Third Teir Men of the 21st Century
So in Part II, I discussed what a 2nd teir man of the 21st century looked like. These are the guys who have gotten ahead of the game and have realized that chasing the old dreams are no longer applicable, and instead guys today absolutely have to pursue a degree of high value, if going to college is something they want to do. Many of the traditional male fields are becoming more and more obsolete, and the demand for highly specialized skills is rising by the day. However, there are still missing pieces to the puzzle which I believe keep some men from reaching their maximum potential in this new economy. As discussed, even amongst these so called "safe" fields, there are still unique problems in each which are all seemingly linked to this shrinking economy we live in today, which calls for higher levels of efficiency for a lower cost.
Now, where can one go from here? From here, I think the next step is grasping the important concepts of the 3rd teir man. What are the qualities that these high level, 21st century men possess? In my view, these men hold 4 important traits:
1. He has an investment mindset
2. He has a 21st century mindset
3. He is a Problem Solver
4. He is independent
The people who are truly doing well today are the people who have at least 3 of these above traits, specifically numbers 2, 3 and 4. If you are a man who has at least these three traits today, you are already winning. Would you believe me if I told you that there are people younger than I am (I’m 24 currently) who are not geniuses, but are schooling Surgeons and Lawyers in terms of salary/net worth, by doing less work? Let me give you some examples of what i’m talking about.
Case Study One
A 17 year old kid named Nick D’Aloisio, born and raised in London was using his smart phone one day and had a thought. He liked reading articles on his smartphone, but felt like he really only need to read a few lines to get the gist of what the article was talking about. So what did he do? He exercised his independence/self reliance and learned how to code for smartphones (which is something anyone can learn for free today with the amount of online resources available for coding on the android via the language Java, or iPhones via the language Objective C) and made an app called Summly which “sums up” what an article is saying in 400 characters. Mind you, the kid was in high school, and he sold his app to yahoo for $30 million dollars and was offered a job there to boot. So what did he do? He had enough independence to learn a new skill no one forced him to learn (btw, Summly was not his first app), and he saw a problem that is quite prevalent today, which is the fact that most people want things done quickly. We want our food in under 10 minutes. We want to get rich quick, we don’t want to read the whole book for an assignment, so we’ll read spark notes instead. He capitalized on this, and created a solution to this problem, at least in the world of smartphones…and he did it by embracing the digital age we live in, using 21st century tools. This is what the precursor of the 21st century man looks like in my opinion. You can watch the 2 minute CNN coverage of what this guy achieved here:
Case Study Two
This next individual is not a guy obviously, but she most certainly possesses some of the traits of what the 21st century man looks like in my opinion. This beautiful young lady by the name of Michelle Phan is currently 27 years old, but achieved her success story years ago. Like many young girls, Michelle was into makeup, but she noticed a problem early on in 2005 that there wasn’t a whole lot of content by people her age in terms of how to apply makeup correctly. She started a YouTube channel right around the time YouTube was just starting to pick up in popularity. She pushed herself on how to make quality videos from the comfort of her bedroom, and created her own buisness of sorts using 21st century tools of the digital age. Now she has one of the most popular channels on YouTube with over 7 million subscribers. How much money does she make? According to socialblade.com, which has been fairly accurate on the salary estimates of YouTube channels, Michelle is currently making over $500k per year in google ad revenue alone. This does not even include some of the deals she has recently made with makeup companies to promote some of their products. She even has her own makeup line and is now said to have a net worth of $3 million. So what’s the deal here? How is a girl who didn’t go through the rigourous years of medical school (btw, she wanted to be a doctor originally) or law school, destroying doctors and lawyers in terms of net worth from the comfort of her own home? It’s simple. She woke up years ago to the 21st century model. The days of your parents generation are over, where the ones who strictly followed the linear path of progression through schooling were the only ones who made it big. This century is the century where more kids are paying off the mortgages of their parents than ever seen before, and the only reason for this is due to how integrated millennials and generation Y are to the tools and knowledge of the information age. To read more on Michelle Phan, you can find a few more facts on her here
So now, just one thing remains. I’ve told you a little bit about what I think the 21st century man looks like, but there is one more step. There is something that I find very unique to men that women, although capable of having, seem to not use this part of their brain as much for whatever reason. What I’m talking about here is the male affinity for taking risks. It’s something that I feel is almost written within the DNA of most men. It’s partly why I believe we do a lot more approaching (when it comes to dating), why there are so few female hedge fund managers/stock traders, why more men flock to the most risky jobs on the planet than women do and so on. Taking the plunge, and rolling the dice is something that men just seem to be more hard wired to do. I mentioned earlier that the 21st century man must at least have a 21st century mindset, must be a problem solver, and must be independent. But one characteristic still remains, and its this layer below the layer, below the layer which differentiates the average guy, from innovative people (like the two i mentioned in the case studies), and the innovative people from the oligarchical kingpins who never have to worry about money again, and hence can pursue whatever it is that makes them happy in life. Think of it like an onion, where to get to the core, you must slice through multiple superficial layers. Third tier men are right in the center of that onion.
