Empires Fall
On being a rich kid, America’s looming challenges, and taking control of your own destiny:

I’m a rich kid, OK?
Believe it or not, it’s one of the things about myself that I hate the most. Weird right?
How arrogant am I to be born on 3rd base, have all of the opportunity in the world right in front of me, have parents who are willing to do anything to support me… and I’m complaining about it?
It’s not that I hold resentment toward’s my parents or anything like that. I love my parents to death. And I have unlimited respect for what they did to put me in a position where I can write my own ticket in life.
And that’s what I hate.
Because I never had to split toilet paper with my 9 siblings, work 19 hours a day in 4 different jobs while going to school, or hear that my mom died in a plane crash and watch my dad abandon the family & then have to raise my siblings as if they were my own, I will never appreciate it as much.
That’s just the truth.
By the way, that was my mom & dad’s story if you couldn’t tell.
“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean.” — Will Durant
It’s just the way my brain works, that I like to view things in metaphors, cycles, & 3-dimensional tapestries. And one of the ideas that I see very clearly for myself is this idea of the rise and the fall.
Take America. We’ve already lost. It’s over. We got soft. A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean.
Can you imagine what it would have been like to fight the Bittish in the Revolutionary War? Or to watch Pearl Harbor get bombed?
Back then we were on fire! We were crushing it in business. We were a proud nation. We were working together & conquering our goals. And if anyone got in the way of that goal, we were ready to band together as one and stand for what we believe in.
What do we believe in now?
We just bicker back and forth that Trump did this, Trump did that. We let the media push our buttons & get us all fired up and angry at one another. We look for the next indulgance. Where can I get a heated toilet seat? Or a pizza?
You’re probably like, “What is this kid talking about? I clicked so I could learn about a fallen empire… and fuck off with this pizza.”
I get it, but I’m trying to paint a picture of the mentality of someone who made it. You worked your ass off, you made a lot of money, you got a hot wife, bought a house, had some kids, and now you’re complete, right?
Wrong.
This is the mentality that scares me right now. We think we made it. That we’re the best, richest, and greatest country in the history of the world so now everyone can just come suck our dicks.
It’s the beginning of the end if we don’t get fix the root cause.
The root cause? Laziness & arrogance.
The solution? Carnage.
And I believe we’re about to go through a lot of that.
As a nation, it took us multiple decades to lever ourselves to the point that we have. And I believe it’s going to take us a couple decades to de-lever ourselves as well. There’s going to be a lot of pain & carnage in the aftermath.
But here’s the thing, as a nation, it’s probably the best thing that ever could happen to us.
Society spins in a funny cycle.
It just seems to happen this way that relationships can be amazing and then end. Societies thrive and implode. Business rise to the top and come crashing down. Out of disorder comes order. Out of order comes disorder. And there just always seems to be an expansion and contraction of our universe.
We’ve had our rise to the top here in America. This is the best it’s ever been. And what we’re about to go through as a nation will test our limits. With the amount of credit card debt, student loan debt, and housing and car debt getting worse by the day, we are about to see how we handle another crisis whenever it happens.
But here’s the punchline. We’re either going to suffer through it & come out stronger, or we’re not.
I don’t know the answer to that, but I can tell you one thing. Being born on 3rd base gives you a sense of entitlement and security that everything is going to be alright forever and always. And that’s us right now.
What I can tell you is the solution I’m getting ready to apply to being a rich kid. I’m leaving. I’m finishing up my work here at home, enjoying the relaxing lifestyle that my parents set me up with, and planning my move to New York City.
My parents saved up a bunch of money for my college, for a trust fund, and a couple other accounts that were gifted to me when I turned 21. I’m liquidating it and giving them a vacation together.
I don’t want it. I didn’t earn any of that money and it would just futher me down the path of comfort and luxury.
I need to toughen up. I need to know the true value of a dollar. I need to live with 10 room mates and struggle a little bit. I need to make a budget and stick to it.
Why, you might ask, and I throwing myself in the fire and doing all of this? Because it’s going to actually make me appreciate all of that luxury and comfort when I had to bleed to get it.
Carnage, my friends. Empires make a rise to the top, but when they forget how hard it was to get there, they crumble to the ground.
It’s time we take back control of our own destiny.