On a business trip about three decades ago, Rob Arnott was speaking with a client about Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” speech. Mr. Arnott wanted to reassure his client that equities were still a good investment.
Mr. Arnott was in a cab, and his driver told him something startling. “Thank you for your success,” he said. When Arnott registered his surprise by asking why his success made his cab driver happy, the driver answered:
#1: Because of your success, you’re a paying customer for me.
#2: You would not be successful unless you have a product that makes your customers happy, and that makes the world a better place.”
Mr. Arnott continues by explaining how in a healthy capitalist system with strong rule of law and a light regulatory burden, “success means producing something people value more than its price and are therefore happy to buy.”
He uses J.K. Rowling as his example. Rowling is among Europe’s wealthiest women. Why? Because millions of families value her stories more than the cost of her books. Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, and Elon Musk each created superior products for millions of happy customers.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t be centibillionaires.
Plenty of people, notes Mr. Arnott, succeed through crime or corruption.
But even with unreliable rule of law and excessive regulation, the overwhelming path to success is through developing excellent products and satisfying customers. Many people have dwarfed my success a hundred- or thousandfold. I don’t resent them. Quite the contrary, I am deeply grateful for their successes. They have made my life easier and happier, and made my dollars go further.
Mr. Arnott would thank the likes of Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Steve Jobs for “putting computers, smartphones and user-friendly apps into the hands of billions of people.”
Also Larry Page and Sergey Brin, for bringing human knowledge to our fingertips, for “free.”
And then there is Mark Zuckerberg, for enabling effortless social interaction worldwide.
Who wouldn’t give thanks to Ken Griffin, ”for creating an efficient market in which large trades are shockingly inexpensive”? Thank you, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei, for “launching the artificial-intelligence revolution, which will change our world beyond recognition—almost certainly for the better.”
It was his rejection of resentment and his respect for those who succeed, Mr. Arnott writes.
Most success is earned by improving an ever-changing world. In a world awash in the politics of envy, he practiced a politics of gratitude.
Instead of resenting success, can’t we be grateful when achievement is fairly earned?
Three decades later, the WSJ writes.
“Mr. Arnott remembers his cab driver’s insight. His wisdom was the rejection of resentment and his respect for those who succeed.”