I would like to turn your attention to an article posted by the Washington post titled, “British Medical Journal: Why Men Can be Idiots”
Feel free to google this washington post article, and read it yourself, but their argument is that men are genetically more stupid than women, because we have a much higher affinity for risk, whereas women tend to play it safe. The study was posted in the British Medical Journal, where they go into what they call Male Idiot Theory (or MIT for short), which basically states that men engage in far more foolish risk taking behaviour because of our greater fitness and less important investment into the creation of offspring, and women do so less, as it is more important for them to survive and nurture offspring.
To be honest, I found the study, and the premise it used to base some of its arguments as moronic, but I’m actually glad the washington post reported on this, as it shows a couple things:
Firstly, it serves as a good wake up call to people who do not believe men when they say today’s society has a growing bias to view us as inherently dumber than women, and now they’re even trying to make it into a scientific theory. It can be debated how dominant this view really is, but I certainly believe it is more of an issue today than it was 20 or 30 years ago
Secondly, I think the article unintentionally shows how smart men actually can be. The fact that men are seen as bigger risk takers is the exact reason why I feel comfortable in writing this take addressing men, and that I’m not wasting my time. Why is it that there are so few women in the investing and banking world? I know very very few women who are heads of banks, investment firms, hedge funds or even brokers. And amongst those few women, i know even fewer that are actually good at it. I’ve always believed that the reason why men dominate in investing as a whole is because of our very nature to risk take, the same nature that this article derides. All of this, no matter who is reading, is nothing to be angry or bitter about, and I need to stress this. Just try to hear where I'm coming from, and jettison your emotional reactions to this article.
To move up the socioeconomic ladder, to inhabit new frontiers, to run a successful business which multiplies the family net worth all involves a threshold of risk that is sometimes too high for a lot of women to consider worthwhile. I’m not necessarily knocking them for it, but i think both men and women alike could agree that you can’t make it to the top of your field or whatever it is that you do without taking risk. I encourage you guys reading articles like this to not be mad, but rejoice. I think you were born with the genetic blueprints necessary for social mobility. If anything you are born with an advantage, and I say its high time that more men started using it, instead of drowning themselves in sorrow over ideas like "girls don’t like nice guys", or that we live in a hypergamous society where men can't achieve success. These are excuses in my view, which holds people back. There is so much potential within you, and you live in one of the best centuries of all time.
So what is so special about the investment world today in the 21st century? Well, we live in a time where the old financial order is being replaced by a new one, due to the decline of the USA as being the sole world superpower after the fall of the soviet union. There is a lot of talk today about the “New World Order” but my view on this has nothing to do with the illuminati or a group of men sitting in smoke filled rooms worshipping satan.
I define the New World Order as the shift of power away from the U.S. and its dominance through the International Monetary System (IMS) to Asia and other countries that are not aligned with the U.S. and its allies. There is a notable shift away from from the dollar-based IMS ever since the financial crisis of 2008. After that crisis, many countries began having doubts on the validity of the U.S. being the single world reserve currency, since they clearly don't have their act together financially. Countries like China and Russia picked up on this fact ever since the dotcom crash in 2000 - 2001. The new system (or, new world order) will likely be one where the emerging world (mainly the BRICS and its allies...BRICS = Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) take a bigger piece of the pie, which they do not get now. This order will likely bring about a change within the western dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) where the emerging world gets next to no voting power. Most importantly though, it will be an end to the U.S. exorbitant privilege to create dollars and issue debt with little cost. The system to replace it seems to be one of multiple reserve currencies, the most important one being gold. In 2011, a wikileaks cable reported that China was buying gold in order to weaken the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
Russia has moved to the number one spot as the worlds largest gold buyer, purchasing 570 tons over the last decade. Vladimir Putin stated that the U.S. was “endangering the global economy by abusing its dollar monopoly.”
In January of this year, Germany, a firm U.S. ally, called for the repatriation of 700 tons in gold bars from France and the United States. When asked about this move, a senior member of the German central bank named Carl-Ludwig Thiele told reporters that gold was an important resource to “to create confidence in the currency and in the economic power of our country."
It's simple really. Countries are loosing faith in the U.S. to maintain this dollar-based monetary system, so they are turning to their insurance measure, which has always been gold. Even though gold was demonetized in 1971, central banks/governments (including the USA) in the 21st century collectively still own over 30 000 tonnes of gold (which is 25% of all gold on the planet), a metal used as money during the time of the pharaohs. Why? They hold it as insurance for the house burning down. A hedge against a likely paradigm shift away from the U.S. dollar centric system and a more multi-polar one. And if you think that only competitors of the USA, like China and Russia are the only ones buying gold, think again. Globally, central banks (including the European ones) have become net buyers of gold for the first time in 20 years
That is the new world order the way as I understand it. Nothing to do with the illuminati. More to do with real time geopolitical shifts that you as risk taking, creative, intelligent men (and frankly women as well if they put their mind to it) can take full advantage of. Now there is one more concept about investing in today's world that I absolutely must share. What if I told you that you could have turned $35 dollars into over $220 000k simply by making 4 decisions over a forty year period?
