Readings.

The prologue notes that Marcus Aurelius wrote these meditations essentially for himself, as a kind of reminder of how he should operate in circumstances that would repeat in the future. It reminds me of Ray Dalio's logic on principles. Marcus is in the same stream of thought as Ray, in the sense of writing these heuristics as a way to help himself make better decisions in his life. Ray has the advantage of living in a different era, as I do relative to Ray. It is my decision to take my own principles and digitize them, turn them into algorithms that help me make rational decisions without the bias of my own emotions, the way the idea of InvestInk came up. I also learn that Marcus had a short and very busy life. He learned philosophy young (12 years old), his mother came from a noble background, he was born on April 26, and he started writing his meditations 8 years before his death (around 50 years old). It is also interesting to notice that one of the most important thinkers of the Stoic school is described by the author as 'not brilliant'. I can imagine that Marcus's writing is probably repetitive, in the same way mine is every time something happens and something has its origin in a problem that infects many situations that are uncomfortable for me and that I want to improve. Hence my urge to always dig until I reach the root cause, design systems that let me solve these problems, plan the steps to reach the end goal, execute, fail, reflect, and iterate with the same enthusiasm. This last part is meta-heuristic 1 that I wrote on a piece of paper and that I hope to replicate always. I hope it is the first and not the last of many I will try to move into my own decision-making software (as I once pictured a personal Matlab) so it becomes more effective every day and builds compounding on top of my own knowledge and what I perceive from others (or what they can contribute directly as a team).

Reaching Book IV there are several points I want to note from what I have read so far. First, Marcus Aurelius puts strong emphasis on time and, especially, how our capacity to understand and correctly perceive reality erodes as the years pass. The urgency to execute everything that needs to be done dominates his psyche. It is a vital point to transmit emotionally to oneself. Second, he insists heavily on the deviations produced by the impulses of the soul and by emotional reactions. Reason and rationality must reign in the mind of any person of integrity. Anything that affects the integrity, honor, and trust of a person must be handled with great care. In other words, moral neutrality in the face of external events must be a constant. The exercise of imagining that today I will meet an ungrateful, false, meddling, arrogant, or ill-intentioned person prepares me not to expect the environment to be in my favor before I can practice virtue. Likewise, a person's soul is damaged when it carries out an action or has an impulse guided by nothing, when it acts at random and inconsistently, because even the smallest actions must aim at some end. This last part reminds me of how I connect the micro and nano decisions of the day with the consolidation of the macro over time. It is an absolute truth that having clear goals and purposes pulls me away from instant pleasure and closer to sustainability and long-term growth. At first, it is inevitable that the body shows some resistance, as if this were 'unnatural'. And yet, paradoxically, it is nothing more than a habit acquired without a conscious filter at the moment of learning. Now that this ground has been taken, I choose to change it, and there is a price I have the capacity to pay: giving up short-term satisfaction for long-term reward. That is what people call 'impossible' to achieve. But to reach the goals I have set, I first need to make it possible in me, so I can then transfer it, expand it, to other humans, organizations, companies, nations. Mastery of oneself lets me scale my character to everything and everyone around me. The energy and vibrations I emit outward will put the right people in my path at each moment. The only thing I have to focus on (and that is within my control) is to always use my environment to fulfill my goals and optimize my processes, and to take care of my environment and myself with every step. Third, it is explained very well how the present is the only thing we have, so in a practical sense no one can lose what they do not have (like a past already lived or an uncertain future). Additionally, everything is opinion, according to Marcus. The book stresses that this perspective is shared by Stoics and Cynics. Fourth, Marcus urges keeping character and reason intact throughout a life, and that as time passes, observing nature in all its phases is a task fit only for wise minds that appreciate its work. Fifth, we should not waste time thinking about what others do, say, or think, unless it is an empathic exercise for practicing virtue, insofar as it relates to the common interest. Additionally, 'the best is the beneficial'; Marcus insists, 'if it is in line with reason, keep it'. Finally, in Book I, Marcus writes a letter of thanks to all the people he loved in his life, detailing the lessons he took from each of them, from parents to friends, mentors, and loved ones.

