The New York Value of Making Money is Justice

• https://paulgraham.com/cities.html

• Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.

• The surprising thing is how different these messages can be. New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer.

  • It’s unclear if this is specific to NYC, but I truly feel this way (blu3mo). Even if you don’t want to be influenced, you are.
    • When surrounded by friends or acquaintances who seem to have similar abilities aiming for jobs like SWE or Quant, making millions in summer internships or planning to earn tens of millions annually after graduation,
      • Observing this makes you aware of the opportunity cost of not choosing those paths.
      • You start questioning, “Is it worth not pursuing these opportunities?”
        • I believe that “doubling your income doesn’t necessarily double your enjoyment of life,” but it’s easy to forget that (blu3mo).
          • Conversely, if there are solid things other than money that make life enjoyable, one is less likely to hesitate (in my case, community or way of living) (makoton).
            • However, I find myself admiring Bunji Dormitory while also longing for Shimokitazawa College, so I can’t judge others.
      • It seems less likely to have such feelings at places like Caltech or Princeton (blu3mo).
    • In the first place, living in NYC costs too much.
      • When you think, “If my income were doubled, I wouldn’t worry about these things,” you feel the message from the city that you should be richer.
      • It’s obvious, but when money changes from a means to an end, it seems tough (makoton).
  • I strongly do not want to internalize this (blu3mo)(blu3mo)(blu3mo).

• What I like about Boston (or rather Cambridge) is that the message there is: you should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you’ve been meaning to.

• When you ask what message a city sends, you sometimes get surprising answers. As much as they respect brains in Silicon Valley, the message the Valley sends is: you should be more powerful.

• That’s not quite the same message New York sends. Power matters in New York too, of course, but New York is pretty impressed by a billion dollars even if you merely inherited it. In Silicon Valley, no one would care except a few real estate agents. What matters in Silicon Valley is how much effect you have on the world. The reason people there care about Larry and Sergey is not their wealth but the fact that they control Google, which affects practically everyone.