Here was a presentation done at the Cambridge House California Investment Conference in February of 2012. Basically, it explains a concept known as wealth cycles. It’s the way the best investors have made money over the decades, simply by buying a good investment at a low price, selling it at a high price, then taking that money and reinvesting it into a new investment at a low price, and repeating that cycle several times throughout their lifetimes. It also talks about the war for gold which is occuring as we speak between the East and the West
This is the knowledge that I feel a lot of the big players in the world today (who are largely men to my knowledge) not only posses, but put to good use. Imagine getting to that same place of success that those individuals in the previous case studies got to, but having one extra bit of insight they do not have, which is an awareness of the geopolitical/global shifts taking place which have offered up one of the greatest investment opportunities you will see for generations. Instead of simply investing $35 dollars however, you invested something more meaningful, like $10 000 at the beginning of the 1970’s. If you had done so, you would have $62 million dollars today.
Better yet, imagine if you were Nick D’Aloisio, the 17 year old kid i talked about earlier who got $30 million dollars for his app from yahoo. As I said before, making apps today is not nearly as hard as people think, and any coder online can tell you that you don’t need to be anything close to a genius to do what he did. I only say this so you can better picture yourself actually being in this kids shoes some day. Anyways, say you took that $30 million today and with your added awareness of the investment world, geopolitical trends, current events, and wealth cycles, you made a similar 4 or 5 decisions over the next 40 years with that money, buying the undervalued asset, selling it at a peak, then reinvesting the profit into another undervalued asset class. I know we’re making a few assumptions here, but say you were able to get close to the same kind of %gains from 2015 until 2055. Under that same scenario described within the presentation, you would have over $5 billion dollars by your 60’s (for the 20-somethings reading this take). Obviously, besides the assumptions I already made, you also have to take into account taxes you must pay every time you sell an asset.
But don’t let the overarching point of all this escape you. The point is that opportunity exists to find maximum satisfaction in life. If you are living in this century, you have one of the greatest opportunities to reach your full potential like in no other time in history, and all you really need are the four traits I described earlier. Money isn’t everything, but it sure makes life easier, and allows you to pursue whatever it is you want to do. Even if you never use a penny of it yourself, imagine how much positive change you can make in the world by donating it to different causes that interest you. Or perhaps you want to finally have the money to ditch everything and travel the world, and gain impressive life experiences. The sky is really the limit here. One thing is for certain though. You can't achieve any of it if you are distracted by today's most popular irrelevancies amongst men
Today, I believe the most undervalued asset is not stocks, not bonds and not real estate. It’s commodities/agriculture (hard assets that come straight from mother earth), with the most important of those commodities being gold, due to the geopolitical shifts I outlined earlier. Consider this take as a primer to the research I hope you are inspired to start doing on your own.
Ultimately, I made this take, not to necessarily convince minds of what I’m saying, but to grow alongside the already convinced. The guys out there who see the male potential within themselves already, and are ready to take that next step into the 21st century lifestyle are the men that will inherit the 2020’s and beyond. Women, stay tuned, as I will be writing a similar take like this specifically geared towards you as well. The 21st century man is a man who is completely financially free and independent in my view, who uses the assets of the 21st century to his advantage, and employs a portion of what he earns into sound investments for the future. The 21st century man is one who is not mentally bogged down by the irrelevancies of new age social dynamics between the genders, using them as a crutch or an excuse. As I’ve shown in this three part take, women are actually doing a lot of things right for themselves, now that they have given more opportunity to prove themselves. Now I believe its time for men to not only catch up, but potentially surpass them using our God-given characteristics. As always, remember that the cost of freedom is steep. So lets afford it together.
- Watermelonoma
Addendum
Interview with billionaire investor, Frank Guistra on the state of the U.S. and global economy
https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=9o30gNfPq_k
The best Interview Ron Paul has ever done
https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=q3SOlXxUBLk
Interview with legendary investor, Jim Rogers on where he sees the world today, the USA, China and commodities
https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=4_0dWf9WkWU&list=FL2g0wgfMxviUmhHn4pYPk3A&index=61
How to invest like Sir John Templeton (one of the most successful investors of the 20th century)
https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=frHNvoKgx78&index=9&list=FL2g0wgfMxviUmhHn4pYPk3A
https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=1r9kXM5-qUY&list=FL2g0wgfMxviUmhHn4pYPk3A&index=125
Interview with Hedge Fund Manager Jim Rickards on the U.S. dollar and currency wars
https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=wa2xM9eJY4M&list=FL2g0wgfMxviUmhHn4pYPk3A&index=96
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