USA - The Land of Opportunity and The Digital Countries of the Future
Level 2 - Value Investor
Welcome Avatar! Fun topic today. We’re going to write a bit about how US culture has changed over the decades. This is important because it’ll help explain why the Epstein debacle will be swept under the rug (easily). While everything is fresh right now, outside some absurd circumstances, we’d wager that people forget about it entirely within 1-2 months.
That’s right. No one will care about the government covering for child predators.
Why? People are too self absorbed and worried about getting theirs/getting ahead. This is reality.
The USA is a Marketing Machine
Epstein got rich by doing a bunch of illegal stuff. And. He didn’t do anything that really impacted Americans directly.
Meaning, if you were not one of the victims of his absurd endeavors, it was a rounding error compared to all the crimes committed on an annual basis. Sound transactional and heartless? Welcome to capitalist intensity and how ruthless the world truly is! Since it doesn’t impact the biggest selling point of the USA, no one will care. The main draw of the USA is unchanged by his cronies being off the hook.
Hint: Bill Clinton had similar long standing issues and nothing happened. We’re sure Epstein cronies won’t be the last either.
The Land of Opportunity
This is the main reason why the USA is winning and will continue to win. As long as the USA is the best place in the world to move up the socioeconomic ladder, the best and the brightest will continue to show up.
This was a humorous quote back when Marco was in style for a while. It hits on two points: 1) the USA still has the most opportunity and 2) suggesting that “there is an opportunity gap to close”. That last part is key. A lot of low talent, low performing people think they deserve more out of life (they don’t and would fail even harder outside the USA). Therefore the quote was quite popular.
This All Relates to Epstein Being Swept Under the Rug
Simple. The USA has been marketed as a land of opportunity for so long that no one cares about anything else. They just want to personally get ahead and improve their own lives. Extreme individualism. Anyone claiming otherwise is typically full of it. Year after year some political person sells out for money and would happily take a few million bucks to change their talking points. No questions asked.
Also. If your life is getting better you don’t really care about weird billionaire parties and other depraved stuff happening well out of your social bubble.
You see this happen over time as people age. In high school people will have a large number of friends due to high presence of similar aged people. This splits dramatically in college when people steer in varying paths. Then another major split based on career/business success. Then finally the largest break in the dam: Middle age. People are split between: 1) made it/didn’t make it with no interest in catching up and 2) family/no family. Those are the major splits at around late 30s early 40s.
This means your social circle looks like an extreme sales funnel and by the end of it you just don’t care at all about anyone else. This has consequences since the relationships in this band are all transactional. Unless someone is bringing something of use, they just fade off into irrelevancy in your phone book. No need to lie about it. Everyone is guilty of the same. Slow bleed with a couple of people that did stick around from child hood (hint, usually the only ones you remember who also made it).
Put It Together: Since Epstein did not impact anyone individually no one actually cares. Think about how brutal and true it is. Does the typical American really care if a bunch of celebrities pay for escorts every weekend for years and years? Nope. You know this is true. We know this is true. Everyone kind of knows it is true.
The only real losers here are the victims and anyone associated with Epstein clients since their families might not know the truth.
Land of Opportunity Not the Land of Morality
While the USA meddles in tons of world affairs, don’t think anyone believes we’re the most moral country in the world. Like every other country in the world, have made some ruthless decisions. You have to be ruthless and ultra competitive to be #1 in the first place.
Now you know the real value proposition of the USA. It was never really a homogenous culture. While you can argue that it was more homogenous 60 years ago (true) those days are long gone and betting on turning back the clock never works (and has never worked in the past).
The USA’s culture is find winners, recruit winners, bring in winners. Tribalism isn’t going to work. If Nikola Jokic shows up to the Washington Wizards they’ll keep him. Even if he rides in on a horse and doesn’t look like a basketball player to the untrained eye.
Been a Slow Grind of Bringing in Other Groups. As usual this is not a comment on if it is good or bad. Just how the USA works - try to bring in talent from abroad and on top of that incentivize rich people to come here.
Summary
Since the USA is the land of opportunity and the competitive edge is to recruit/steal the best and brightest from every other country (sorry homegrown talent isn’t enough this is basic statistics) we know that this is what people really care about. Getting theirs and getting their standard of living up.
Unless someone does something big enough to impact the typical person directly, no one truly cares. There were protests on Wall St related to bank bailouts because the downturn caused people to lose their homes. This is a direct hit and impact they can see. If a sitting president or bank CEO has some weird fetish and is friends with some disturbing weirdo like Epstein? Guess what. They don’t care.
Welcome to American culture in 2025!
There is a Catch Though
By the time we’re 6 feet under, won’t be surprised to see the USA still dominating. The difference is that the growth is no longer actually coming from the USA anymore. You don’t see a lot of people improving their lives (socioeconomically) through hard work and corporate grind in the USA.
