So many kids wanna be just like you
— Nyashinski
Paul Graham once wrote, “If you’re in a job that feels safe, you are not going to get rich, because if there is no danger there is almost certainly no leverage.”
Leverage is what Archimedes meant when he asked for a lever long enough in the powerful belief that he could move the world. With little input, so goes the mechanism, one can move planets.
In business, different forms of leverage exist. Naval Ravikant succinctly divided them into four:
Capital, where one uses money to make more money.
Labour, where one uses skilled personnel to make more money.
Writing or media, where your word brings you money.
Coding, where your software makes you money.
The first two have existed ever since we can remember. Before the upscaling of capitalism, feudalists used squatters to reap from their plantations. Coal and diamond miners required human labour, some even using underage kids. Human labour will always be there, even after AI agents flood our virtual space.
Capital too will continue to exist as leverage. For leading LLMs to make progress, they have used capital as leverage, raised by big companies. Presently, 25% of the GDP of the USA rests on AI. Not a good basket, but that’s the kind of risk Graham was referring to.
To be ultra successful or filthy rich, one has to develop an idea that is completely novel but make sure that it’s right. For now, LLMs are somehow novel, although their mechanism, of statistical probability, doesn’t quite shower it with much praise. The more pressing question is: Is it right?
Studies point in divergent directions. Its biggest pushers have promised heaven on Earth, but for the largest funded project in human history, we have seen little from it. In essence, a few companies have borrowed from many people, and the result is tepid.
Borrowing, as I will argue, is a means of getting leverage. Leverage is a tool to enhance status. Thus, all four examples Naval had shared can be collapsed into one.
Borrowing
Borrowing is different from theft. A borrower intends to give back. A thief doesn’t. And yet, both individuals utilize the concept of leverage.
For the honest borrower, returning it is a show of trust. A reputation is one of the best means to show reliability. The thief doesn’t want to get known for what they have stolen, but they will use their rewards to improve their status. Both the borrower and the thief aim to improve their status.
Status is largely acquired through ownership or affiliation. Parents own a child, although not in the sense of property as was the case in the past. Wives, too, used to fit in the same category. The man with the most children or wives had a higher status in society. One could build this status by getting more property and respect in various ways.
The man could offer one of his daughters for marriage, in exchange for several herds of cattle. It wasn’t an exchange as many tend to think, but a debt. Exchanges imply equality on both sides. A dowry is an admission of inequality: the father has raised a precious wife (daughter), and no matter any amount you bring, it will not equal the daughter. The husband-to-be will always be indebted to the father. That is how one flexes leverage. Now the father has a share in the future son-in-law.
The son-in-law has borrowed a piece of the man’s wealth — again, not to disparage women — so that they can also increase their status wherever they are. They too will now have ownership. More children means more wealth to the man. His status further improves. Even more, if the man sires a son, in different parts of the world, this could be more valued than a daughter. It means with every marriage, there was a risk associated with getting a wife.
Queen Catherine of Aragon didn’t get a son despite multiple trials. King Henry VIII saw shame in that. A risk that came with the queen, a risk he couldn’t tolerate. He sought a second partner, split from the Catholic faith, and the Church of England was born. King Henry VIII utilized leverage differently to establish his status in England and the world.
When a startup seeks funding, the money lent is leverage. Risk is associated. Venture capitalists know most start-ups wouldn’t get to unicorn status. Those that do more than cover up for the losses. The status that comes with the high-risk leverage exchange creates different degrees of status. Can you stomach the losses? How many unicorns do you have under your belt? Is your company a unicorn?
The example from VC funds is largely about capital as leverage. It builds a reputation people can stand by. In Barbarians at the Gate, several firms had participated in leveraged buyouts (LBOs). Others hadn’t. Those who wished to test the waters didn’t have the reputation that comes with the LBO-associated risks. The veterans in the field, such as Henry Kravis, had a track record of successful LBOs. This is the result of borrowing.
An entity borrows your trust, and you deliver. That’s leverage. It applies to human labour. You find a gifted specialist. Sign a contract. Their skill cannot be quantified, usually, but the agreed terms are outlined in the contract. At the end of the month, they get a salary. The company has borrowed from the specialist to make money, in exchange for an agreed regular payment. The company then gains status. A hospital, for instance, will boast of the achievements in surgery or the revamping of a new department. From borrowing, one seeks to improve status.
Naval sites writing and coding as the more powerful examples of leverage because of their reach. I write daily. I don’t know who will read my work. But every article is essentially an employee who works for me when I sleep. Coding has similar properties. In the internet and AI era, these are the limitless and permissionless opportunities.
While human coding may have been slashed with vibe coding and the powerful outputs of Claude Code, writing remains king. With it comes risk.
The most viral messages create a visible target. For Ruth Belville, the Greenwich lady who sold time, articles mentioning her work brought her more fame. For a writer, it could swing the other way. In essence, a writer or coder samples (borrows) a parcel of their ideas, actualizes it in writing (coding is still writing), and releases it, hoping it gets returns. It carries risk. It also has the potential to gain one status.
Since writing and coding are practically free with limitless returns, Naval advocates for them. I argue that they are status-acquiring tools.