The main emphasis is still time. The urgency to live according to our nature and determination fills these writings, which were surely daily at the time. The imperturbability of what is beautiful is another factor; his analogy tends to point to objects or things, but it is applicable to human beings and even to moments or memories. We choose how to interpret them. The universe, mutation; life, opinion. Always remember that an attitude that welcomes everything that happens is a fundamental trait for being morally neutral in the face of circumstances and events. Focus on the common good, kindness, empathy, and just thinking (this last one being the only proper use we should give to judgment). The analogy of the radiant fire and how it dominates and consumes everything that falls into it is fundamental. Maintaining stable and growing energy, that expands to others, is the same as a fire that grows and makes things grow. That is contagious. Meanwhile, seeing the universe as a huge machinery is the right perspective to also see the smallest things as smaller machineries that are part of larger systems. Where we all live in harmony and where universal wisdom decides what happens and why (even if this last part is often not clear to us). Separating events from our opinion or reaction to them shows us that 'bad' things can happen to 'good' or 'bad' people alike. It is indifferent. Fate has plans for each one, and often our own myopia does not let us see the big picture or the effects it will have over different time horizons. What remains within our control is our capacity to use what happens as fuel to continue, in spite of everything, practicing virtue. History is cyclical. Things have happened before and will keep happening. Life is like a river whose current never stops flowing. We often ignore why we live and rarely ask whether the actions we choose each day are aligned with that vision. Free of vanity or arrogance, this should not aim at creating an 'immortal' image of the person, but rather at producing value, serving, and taking care of the common good of the souls that inhabit this earth today and that tomorrow will not be here, but will leave behind, for future generations, parts of you that may or may not disappear over time.

Today the emphasis is on how getting up early is an exercise that tends to feel uncomfortable but does not go against nature. Everything that happens has a sense from the big picture. From below, we cannot see it, and that is why we often judge what happens with one color or another (negative or positive), when in truth it can happen equally to those who follow the orders of nature and those who do not. Myopia is common, and at the same time, for the wise, it gives the certainty that, whatever happens, we are always at the mercy of what has been prescribed (under the format of 'what befell him').

The common, the political, is a task of each cell that forms the complex system in which we live. That system, in turn, forms an even more complex system that also becomes a cell of the whole. I do not know what the cause and the effect of this evolutionary process are, one of constant improvement, development, and growth. The only thing I know is that the laws of the universe, together with physics (which has only managed to explain part of the whole), tend toward disorder and chaos, and that through providence and order we can, by conscious decision, redirect our own matter toward what we consider just and necessary. Toward our purpose in this world. That which is in line with our nature and, at the same time, is oriented toward the common.

When someone does something against you, think of the criteria they used to define what is good and bad before the action. That lets you feel compassion and see the action as something that benefited them, and did not carry a direct intention to affect you. From the outside it was just a trade that did no harm to either party, because I still hold the belief that we are good, as a species, by nature.

One thing that stands out is that we are part of an entity, a highly complex organism. In the same way that a particle is only an entity that is part of more complex compounds at a minuscule scale, or planets are part of a system on a planetary scale, we humans are part of a system composed of the social and the political. Our nature is benefactor. Following nature does not scatter life; it enriches it, strengthens it, and makes it a life well lived. The only reason we are here is that we start from a soul we all share equally. We are all different members of a single entity. Our main function is to cooperate at scale, with each other, for the progress of the species over time. All this without losing sight of the fact that fame, and therefore 'legacy' as a manifestation of ego, are just an illusion. It does not matter what great things you do in life: you are, together with your peers, only a tiny part of the history of a whole more complex and larger than yourself. If you do what you do for the sake of 'leaving a legacy' then you are a fool. If instead you do what you do to fulfill what is good, your purpose, if you act according to your nature and provide long-term value to others, then you will have lived according to your function. You will have lived a virtuous life. The path is complicated, full of obstacles that will make you strong, smarter, and capable of helping more people. The obstacle IS the path. Only the strong, brave, and passionate are willing to take the most rugged route. Above all, those with attitude, courage, and drive in their heart know with certainty, they have the guarantee, that they will find the right people as time passes and they advance along the way. As you evolve, you only attract people who are extensions of yourself (a hypothesis congruent with Marcus's meditations) and with what you have observed in the physical world. You are your own reality, and by designing and building yourself you can design and build what surrounds you. From the inside out. The human being is political by nature, because caring for their siblings, their peers, is a life mission for the progress of the whole. You are a member of a whole made up of different pieces. Like an orchestra, they function harmoniously together. Teams are the key. Individuals are the origin.

