A person's strength is almost always forged under pressure.

If you see someone being domineering, chances are they once had a period where they were forced to pay up.
That's exactly how it was for the United States.

Take a look at this "receipt" from 1797. That year, nearly 20% of the U.S. federal budget went to North African pirates. And they paid tribute every year for over a decade.

The newly independent U.S. had no navy. As a colony, its merchant ships had relied on the protection of the British Royal Navy. But the year after independence, that protection was gone, and the pirates immediately started looting. They captured sailors and sold them as slaves—the first group of captives was imprisoned for ten years.

At the time, the U.S. government did the math: building warships was expensive, but paying protection money was cheap. So they chose to pay year after year.

Because from a single-year perspective, it always seemed rational: paying for one more year was still cheaper than the fixed cost of building a navy.

The image below is the pass they got in exchange for payment. Only after paying could their ships sail. Given the current situation in the Middle East straits, it carries a different flavor.

However, the more readily they paid, the more the pirates demanded—raising the protection fee every year.

Only when the U.S. was backed into a corner did they grit their teeth and build six frigates, fight two wars, and wipe out the protection fees for good. To some extent, that's how the U.S. Navy came to be.

The most obvious reflection of this is that the editor often feels: stopping a loss is too expensive, while adding margin to hold the position seems cheaper. But the more they add, the bigger the loss they end up paying themselves... 🤡

So history teaches us that many excellent decisions are not necessarily born from ambition, but from an unbearable deterioration of the environment for survival.

Endure for a moment, and the wind calms and waves subside; take a step back, and the more you think about it, the angrier you get.

The same goes for life, work, and even the market.