Don't deal with "people"#GatePreIPOs首发SpaceX

I heard that there are still people in rural areas asking relatives for loans, which is clearly a situation that clashes with modern society. So I asked, why not borrow from the bank? The other person said because banks charge interest. That made me even more puzzled—doesn't the lender also earn interest on their money? If you lend to relatives for free, isn't that equivalent to constantly losing your own money? The other person said yes, but sometimes there’s nothing in the family to collateralize, and no stable income, so they can't borrow from the bank. I still find it strange—since the bank has already judged that this person might not be able to repay, how can the lender be sure that the other party will definitely pay back on time?

This is clearly an even less reliable system, and countless conflicts stem from it. What is the fundamental reason behind it? It’s dealing with people. Human uncertainty is the greatest—people can pretend, break contracts, go back on their word, have emotions, and their future actions are unpredictable.

During the American Civil War, a few large plantation owners in the South controlled a large number of slaves. At that time, black slaves were extremely expensive because buying a slave meant purchasing that person’s expected lifetime labor value, and as long as the mother was a slave, her children would also be slaves—this is compounded “interest,” so buying a slave could exchange for dozens of acres of cultivated cotton land.

Back then, the South regarded slaves as the most important means of production and fixed assets. But after the Civil War broke out, the North saw that the South relied on slaves for logistics and production. Lincoln, who initially had no plans to abolish slavery because he wanted to deprive the South of economic support, shifted his focus to “abolishing slavery,” began spreading the evil of the slave system, and incited slaves to escape, telling them that coming to the North would give them a better life and they wouldn’t have to be slaves.

Then, slaves in the South started fleeing en masse. After losing economic support, the South’s resistance turned into rapid defeat.

Of course, slavery was evil, but have you noticed that if you tie the success of something to “people,” that’s the biggest risk? Because people can change their minds at any time—unexpected situations are far more likely with humans than with machines or systems. Landowners spent huge sums on slaves, thinking that was the greatest compound asset protected by law at the time. But in reality, people are just people—assets or not can be decided by a single thought. Today, it can be your asset; tomorrow, it could wipe you out.

I often hear people say, “When starting a business, what kind of partners should I look for?” Let me put it this way: unless you’re doing a mind-blowing business worth tens or hundreds of billions, no matter what kind of partner you find, it’s better not to have a partner at all. Find your close friends, your best friends, your classmates, relatives—even your parents—it's better to do it yourself. You can hire people, give project dividends, but don’t take on partners or seek others’ investments. Do as much as you can with your own ability.

This might sound too absolute, even a kind of extreme statement, but it applies to most people because humans are inherently the biggest unstable factor. Machines serve you—they are stable because they have no goals or emotions of their own. Humans, on the other hand—seeing you make money—may feel jealous; they can be greedy, think distribution is unfair; they form cliques with hidden agendas; today they share your values, tomorrow they suddenly don’t; they can have sudden emotional lows, or unexpected situations that prevent efficient work—an endless list of uncertainties.

So it’s very simple: if you can deal with systems, don’t deal with “people”; if market-based spending can solve the problem, don’t rely on one-on-one relationships; if one person can do it well, don’t look for two. Unless you’ve already built a system, and that system is growing larger—you want backups, resilience, and anti-fragility—then it’s worth it. Always remember, in ordinary small matters, the fewer “people” involved to achieve the same effect, the lower the hidden costs and the fewer troubles.