Another theme that stands out in today's reading is that history really is cyclical (something also congruent with Ray Dalio's hypothesis about 500 years of history). Beyond exact details, there are principles governing what will happen next, as if the world did not change but balanced from one cycle to another as time passes. This confirms to me that knowing history is key. Not necessarily getting into the exact details, but extracting the decision principles that govern the tipping points of history, the momentum and inertia of the highest-impact events.

Today's reading returns to the idea that we are part of a whole more complex than the individual. There are many references to how what happens to us only has power over us depending on the interpretation we give it, or, put more simply, the opinion we hold about that external thing that has some influence over us. It also tells us that everything within our reach is thanks to providence, and that we, as a collectivist species, have the possibility of choosing to use what we have in favor of the whole, of the political. This, by default, influences the individual's own well-being, since they will be following The Law (nature). According to one passage, anything that does not go against The Law will not harm The City (the world), nor the political, nor the individual. It reminds me of Lex Fridman's podcast and his conversations with Lee Cronin (chemist at the University of Glasgow, author of assembly theory), where he mentions that, as a species, we have the capacity to use the past and extrapolate it to the present to generate novelty in the future using two key components: imagination and technology as a vehicle to transform ideas into the physical world. Since I came out of my depression I thought about the importance of memory, consciousness, and imagination in this game we think is linear (time) but which is in principle circular. According to Cronin, we actively interact with the future in the present. The decisions we make today affect how everything is tomorrow, and our imagination has direct causal implications on the future. Therefore, the universe cannot contain the future, because of the constant of novelty in the nature of the present, closely tied to the principles of entropy in thermodynamics (laws of physics). This gives us a very positive perspective on the nature of reality: if we believe we have free will, we are also considering that the future is strictly stochastic and not determined by a 'superior' force that dictates our individual decision-making and how it influences peers and the entire system. It is a philosophical question I loved, and I can agree very much with his way of seeing things. Always keeping the faith and the power we have to change our own reality, I stay loyal to what Lee and Marcus say, even though they are unrelated by life or work.

What stands out in these last two chapters is the search for matter, cause, truth, and the common. Without these components, human life has no meaning. Intelligence, beyond the body, is what remains for all eternity. It is truly ours, and it serves as the instrument to find those four components, practice them through virtuous actions day by day, and celebrate with others the grace of living a life under the ruling principle. Always leading by example. The search for truth, always respecting truth, is what I take with me today, especially given what I wrote in my daily writing earlier. I think causes and matter are what generate my curiosity. I have always had the need to give meaning to everything I learn, see, and experience. I care about how things work, the more abstract, the better. And mental openness for this is fundamental. Knowing yourself and respecting who you are, above what others say, think, or do, is another point I take with me. Finally, being afraid of, or angry at, external events or your peers, goes against nature. If these attitudes repeat over time, what they guarantee is separation from your community, and therefore from the political. That is unnatural, so the individual will get lost and struggle to recover and reintegrate after separating from the whole. Even though only our species can do this in the whole universe (or at least in the one we know, or that Marcus knew). In sum, a very good book. Key principles can be drawn from 10 short passages, the kind Ryan Holiday keeps reminding me of on Instagram or in his books. Always remember: the Ego is the enemy.

