some of that "green energy" money? Musk sinking his own capital into it would defeat the whole purpose of the endeavor! And yet this is precisely what he wound up doing (to an extent that surprised even me!). Not only did he nearly go bankrupt keeping the company alive, but what was even more surprising is that no one even gave a shit anywa. At a certain point I got so fed up that I decided, "The moment this company goes public I'm going to buy shares because I'm tired of fucking arguing with people about this. If I'm so sure I'm right, I should put my money where my mouth is." And thus concludes the story of how I became an investor in Tesla Motors (ignoring, of course, the three years I spent holding the stock during which it didn't move whatsoever :).

From this I learned that I am a good judge of character and intelligence and that people, in general, don't have a fucking clue what they are talking about, are blindly following the herd, will gladly totally revise their previous beliefs and pretend they were right all along ("Elon Musk is OBVIOUSLY a genius!!!" Then why didn't you invest in Tesla Motors? "...") and God-Bless-America you can profit off their ignorance if you're willing to take the risk.

A Social Network for Givers

With my Tesla stock performing gloriously, my knowledge of business, economics, and technology maturing, and my real estate career depressing the shit out of me I decided to get back in the business of starting a business. It had always frustrated the hell out of me that there was no easy way to keep track of your donations. Isn't there a chrome plug-in or something that can solve this? Nope. It seemed like the problem was that if in order to keep track of donation you had to facilitate it. But if you wanted to create an app that could keep track of donations to ANY nonprofit, it had to be able to donate to ANY nonprofit. Is that possible? Well no one is doing it, but there is one company that offers a similar purpose. Let's say you're a nonprofit and you want to start collecting donations online, but you don't want to go through all of the trouble of setting up a website, figuring out how to accept money, etc. Well you go to this company and they do it for you! The way it works is that they're a nonprofit, so they set up a portal that enables people to donate to the nonprofit X, but really they're just donating to the service provider who is then simply cutting a check for the desired nonprofit and mailing it to them (after taking a small fee). Using this service (and a few others) we were able to hack together an application that enabled people to search for, learn about, and donate to any nonprofit in the US and have their donations automatically kept track of for them. Perfect. A solution to a problem that had pissed me off for eternity. Problem: no one else seemed to care too much, nonprofits are a nightmare to deal with even when you're offering them tools and services (like data analytics) and I do not have the constitution of an entrepreneur. After two years spent building it, during which I committed many mistakes including but not limited to trying to add way too many features, I burnt the fuck out and decided to quite both real estate and GiverHub.

The Information Age

Part of the problem was that I was evolving philosophically, in no small part influenced by Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Unlike most people who went from believing that Musk was insane to believing he's just so brilliant that he single handedly built those companies from scratch, I came to believe that the success of the two companies had more to do with Musk's AMBITION than his genius. After all I doubt anyone would claim that Musk is the smartest person in the world. He just seemed to have a couple of traits that we all seemed to be missing. I mean "missing" in the sense of "Why the fuck aren't we looking for them?" It's not HARD to believe that we can build anything we put our minds to. It's not HARD to believe that a sufficiently well organized group of intelligent human beings can solve ANY problem they put their minds to. It's just that our cultural evolution has led us to believe all of that. But over the past year I have come to believe precisely those things and more. I believe that human beings are not just inherently creative, it's all we are.

I believe that every person can be amazing at SOMETHING. I believe that systems which are founded on these beliefs are destined for greatness and I believe that Steemit is one such system.

• @andrarchy

P.S. If you can't tell a lot of this was rushed, especially the end because I have to run off to Evolution Muay Thai where I train in Muay Thai Kickboxing. If you're ever in NYC and interested in MMA, you should totally check it out