I know your friend means well, but we need a new way of thinking: http://bit.ly/hTE82Y

I haven't had the opportunity to read Rockefeller's biography, but I'm going to add it to my list of books to read. I just finished reading through Dane's summary of "Titan" and I have a few initial observations:

Dane's portrayal of Rockefeller sounded very similar to Marcus Aurelius (and other stoics) in some of his attitude and personality. I would guess that came from his strongly Christian beliefs.

Rockefeller's strict reliance on using numbers for his decision making sounds very useful but also challenging to adopt. In my own life I've been trying to change towards a more probabilistic approach to decision making. I haven't been able to overcome the innate fear with many actions, I find it really odd.

Without going into depth the other facets that really stood out: Delegation, Flexibility within strict structure, his humanity.

A question for you Sebastian: You've mentioned several times before about having a really pro-wealth stance, I just wondered if you derived any of that specifically from Rockefeller's biography, or if its something that arose independently from multiple sources?

Thanks, very interesting.

Hey Christopher, you've got to stay on topic when you comment here - linking to some activist video that's not even particularly well-done... well, that ain't how we do it here.

Very good comment.

First, yeah, Titan is great. Rockefeller does remind me of a Stoic as well, which might be one of the reasons I like him so much - I've gotten a lot of Stoicism from the West and Bushido from the East.

Numbers, decisionmaking, probability - yes to all of those.

On being pro-wealth: The biggest influence on me being pro-wealth is probably Judd Weiss, who I had a lot of very important conversations on the topic with. After that, Paul Graham's essays and the culture around Hacker News was a big one. But yes, Rockefeller too - it blows me that someone who did so much good is commonly villainized, while a lot of clearly very bad people are lionized... when I dug more into history, I started realizing that a lot of the people that history says are the "bad guys" are actually pretty good, and a lot of the "good guys" aren't very good...

I have to agree with you here, Sebastian. The production values for this video leave something to be desired.

I also appreciate your intentions with the posting of your friend's summary. An abundance mindset is important.

As for whether I was on topic vis a vis the video, I respectfully suggest that we let your readers decide this for themselves.

Even so, I realize that I was remiss in not providing a bit of preamble for my previous comment. Sorry about that.

Those of us who are anti-wealth, such as myself and Christopher here, can get a bit carried away with trying to spread the anti-wealth message.

So initially - Sorry.

It's just that when you view the operating system in this way, it becomes very difficult to remain quiet, and any message that is even remotely pro-wealth gets our hackles up.

Of course we understand why people are pro-wealth, and on an individual level it makes obvious sense to be this way. However we have become convinced that the negative effects that wealth has on the human psyche (and society in general) are so great that they outweigh the benefits. Funnily enough, this was not true in the past, yet the evidence suggests that it may be true today.

Of course we are more than willing to be proven wrong in regard to this hypothesis. I'd really like to be... it would take a lot off my mind!

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Anyway, I still have to agree with your response to Hurt Anderson, in that many of the perceived villains of history weren't so bad (and in this case good), while many perceived heroes were in fact pretty horrible. Che Guevara is a great example, and with so much information about him stating both sides of the argument, one often has to sit on the fence as to whether someone was "good" or not.

Although I'm of the opinion that you can't really place people into these categories anyway, and to do so is folly -

"I stand here for I stand on the shoulders of giants"

When you take this concept within the more general framework of "memes", the result is the evolution of ideas over time, with the great people throughout history being the ones who are able to evolve the idea (or at least understand the idea) better than anyone previously.

Not to take anything away from these great historical figures, many of them were indeed "great" people, however to determine "good" is only ever relative to ones society at the time, and is therefore not necessarily applicable...

Did any of my ramblings there make sense? Sorry, haven't had enough coffee yet today.

Wow, thanks for sharing Sebastian, this document was a gold mine to me. I've already started managing my expenses the way John did and I'm not gonna stop trying to replicate his skills and methods.

That's a bit stupid, but I feel really empowering to incantate "Let's do this Rockefeller-style" when dealing with a choice to make or an attitude to have :D

Yeah, I really enjoyed this - I was was really grateful that Matt pointed me to it and Dane let me share it with everyone. Some very good insights in there.