Today I started the book and two things struck me: how little text it has, and how much that little text says. The prologue notes that Sun Tzu's knowledge can be applied to economics, politics, entrepreneurship, business, or even psychology. That opening made me look beyond the words and try to apply them directly to situations I can visualize, that I can touch with my imagination. First, we talk about strategic plans and the role of the following fundamental components (the components of a real battlefield): 1) Heaven; 2) Earth; 3) the Moral Law; 4) the Commander; 5) Method and Discipline. Each has a clear definition. For me, the fundamental difference between heaven and earth is that the first represents everything that fluctuates outside the control of the army and the Commander (cold, heat), while earth IS under the control of the people (through their decisions), which leads to solving specific problems depending on the terrain they cross (its shape: wide, narrow). The Moral Law, for me, is the common purpose, the mission, and the commitment the group of people has to the collective and to the Commander. The Commander has the executive capacity to decide which terrain to cross, how to handle the unpredictable problems of heaven, and how to use the enemy's resources in one's own favor. He represents wisdom, strict conduct, courage, and benevolence. Method and Discipline are provisions (and the guarantee of their arrival), and the resources to cover military costs. Basically how enough and necessary (albeit scarce) resources are managed to guarantee final victory.

Sun Tzu emphasizes that the art of war is based on deception. Also, prolonged battles are of benefit to no one. Using the enemy's resources and increasing one's own internal strength is part of the game. In principle, foreign resources should be valued even more freely than one's own (for their scarcity, and above all their internal utility).

A successful general takes whole battalions without killing, and whole cities intact. Whoever yields to the enemy's provocations and drives their decisions on pure emotion is condemned to failure. The commander of highest value is solid.

One should attack the enemy at their weakest points and avoid the strong ones. A general is skilled when, in defense, the opponent does not know where to attack, and in offense, the opponent does not know what to defend. When the opponent spreads resources across multiple points in parallel, they lose strength. That is why disputes should be sought even when they are calm, and when they least expect them. Being the first to impose conditions gives an advantage similar to the dynamic game I saw in class in Barcelona: the first player has an advantage if they have complete information and if they know that all players know they know, and that they know each other's potential strategies. In other words, under the right assumptions (everyone wants to win the war) any participant has the advantage of imposing themselves if they act first, anticipate, prepare, and respond faster than the rest.

A true general knows when to take advantage of the enemy's fluctuations in morale to attack. A troop's spirit will always peak in the morning, while in the afternoon they will only be thinking of retreat. There are 5 factors that can affect a general's chance of success: 1) recklessness; 2) worrying excessively about their people; 3) an excess of honor and pride; 4) bad temper (reacting instead of responding calmly and rationally to situations); 5) cowardice. Camping positions are important. One should always avoid going uphill, both in mountainous zones and near rivers: if nature or context goes against you, better to avoid the attack and go with the current to plan a well-thought-out counterattack.

Approaching the end of the book, special emphasis is given to terrain and its role in the art of war. On top of exceptional human management, it is important to know the enemy's or players' intentions as well as the different situations they may be subject to, in order to anticipate contingencies (hypothetical scenarios) that will translate into strategies whose objective is to secure victory. The characteristics of the terrain and its status, depending on the difficulty and ease of retreat, are fundamental in the sovereign's planning and the general's execution. It is always important to consider that it is better to tempt the enemy by taking something important to them and wait for their arrival. Likewise, if the enemy's best strategy is retreat, one should wait before attacking, as it may be a stratagem, plot, or ambush. Rivers, marshes, and mountains play a fundamental role. These are what the book calls 'the Earth'. Similarly, 'the Heaven' is the conditions of that terrain. To ensure the health and well-being of the army (and above all to mitigate the risk of incalculable losses), it is necessary to camp and plan strategically during breaks on elevated, sunlit ground. Provisions are important given difficult terrains and unfavorable conditions. The decision to wait or attack in order to avoid death will depend on the opponent's strategies (which can include alliances, interceptions, or flanking the enemy). The urgency of last resort brings out the best in the troop, since they will do whatever is needed to attack and win, until the end. I have drawn an analogy about how we humans generally work: we need to be forced to execute something in order to live or die. With the right incentives, our obligations turn into concrete actions we will execute to the end, as in war. Finally, the last chapter talks about spies and the essential role they play in gathering information, which will clearly influence strategy planning, given the objectives and conditions dictated by Heaven and Earth.

