想法是新的石油Ideas Are the New Oil
Naval： 人类的历史充满征服，因为我们争夺的是完全相同的资源；但即便在人类历史上，最初的探索者也是商人。他们远行是为了寻找香料、黄金、丝绸、新的可驯化植物和新的动物。
他们远行未必是为了征服土地。最终他们确实征服了，因为当你被困在地球上时，就会陷入有限资源的困境。但一旦你拥有了离开地球的技术，有限资源就不复存在了。
如果你想要某种资源，那就去找一颗中子星，或者去找一个恒星系。你不会去追逐一颗小行星。宇宙中有着数不清的开普勒行星，它们离这些资源要近得多。
人们想要的是思想和贸易。
看看现代社会——尽管我知道这不是普遍看法——随着我们变得更加文明，我们也变得更加不好战。原因在于，你再也不会为了自然资源去征服俄罗斯了。如今世界上最富有的地方，是拥有最好想法的地方。硅谷曾一度作为财富创造引擎高居榜首，因为它拥有最好的想法。
新的石油是思想。它完全是数字化的。所有新的财富都在思想的空间里被创造出来。
事实上，如果你今天是一个年轻而有抱负的创业者，你不会去学房地产；你不会去学煤炭和石油开采；你不会靠开采实体资源来创造财富。你会进入思想空间。你会去做编程、写书、拍电影、写博客、做播客、造机器人——这些底层大多都是知识产权。
即便作为一个人类文明，我们也在从征服实体资源，转向越来越多地进行思想贸易。
人类物种的糟糕情形是：我们太多的大国和民族国家相信它们已经实现了思想的极致，现在是时候节省资源了。它们最终摧毁了进步、纠错和创造的手段，最终陷入停滞。
然后思想的产出来自数量少得多的城邦，而这些城邦又不得不抵御那些庞大、更具掠夺性、更加僵化的国家。
人们谈论中国多么令人瞩目——"看看他们的火箭"，或者"看看他们的GDP"，或者"看看他们建起来的城市"。等他们发明出新东西的时候再叫我吧。等他们想出我们从未想过的惊人想法、造出我们从未有过的技术的时候再叫我吧。因为到目前为止，一切都是模仿。他们不过是利用从我们这里学到的技术，如今正在奋起直追。他们只是把规模套用上去，因为他们有更多的人。
等他们的人均GDP超过我们的时候再叫我吧。等他们造出我们不知道如何制造的药品、疫苗、航天器、发电机或聚变反应堆的时候再叫我吧。等威权社会自上而下地搞明白如何创造出全新的东西、当它更有创造力、当他们的艺术更好、科学更好、技术更好的时候再叫我吧。
等这一切发生在一个民主、自由、资本主义的社会面前时再叫我吧，因为我从未见过这种情况，一次也没有。
Naval: Humans have a history of conquest because we fight for the same exact resources, but even in human history the first explorers were traders. They were going out there to find spices, gold, silk, new plants to domesticate, new animals.
They weren’t going out there necessarily to conquer the land. Eventually they did because of the finite resource dilemma when you’re stuck on Earth. But the moment you have the technology to get off of the earth, finite resources go away.
If you want a resource, then you go find a neutron star or you go find a star system. You don’t go after a little planet. There are infinite Kepler planets out there that are going to be much closer to them.
It’s ideas and trade that people want.
If you look at modern society—even though I know this is not the common belief—we’re becoming less warlike as we become more civilized. The reason is that you don’t conquer Russia anymore for its natural resources. The wealthiest places in the world now are the ones that have the best ideas. Silicon Valley was on top for a while as a wealth creation engine because it had the best ideas.
The new oil is ideas. It’s all digital. All the new fortunes are being created in ideas space.
In fact, if you’re starting out today as a young, ambitious person, you don’t learn real estate; you don’t learn coal and oil mining; you don’t go into the extraction of physical resources to create wealth. You go into ideas space. You go into programming, books, movies, blogs and podcasts and building robots, which are mostly intellectual property underneath.
Even as a human civilization, we’re moving away from conquering physical resources and moving much more into trading of ideas.
The downside scenario for the human species is that too many of our larger countries and nation-states believe that they’ve achieved maximal ideas and now it’s time to save resources. They end up destroying the means of improvement, error correction and creativity, and they end up stagnating.
Then you have the idea generation coming out of a much smaller set of city-states, which then have to defend themselves against these massive, more predatory, ossified states.
People talk about China being so impressive—“look at their rocket,” or “look at their GDP,” or “look at the city that they built.” Call me when they invent something new. Call me when they come up with some incredible idea that we haven’t had and they built some technology that we haven’t had. Because so far it’s all imitative. It’s them taking advantage of technology they’ve picked up from us that they’re now catching up on. They’re just applying scale to it because they have more people.
Call me when their GDP per citizen crosses ours. Call me when they come up with pharmaceuticals or vaccines or spacecraft or energy generators or fusion reactors that we do not know how to build. Call me when the authoritarian society figures out top-down how to build something brand new, when it’s more creative, when their art is better, when their science is better, when their technology is better.
Call me when that happens over a democratic, free, capitalist society, because I’ve never seen a case of that, ever.