... if you’re trying to choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right. - Paul Graham

People think that what a business does is make money. But money is just the intermediate stage — just a shorthand — for whatever people want. What most businesses really do is make wealth. They do something people want.4

Naturally wealth had a bad reputation. Two things changed. The first was the rule of law. For most of the world’s history, if you did somehow accumulate a fortune, the ruler or his henchmen would find a way to steal it. But in medieval Europe something new happened. A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns.10 Together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord.

Most struggles, whatever they’re really about, will be cast as struggles between competing ideas.