Today the book focused on the principles for finding people in an organization, how to manage disagreements, how to provide feedback, and how to remain open-minded and radically honest to give tough love (the least understood but most effective form of helping others grow in the long run). The author emphasizes organizations that have systems to measure their people's capabilities and skills. He gives a lot of weight to making this information public in formats everyone can understand, so they can somehow measure the credibility each person has with a given task. Ray's way of seeing things is quite based on accuracy and on the use of reason over emotion. He shows repeatedly that, to make high-quality decisions, you should always follow a meritocracy of ideas, a consensus of the most credible people in the group, to increase the probability of getting it right. For this to be effective, the values of the people and their ways of thinking also have to be aligned with the rest. If everyone values the search for truth, meaningful relationships, accuracy, open-mindedness, tough love, radical honesty, and evolution, and if everyone also thinks independently to reach that truth, then you have a machine that can polish itself. Especially as its members build more mileage in their fields of expertise, train up, and reach excellence in their roles. He also spoke a lot today about the typical bias in a departmentalized organization: each member thinks their work is more important than it really is. It is a paradox, because the intrinsic motivation of the individual comes, indirectly, from the belief that their work is very important for the collective, hence the commitment to not miss commitments and responsibilities. Finally, there is a key factor to always spot: avoid being biased by employees you like but who are not effective and can become harmful to the organization. Not aiming to rehabilitate (change values) is wise advice from Ray. Because it is something deeper (unlike skills, which can be shaped quickly), Ray insists on rigorously analyzing the cost of keeping such an individual against the long-run benefit of having them out.

Today the book emphasizes the 5-step set for improving a machine (whether you are an individual or an organization): 1) define your goals; 2) identify the problems that keep you from reaching 1); 3) look for the root cause, the origin of the underlying problems; 4) design strategies, plans, and tasks to tackle these problems; 5) execute. Special importance is given to organizations at first. The manager stands out here: they are engineers of organizations. They see companies as machines where errors are identified, structures are designed around people, goals are defined, tasks are assigned, and everyone is held accountable to their responsibilities without getting into the details. The figure of a good manager is one who does not obsess over details. It is like an orchestra conductor, directing the musicians so their combination produces extraordinary music. The iterative process of reinventing, iterating, and redesigning the machine, as well as reallocating people to the positions where they perform best and where they can meet their personal purpose of individual growth, are the missions and responsibilities of an excellent manager.

Today the book focuses on the organizational side and the roles of a quality manager. Knowing the team deeply: this step is fundamental for the leader, since it lets them set objectives and expectations for each person. From this personalized knowledge follows the assignment of responsibilities and their tracking over time. Building objective, quality metrics in different formats is essential to avoid buying certain team members' excuses, and to instead use available information to get closer to an unbiased reality. Communication with the team is also fundamental, and precisely for that reason it should not be the only channel to judge performance on any task. The importance of ownership and the manager's benefit of the doubt: the former focuses on aligning the individual's well-being with that of their community so there are no cargo shifts, and so that the design and incentive system move in line with the capacity and commitment of each member to own their responsibilities in the corresponding area. The latter has to do with the fact that being an excellent manager is not 'what it looks like'. You must empower the team with the mission through a good system and design, as well as good communication bridges and control metrics. Always alongside avoiding confusing tasks with goals on the members' side, and always seeking truth on the manager's side, trying to generate insights about the machine from the bottom up, giving benefit of the doubt, and never letting themselves 'be pressured'. The manager's goal is not to be liked, loved, or wanted: it is to seek truth, be open-minded, radically transparent, and give tough love to their peers. All of this, always remembering that it is better to bring disagreements out and resolve them together, as reflectively and effectively as possible.