FAAS
Shin, we si binadamu anymore
We ni brand sasa, maisha yako ni show
Media ina-scrutinise moves una-make
Hakuna days off, ata kaa inaku-break
We baki kwa box tumekuweka, usitoke
Hivo ndio tunapenda, usichoke
Either you love me like you say you do
Or just love what I do for you
Either way, lucky you— Nyashinski
Leverage gains one status. Status gets used to gain more of it through borrowing. An angel investor will borrow the labour of a small team in Silicon Valley to reap returns, and gain more status. From borrowing, we begin to own.
Ownership was easy in the past. A young man could buy a parcel of land from their salary, get a car, start a family, and live a life of one’s choosing. That’s not the case today. The cost of living has shot to intolerable levels. Young adults finish campus to plunge neck-deep in tuition debt, with unemployment rates getting higher by the year. Fertility rates have taken a nose-dive, as no one wants to start a family when their lives are not stable at all.
Few, if any, are taking a risk on the young. Music production companies are not betting on young talent. They are busy getting the copyrights of the long-gone legends, so that they can make money from any production that samples these songs. They then plan to film biopics and create sequels, creating a money-minting industry that doesn’t borrow from the present cohort, but from the dead ones. Michael is the sad but notable example.
In the past, adults could own a car, a job, and a couple of projects to their name. From the economies of leverage, they built a status among their peers.
Today, young adults have no such luxury. And yet, they need to create their own form of leverage. It exists online. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that many wish to become influencers or make money from OnlyFans.
OnlyFans is an interesting example, because it has the distributive power of writing and coding. With it comes money, and the purchasing power to improve one’s status.
Influencers try to build traction and showcase their proof of work. Numbers in their posts, engagement guaranteed, and a budding audience. Thus, companies usually reach out to them. They borrow a piece of their influence to market their product. Leverage. As a result, the influencer will do something parents used to do. In the past, one could parade their children, cars, and property for the world to see. Online, they do that through highlights.
On Instagram, highlights are the achievements the influencer has made. The Coca-Cola deal. The Monster drink endorsement. The Nike promo. These were the result of borrowing. The offshoot is influencers gain status. They also signal to those who are not jumping on the train that they are missing out. Influencers offer what I have called FOMO as a service (FAAS).
It has leverage properties. An influencer does what they do. It reaches an audience. They get paid. It’s no different from the specialist, who has a market, that a company will borrow for an agreed time. They will get paid.
Attacking young adults for always being online, thus, is, in a sense, unwarranted. These people (myself included) don’t have the advantages our parents and grandparents did. I finished my campus years debt-in-waiting. Although I was lucky to get straight into a paid internship, it took over four months for the money to come. I had to dirk the agents and rely on my brother to account for my expenses. Many people like me are not this lucky.
Social media, with all its ills, is the modern-day concrete jungle, where dreams can be made. The competition is stiff. Unlike college degrees, where proof of work and competence can be established through a well-defined curriculum, the online world is a school of hard knocks. You can spend hours making a reel and only get three likes — one by you and two from your parents.
The situation is so tough that today, people don’t get online to interact with friends. It’s more of passing time, catching up on the latest celebrity trends or gossip and memes. The creators who wish to create a following have to appeal to this group. This is how the young adults are creating their status.
As AI floods our online experience, it creeps onto the very remaining vestige. Slop destroys the efforts of the influencers who have struggled to make a living from their online audiences. Scattering attention and lowering the bar for proof of work destroys the hopes of anyone hoping to make it online. As I have argued before, even those thinking AI will change the game are wrong.
When you hang out with influencers, you can see the passion they have in developing a business or that other word I detest — brand. They don’t want to feel used, like a tampon then thrown into the bin. They seek long-term partnerships. Despite their mechanism being FAAS, they seek the stability that comes with the previous forms of leverage, before the internet. To borrow their ability, they ask that one be willing to put a bet on them. To take the risk, because every time we borrow, that is what we do.
Most outside observers are naïve to the Red Queen life influencers lead. They have to observe a certain form of consistency in an ever-shifting landscape. The ones who have been trying to get some form of status feel the influencers are lucky. Some are envious, because social media was the only fertile ground where they could have built their status. Small wonder the mental health cases are numerous. There are few remaining spaces where they can borrow your time in return for your likes and loyal following.
As Nyashinski raps:
Na-try kuishi vi-righteous, ku-turn pages
Ku-make changes, life changes
Najua fame kutoka far inakaa painless
Outsider ako naive to the dangers
Hakuna sympathy kaa una-succeed
Hao husema, “Una-make doh, so don’t complain please”
Sahau story ya privacy
We ni public property, no matter how your day is
Ata kama deep down you don’t love me
Picha na mimi itakuongezea likes IG
Unakaa unaishi life wana-wish
Hakuna mtu atakusikia hapa ukilia lia, “Why me?”
This can all be collapsed into a single idea — borrowing.
What I’m trying to say is…
Borrowing is a means to build status. It was easy in the past. It’s not presently.
Creating environments for borrowing and putting a bet on yourself rather than waiting to get chosen is presently the best way to go in the age where writing, coding, and FAAS offer unparalleled leverage.
Plus, this could partly explain the degree of depression, anxiety, and lack of enthusiasm among the young generation about their future. We need to create spaces where they can borrow and believe they will not be poorly positioned if it doesn’t work out.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube