Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status
去寻找财富，而非金钱和地位
Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep
财富是资产，资产在你你睡觉时也能一直为你赚钱
Naval is a prolific tech investor and founder of AngelList
财富是资产，资产在你你睡觉时也能一直为你赚钱
Nivi: You probably know Naval from his Twitter account.
Nivi: 你可能通过Naval的Twitter账号认识他。
We’re going to talk about his tweetstorm, “How To Get Rich (without getting lucky).” We’ll go through most of the tweets in detail, give Naval a chance to expand on them and generally riff on the topic. He’ll probably throw in ideas he hasn’t published before.
我们将会讨论他的推文“How To Get Rich (without getting lucky)”如何致富（不靠运气）。我们将通过详细讨论大部分推文，让Naval有机会进一步阐述概括这个主题。他也有可能抛出新的想法。
Naval’s the co-founder of AngelList and Epinions. He’s also a prolific tech investor in companies like Twitter, Uber and many more.
Naval是AngelList和Epinions的联合创始人。他是一名丰富的科技投资人，投资过Twitter、Uber等公司。
I’m the co-founder of AngelList with Naval. And I co-authored the Venture Hacks blog with him back in the day.
我和Naval共同创立了AngelList。也曾经一起撰写过Venture Hacks博客。
Naval: The “How to Get Rich” tweetstorm definitely hit a nerve and went viral. A lot of people say it was helpful and reached across aisles.
Naval:“How to Get Rich”（如何致富）这篇推文显然戳中了很多人的痛点，并迅速走红。很多人说它非常有帮助，而且打破了圈层，引发了不同群体的共鸣。
People outside of the tech industry—people in all walks of life—want to know how to solve their money problems. Everyone vaguely knows they want to be wealthy, but they don’t have a good set of principles to do it by.
不只是科技圈的人，几乎各行各业的人都想知道怎么解决财务上的困扰。大家都知道自己想变有钱，但很多人其实并没有一套靠谱的方法或原则去实现它。
Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep
财富是资产，资产在你睡觉时也能一直为你赚钱
Nivi: What’s the difference between wealth, money and status?
Nivi: 财富、金钱、地位有什么不同？
Naval: Wealth is the thing you want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep; it’s the factory of robots cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program running at night that’s serving other customers. Wealth is money in the bank that is reinvested into other assets and businesses.
Naval: 财富是你想要的。财富是资产，资产在你睡觉时也能一直为你赚钱；它可以是工厂里的机器人为你生产东西。也可以是晚上也能一直服务客户的电脑程序。财富是银行里的钱，可以再投资到其他资产或生意当中。
A house can be a form of wealth, because you can rent it out; although that’s a less productive use of land than running a commercial enterprise.
房子也可以是一种财富，因为你可以将它出租出去。尽管这与经营企业比，是一种生产力较低的一种利用土地的方式。
My definition of wealth is oriented toward businesses and assets that can earn while you sleep.
我对财富的定义是在你睡觉时能为你赚钱的企业和资产。
Wealth buys your freedom
财富买来的是自由
You want wealth because it buys you freedom—so you don’t have to wear a tie like a collar around your neck; so you don’t have to wake up at 7:00 a.m. to rush to work and sit in commute traffic; so you don’t have to waste your life grinding productive hours away into a soulless job that doesn’t fulfill you.
你想要财富，是因为财富能为你买来自由——让你不必每天戴着像狗链一样的领带，不必早上七点起床赶去上班、堵在通勤的车流中，不必把自己最有生产力的人生时光，浪费在一份毫无灵魂、不带来任何满足感的工作上。
The purpose of wealth is freedom; it’s nothing more than that. It’s not to buy fur coats, or to drive Ferraris, or to sail yachts, or to jet around the world in a Gulf Stream. That stuff gets really boring and stupid, really fast. It’s about being your own sovereign individual.
财富的真正目的就是自由，仅此而已。它不是为了买貂皮大衣、法拉利、游艇，也不是为了坐湾流私人飞机环球旅行。那些东西很快就会变得无聊甚至愚蠢。真正重要的是：成为一个完全自主、独立的人。
You’re not going to get that unless you really want it. The entire world wants it, and the entire world is working hard at it.
但你必须真正渴望这种自由，你才可能得到它。全世界的人都想要这种自由，也都在努力争取。
It is competitive to some extent. It’s a positive sum game—but there are competitive elements to it, because there’s a finite amount of resources right now in society. To get the resources to do what you want, you have to stand out.
在某种程度上，这是一场竞争。虽然它是一个正和游戏，但仍然有竞争的部分，因为当前社会的资源是有限的。如果你想获得资源、去实现你想做的事，你就必须脱颖而出。
Money is how we transfer wealth
金钱是如何交换财富的具现
Money is how we transfer wealth. Money is social credits; it’s the ability to have credits and debits of other people’s time.
金钱是社会信用。它代表你拥有他人时间借贷的能力。
If I do my job right and create value for society, society says, “Oh, thank you. We owe you something in the future for the work that you did. Here’s a little IOU. Let’s call that money.”
如果我做好了我的工作并对社会产生了价值，社会会说，“谢谢你！我们欠你一点什么，以后会补偿你过去做的这些事。给你一张欠条，我们把它叫做‘钱’。”
That money gets debased because people steal the IOUs; the government prints extra IOUs; and people renege on their IOUs. But money tries to be a reliable IOU from society that you are owed something for something you did in the past.
这种钱会被稀释，因为有人偷走了这些欠条；政府印了更多的欠条；也有人赖账不还。但钱本质上是在努力成为一个可靠的社会欠条，是社会对你过去行为的回报。
We transfer these IOUs around; money is how we transfer wealth.
我们在人与人之间交换这些欠条；金钱就是我们如何交换财富的具现。
Status is your rank in the social hierarchy
地位是你在社会体系中的排名
There are fundamentally two huge games in life that people play. One is the money game. Money is not going to solve all of your problems; but it’s going to solve all of your money problems. I think people know that. They realize that, so they want to make money.
从根本上说，人们在生活中玩着两种巨大的游戏。一个是金钱游戏。金钱并不能解决你所有的问题；但它却能解决你所有需要钱的问题。我认为人们知道这一点。他们意识到了这一点，所以他们想赚钱。
At the same time, deep down many people believe they can’t make it; so they don’t want any wealth creation to happen. They virtue signal by attacking the whole enterprise, saying, “Well, making money is evil. You shouldn’t do it.”
与此同时，许多人内心深处认为自己赚不到钱，所以他们不希望财富创造发生。他们通过攻击整个行业来发出道德信号，说：”赚钱是邪恶的。你不应该这么做”。
But they’re actually playing the other game, which is the status game. They’re trying to be high status in the eyes of others by saying, “Well, I don’t need money. We don’t want money.”
但实际上，他们在玩另一种游戏，即地位游戏。他们试图通过说 “我不需要钱” ，“我也不想要赚钱 ”来提高自己在别人心目中的地位。
Status is your ranking in the social hierarchy.
地位是你在社会体系中的排名。
Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Everybody in the world can have a house. Because you have a house doesn’t take away from my ability to have a house. If anything, the more houses that are built, the easier it becomes to build houses, the more we know about building houses, and the more people can have houses.
财富不是零和游戏。世界上每个人都可以有房子。你有房子并不会剥夺我有房子的能力。相反，房子建得越多，建房就越容易，我们对建房的了解就越多，就有越多的人可以拥有房子。
Wealth is a very positive-sum game. We create things together. We’re starting this endeavor to create a piece of art that explains what we’re doing. At the end of it, something brand new will be created. It’s a positive-sum game.
财富是一个正和的游戏。我们共同创造财富。我们正在努力创造一件艺术品，来解释我们正在做的事情。最后，我们会创造出全新的东西。这是一个正和游戏。
Status is a very old game
地位是一个非常古老的游戏
Status, on the other hand, is a zero-sum game. It’s a very old game. We’ve been playing it since monkey tribes. It’s hierarchical. Who’s number one? Who’s number two? Who’s number three? And for number three to move to number two, number two has to move out of that slot. So, status is a zero-sum game.
另一方面，地位是一种零和游戏。这是一种非常古老的游戏。从猴群时代开始，我们就一直在玩。它是等级制的：谁是第一？谁是第二？谁是第三？而要从第三升到第二，第二就必须让出那个位置。所以，地位是一种零和游戏。
Politics is an example of a status game. Even sports is an example of a status game. To be the winner, there must be a loser. Fundamentally, I don’t like status games. They play an important role in our society, so we can figure out who’s in charge. But you play them because they’re a necessary evil.
政治就是一种地位游戏的例子。甚至体育比赛也是一种地位游戏。要有赢家，就必须有输家。我本质上不喜欢这种地位游戏。它们在社会中确实扮演着重要角色——帮助我们弄清谁是领导者。但你之所以参与，是因为它们是一种“必要的恶”。
On an evolutionary basis—if you go back thousands of years—status is a much better predictor of survival than wealth. You couldn’t have wealth before the farming age because you couldn’t store things. Hunter-gatherers carried everything on their backs.
从进化的角度来看——如果你回顾几千年前——地位比财富更能预测一个人的生存能力。在农业出现之前，人们是无法拥有财富的，因为他们无法储存东西。狩猎采集者把一切都背在身上生活。
Hunter-gatherers lived in entirely status-based societies. Farmers started going to wealth-based societies. The modern industrial economies are much more heavily wealth-based societies.
狩猎采集者生活在完全基于地位的社会中。而农耕者开始向基于财富的社会转变。现代工业经济体则更多是基于财富的社会。
People creating wealth will always be attacked by people playing status games
创造财富的人，总会受到玩地位游戏的人的攻击
There’s always a subtle competition going on between status and wealth. For example, when journalists attack rich people or the tech industry, they’re really bidding for status. They’re saying, “No, the people are more important. And I, the journalist, represent the people, and therefore I am more important.”
地位和财富之间，总存在着一种微妙的竞争。比如，当记者抨击富人或科技行业时，其实是在争夺地位。他们是在表达：“人民才是最重要的，而我，作为记者，是人民的代表，所以我更重要。”
The problem is, to win at a status game you have to put somebody else down. That’s why you should avoid status games in your life—because they make you into an angry combative person. You’re always fighting to put other people down and elevate yourself and the people you like.
问题在于：想要在地位游戏中获胜，就必须贬低别人。这也是为什么你应该避免参与地位游戏——因为它会让你变得愤怒、好斗。你会不停地打压他人、抬高自己或你所支持的人。
Status games are always going to exist; there’s no way around it. Realize that most of the time when you’re trying to create wealth, you’re getting attacked by someone else and they’re trying to look like a goody-two shoes. They’re trying to up their own status at your expense.
地位游戏永远都会存在，这是无法避免的。你需要明白，大多数时候，当你试图创造财富时，攻击你的人，其实是在假装正义。他们想让自己看起来像是“正人君子”，但本质上是在踩着你来提高自己的地位。
They’re playing a different game. And it’s a worse game. It’s a zero-sum game, instead of a positive-sum game.
他们玩的是另一种游戏——一种更糟糕的游戏。地位游戏是零和游戏，而财富游戏则是正和游戏。