Today the book focuses, as a first point, on identifying problems and not tolerating them; and then on discovering the root causes of those problems, in order to later design or redesign systems to attack and resolve them over the long term. Great emphasis is put on differentiating between people and design as primary sources of error, and, in the case of people, knowing how to differentiate between behavior patterns (linked to the mistakes made), where it is important to distinguish exceptions from patterns. Also, the difference between capabilities and skills, in the case of people, is fundamental. Design plays a key role. In principle, managers, as company engineers, see things from above and supervise that the orchestra plays in tune through the analysis of performance indicators, tracking of progress, and setting of specific goals. In this case, design failure is the manager's responsibility. It is also necessary that these failures are accepted and rectified. Escaping the responsibility of accepting mistakes at the top of leadership can be a clear signal of a lack of character and, above all, of high ego, which in the long run harms the organization. The search for truth is another relevant point in these chapters. A quality manager should not put the 'happiness' of the group or of each individual above what is good for the collective as a whole. That means placing people in positions they do not necessarily want to fill, and letting go of people who are nice but do not perform according to the quality standards of the organization. Finally, I think the most relevant piece of these chapters is using mind maps or flow diagrams to identify at which exact point in the machine's value chain the failure occurred. Above all, the questioning mechanism the analyst in charge (the diagnostician) needs to use is based on the 5 Whys, which I learned once in Design Thinking classes and in many entrepreneurship talks tied to the Lean methodology. In short, the goal of these methods is to find the root of the matter by knowing how to segment each step systematically, placing yes/no questions to separate them, adding layers of complexity about people (capabilities, skills, patterns, exceptions), and finally weighing whether it was really a manager's mistake (design) or a mistake of the people that make up that design. A good diagnosis of these fundamental errors can prevent many spillover effects in the near and long term of an organization since, as the book notes: 20% of the causes generate 80% of the suboptimal results of the organization (including companies, nations, or individuals). Given the importance of finding truth in this case, it is important to always rely on as many involved people as possible, individually, to reach the core of the problem effectively and, above all, in an organized way.

Today the focus is the design of the solution, once the root problem has been identified (and once it is decided it will not be tolerated). Great emphasis is placed on the fact that organizations must be built top-down, since managers are the ones who have the perspective to see the right people for each role given their values, capabilities, and skills. It is also important to know how to control people correctly to keep high quality standards (depending on what those are for the organization in question). Org charts are fundamental to maintain order, to define objectives (and not guide departments or subdepartments by tasks), and to know who is responsible for what and why. Responsibilities must be aligned with the capabilities and skills of the person, not with their job title. Designing a new structure aimed at correcting the root problem (and its spillover effects) implies an iterative process where something 'imperfect' is better than nothing done. All this, keeping in mind that hiding dust under the rug only delays catastrophe until the glass overflows and the consequences are worse. The role of a good manager, according to the book, is the ability to correct problems whose consequences are observable and immediate (first order), while something fundamental (and rarer) is the ability to anticipate second- and third-order problems that often go unnoticed for their lack of observability (including the manager's own lack of experience when analyzing the situation). An important trait is concern and aversion to the pain the manager foresees and the imminent danger that means, in the present, for the macro objectives not to be met. Remember, the changes to execute take time. Having a small ratio of intelligent people in the organization is much better than a high volume of average people. The former see opportunities where no one else does and increase productivity over the long run. Systematizing principles for decision-making, recording incidents, and having standardized metrics to track work and the way people behave under patterns is the best way to manage the changes the machine needs to progress. Remember, laws make no sense without a 'police force'. Ensure a high ratio of communication to productivity for each team member who communicates with you. The higher the hierarchy, the higher the ratio usually is. Not putting the 'resource' before the strategic is fundamental: the long-term values and objectives of the company do not change. Its recurring goals and its systems and processes do. Aim for departments and subdepartments to be as resource self-sufficient as possible. Increase ownership of individual errors with 'public executions'. These should be as precise as they are constructive.