Think that you landed a gig on Wall Street and will make it? We’ll actually bet *against* you. Unless you’re born to be a banker, we’ve seen a huge number of people fail to even improve their standard of living vs. their childhood upbringing.
Many only retain their quality of life due to family support! It’s that rough out there.
Where is the Money Going?
Yep you guessed it. Digital.
If you talk to anyone who actually made it by middle age you’ll find the vast majority did the same thing: 1) e-commerce, 2) tech, 3) crypto related stuff - which is just tech, 4) tech investing - which again is just tech and 5) various affiliate marketers and influencers.
Notice that basically everything is deriving value from the internet and from a computer screen. We’re sure someone reading this knows of a successful home flipper. That’s great. We’re talking about the majority not the exceptions to the rule or your cousin who played 8 years for the New York Knicks.
The Problem? Digital is Global
Now you see the real battle that the USA is facing. More and more people are making their money digitally. This means they are no longer tied to a specific geography. This is probably part of the reason for Trump’s obsession with Tariffs. Have to find a way to make sure everyone is reliant on the USA. Don’t want a million companies founded in tax havens constantly selling to the US consumer without paying a dime to the growing $37 trillion debt.
Is there anything they can really do about it long-term? In our opinion no. You’re going to be forced to earn your living digitally via e-commerce, SaaS, online ads, copy writing, crypto currencies, etc. (The most viable continues to be E-commerce assuming no high-tech expertise - if you’re high-tech you already know and don’t need to ask if a SaaS is a good idea or not).
Cream Rises to the Top: This is the major reason for our belief. When you see an ad on Instagram, Yahoo, Google etc. You have no idea who made it. Who designed the landing page, who made the copy, who did everything behind the scenes (IE. the person making the real money).
This makes it difficult/nearly impossible to create any sort of tribalism to fend off the digital future. Sure. You can support locally/regionally but when it comes to actual private commerce and digital competition… good luck.
You Should be Thrilled: The days of “who you know, not what you know” is coming to an end. It is turning into “what you know, what you can do”.
Before it was possible to just know the right people and that was it. Locked into forever job placements. Dying quickly. Now it’s just performance based
Are you able to create nice ads? You will be rich
Not able to make ads but can create incredible copy? You will be rich
Not able to do either but can make addictive videos? You will be rich
Can’t do any of those but can predict what people will spend on? You will be rich
Have no connections? Congrats, doesn’t matter anymore. Facebook/Meta/Google will do all the targeting for you anyway. Don’t even need built in traffic since they can show it to the ideal buyer for you
The only downside here is that the non-performers will be left behind. Something akin to New-Age-Feudalism.
Not Quite this Bad But You Get The Idea
Within this humorous image, someone with e-com, tech/crypto heavy would land somewhere around Royal Ministers. Good enough.
Digital Countries / Ecosystems
You already see a seed of this with the Jungle. People who don’t know each other beyond their internet interactions have started companies together. Sometimes in a venture together, other times by swapping information to fix pain points.
This is basically why you’re seeing a bifurcation on the internet. It’s no different than cliques/groups in your own city/school. The only difference is that you can find people just like you who live 4,000 miles away! It also doesn’t matter that they live there because you can communicate freely with the click of a button.
Digital Land Grab: This means you’re watching as people create new digital economies/communities and for all practical purposes cities/towns. While there are currently no laws/regulations, that’ll likely happen as groups become more intertwined 50+ years from now. Each country will offer different rules for digital commerce/digital entrepreneurs and that’ll determine which country is getting all of the talent. 2021 taught us how quickly people will leave to tax havens if it benefits them enough. Just imagine how bad it’ll be if everyone is earning all their money online? Floods of people going to the most optimized spots
Summary
Since we know the money being earned is slowly turning digital/internet/computer based and we know that your face/name/location doesn’t matter anymore… It leads you to pretty clear conclusions: 1) you have to create skills and talent related to a digital economy, 2) you can’t rely on tribes/groups simply handing you opportunity anymore and 3) you’re going to hear the phrase “I don’t care where you grew up or where you went, just show me the results” a lot more. Everything is going to be tracked, no one will be able to hide behind the veil of “being a nice guy”. While it’ll work in the corporate setting while you’re collecting those paychecks. It isn’t going to last forever.
If You Have Kids…
We get this a lot what we’re doing to help the youngest people prepare. Well you have your answer now. There is no chance that your kid/kids should have zero online income by the time they are 14-16 or so. Yes. Seriously.
If someone had a teenage kid right now, would purchase a basic and cheap website that makes a few hundreds to a few thousand a month. Make them learn how to run it and grow it. If they fail, they don’t get any spending money. If they succeed they can spend part of the money generated from it.
Just gave out the easiest way to give your kid a real education.
As usual. Stay Toon’d and don’t bet against the digital future. It won’t work.
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.
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Banger
Love it. Good stuff. Especially the last paragraph about getting a true education.