Rich Dad; Belief Systems
-----If you are in for the high jump, either jump higher than any one else, or manage somehow to pretend that you have done so. If you want to succeed at whist, either be a good whist-player, or play with marked cards. You may want a book about jumping; you may want a book about whist; you may want a book about cheating at whist. But you cannot want a book about Success. Especially you cannot want a book about Success such as those which you can now find scattered by the hundred about the book-market. You may want to jump or to play cards; but you do not want to read wandering statements to the effect that jumping is jumping, or that games are won by winners.
G. K. Chesterton, "The Fallacy of Success" (1909)
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Rich Dad, Poor Dad is practically an instant-seller online. Its value has declined enough that it's usually better to just sell it to Powell's than to bother with shipping, but it would still probably sell in a matter of hours after listing it online. I've had many copies pass through my hands, but I've never looked inside a copy until last week. My assumption about "improvement" books is that they tend to give the same bits of information that have been circulating for decades in similar titles, but people always think (hope) that the new book will have some trick leading to staying power. Further, I'd admit that a lot of self-help advice is good advice. But you can read very old nuggets of wisdom from William Penn or Ben Franklin that have hardly been improved upon since. Rich Dad struck me as odd, because I didn't really see a lot of advice. It doesn't seem exactly inspirational and certainly not practical in terms of specific ways to make more money. Rather it just implies that a go-getter attitude will lead to wealth. Much of the early anecdotal stuff could have been lifted from Ayn Rand (an accusation I learned is common). His Poor Dad (his actual dad) was a Ph.D who made a career in education, giving his family a solid middle class life. His "Rich Dad" was self-educated and truly wealthy. (Under the pressure of scrutiny, the author has practically admitted that this Rich Dad is purely fictitious. If this is so, then what are we to make of his advice?) The "poor" salary-earning dad believed in all kinds of nonsense about social welfare, progressive taxation, etc. The Rich Dad said take care of yourself first.
Some time ago one of the newer crop of book scouts (cell phone-enabled) said that he really likes Rich Dad, Poor Dad as a book. I wonder how and why people respond so powerfully to something so superficial. Reading around the web convinces me that what self-help, improvement and get-rich-quick literature feeds on is an innate desire to believe in something akin to magic. In the past, I thought that such books probably gave legitimate advice, but that most people realistically don't have the time, energy, intelligence, etc. to put the advice to any use. It's like getting tips on how to learn a foreign language, then getting the CDs and books, but after a few hours of self-study, they gather dust for the next two years. You could have learned that language in that time, but you got distracted. Well, with this kind of book, I now doubt that there is any such gap between the advice and activity. The closest thing one gets to advice in Rich Dad is the old thing about buying real estate, fixing it up, and making a profit. From what I read on the web, the actuality is that few people can really make money doing this, and further--despite the breathless claims of late-night infomercials--you pretty much need a fair amount of start-up money to do that kind of work anyway. The stuff about "you don't need any money to start with!" is just a ruse to get the unemployed couch potatoes watching those infomercials to get out the check book and buy some "system" guaranteed to get them started.
I found an overly long, but convincing critique by some guy named John T. Reed. He goes on way too long about side issues, like the Rich Dad author's military record. Also, Reed himself is in the real estate guru biz, but I admit he strikes me as above board, in that he openly declares the difficulty of such work and the need to have capital to get started. Reed apparently has gotten a lot of hostile responses from devotees of the Rich Dad system, and it was here that I began to think more and more about this as a case study in belief systems, rather than anything to do with objective arguments about how to make money in real estate. I had a passing experience with this myself when some friends in college were temporarily interested in Amway's multi-level-marketing scheme. They would go on and on about how in three years they would be "financially free," jet-setting the world, etc. Of course none of that happened, but while they were drunk on it all, they were very touchy about criticism of their scheme, and even disliked being around any "negative thinking" regarding the possibility of getting rich quick. This is one of the big things in this, and I think also in faith healing, New Age mind-over-matter, black magic, etc. It's as if they don't even want to engage in a critical give-and-take. The gurus discourage it anyway. Even in Chesterton's 1909 essay he writes of how books on "Success" admonish the reader to avoid "feeble" thoughts and feelings--the kind of thoughts that their family members, co-workers and the like often indulge in. Rich Dad gets off on this, too. All those people who just keep punching a time clock are losers, because they are "working for money, rather than letting money work for them." They are helping rich people get richer, and doing it for peanuts, etc. However much truth there is in this, the problem with Rich Dad and similar books is that they seem to promise a world of all chiefs and no Indians. Of course they don't really do this since it is implicit that there will remain a host of losers out there who will continue to be wage slaves for your business. This is the sly rhetoric that is populist on the one hand ("Anyone can do this!" "You don't need to be born with money, or to have a fancy degree!") but then turns elitist--somehow, only you and a few others will actually elevate to status of the rich to whom all rivers of capital flow. Why you and not the millions of others who have bought Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Well, since education is not a key (the author is actively hostile to college education), and prior capital is irrelevant. . . well there is not much left except confidence, positive thinking, etc. The guy who tries to buy real estate without his own money and is turned down for a loan? Well, he'd better not get discouraged and go back to his day job, or that will be the mark of a quitter. I think it is because the main asset of the get-rich-quick is positive thinking that they get so bent out of shape by criticism of their (currently) favored guru. You don't find rebuttals, just indignant, angry attacks. These are the skeptics and nay-sayers the guru warned about! Don't let them bring you down!
Apparently the Rich Dad guy was profiled critically on 20/20. As several test subjects failed to make tons of money as promised, he admitted that "90 percent" of people who try will fail, but added that failure taught important lessons! This is also pretty sly, since anyone who has a sense of human nature knows that almost everyone who buys such a book or attends a seminar thinks he or she will be in that 10% who are successful. The people who benefit most from this trait of inflated self-esteem are the gurus who sell books, tapes and seminars, not the vast majority of people who will waste time and energy on one scheme and then another.