This is a habit I will start to keep, not only with the books I read but with the lectures I watch too. It is the best way to remember, over the long run, everything I read.

These last two days I have had the fortune to make real progress with Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. In yesterday's and today's excerpts we talked a lot about how national income is divided between capital and labor. How the share of capital can vary depending on the countervailing (or amplifying) forces of the rate of return on capital and the capital/income ratio. How you can end up with infinite capital-labor elasticities (a fully robotized economy) or elasticities near 0 (any additional unit of labor or capital does not have a counterpart in increased output). How the labor share has grown in recent years due to the importance of labor in the general process of economic activity, which is not necessarily justified by more evolved or incredibly smarter human capital (even if century-to-century differences are quite relevant). Capital, on its side, has stayed consistently below the income coming from labor. However, one important metric that has been growing since the end of World War II is the share of housing rent relative to national income. The fall of the capital share in France relative to the 20th century is due to this phenomenon of human involvement in the productive process and to the heterogeneous elasticity that capital and labor have had across developed countries. I also learned that for the capital factor to yield better returns (price of capital), two things are needed: 1) technology; 2) supply and demand. The play of these two forces over time, dynamically, in virtuous or vicious circles, gives us more or less capital return, which also influences how much is accumulated and, therefore, what uses it is put to. Without technology and with high availability of capital, the only way to explain a high return is the agents' ability to find new ways to use it. That is tied to its level of utility in the economy as a whole and, usually, at the firm level.

We also talked a lot about how income and wealth are distributed in the world. It was specified that income inequality tends to be, and has been, lower than wealth inequality. The evolution of these inequalities has been positive (the middle of the distribution has been able to own a considerable share that previously belonged to the top decile or percentile) over the course of a century or more. It was specified that ratios and the Gini coefficient are poorly explanatory metrics of inequality of income and wealth, and clear differentials were established between the USA, Europe, and the Nordic countries in this sense (with the USA ending up as the most unequal country in the world). The percentile of a country like France, with 65M inhabitants of which 50M are adults, corresponds to 500k. Meanwhile the percentile of the USA with 365M adults is 1.6M people. Given the demographic differences, it is necessary to measure absolute volumes case by case and the effects of public policies for each. It also mentions the interesting cases of inheriting versus working as a trade-off in developed (or even developing) countries. The differences in distribution between wealth elites who do not work and those who do (and how these vehicles reinforce themselves to generate more wealth), and how sometimes the person who earns the most is not necessarily the one who owns the most. It also considers the theme of inheriting real estate and its long-term effects on an agent's ability to accumulate wealth.

The most relevant concepts from today's excerpt (read in 15 minutes) were the effects of critical junctures (or, analogously, external shocks outside the model), the contingent weight of history (as tipping points that change direction; being and staying in the 'what if' case), virtuous and vicious circles (in development and evolution with respect to t), and, finally, institutional drift (analogously, genetic drift), where two entities initially similar diverge or converge on specific paths depending on external shocks, internal (endogenous) decisions, random shocks (critical junctures), and past patterns that tend to be conditioned by base or origin influences (institutions, frameworks). The difference between nations whose fundamental units (human beings) are practically equal by nature comes from what is culturally and socially accepted, from who holds power (and how that conditions the above and the rules of the game, like laws and what is or is not allowed), from how that power is exercised and under what intentions (extractive or inclusive), from random shocks that can affect all participants at different magnitudes or not, from the past and from the repetition of historical patterns, from the cycle phase the entity finds itself in (up, down, or stagnant), among others. In the end you can extract multiple determinants that condition what reality is, which is what quantum physics tries to quantify. The human species is closer every day to making more predictable what was previously perceived as 'pure chance'. Cause-effect relationships and deterministic and stochastic implications are part of an infinite game where we all participate, not necessarily on equal terms, but with the ability to modify our reality if we focus on the only thing we have relative control over: ourselves.