Luis Carbonell - On Poverty.
“I think the culture here in America is poverty is seen as a negative. It's seen as your fault. It's made fun of a lot of it's I think it's fairly widely misunderstood. And to some degree, there's shame in it.”
Originally born in Cuba, moved to America when he was 5. He saw abject poverty in Cuba, he grew up in poverty in America. A gifted brain, he worked on the Riemann Hypothesis when he was 14 years old, enrolled in SAS. He has been homeless, he has started a successfully ran multiple companies in the software development and artificial intelligence space. Currently, he is working at three companies and living in California.
Key Insights from Luis’s Experiences
Through Luis’s experiences there were some key insights.
Poverty enforces short term thinking as a habit
Poverty sees growth as risky
Understanding the Psyche of poverty
Luis Quotes
On Poverty.
“Because poverty creates the sense of I can't grow because growing is risky, and I have no time for it. And the second that you stop improving your Fuck, you get stuck, and you stagnate and inflation eats you alive.”
On Poverty.
“That I think the real emotional reaction that I felt was guilt. Right? More than shame. I felt guilty of being poor…. I'm burdening so many people through my poverty.”
On Poverty and Mindset
“I had a transformation, personally, where I realized, I went from thinking, I am poor, two, I am broke. And there's a very big difference. Poverty is a mindset and broke is a state. And I realized that I just happened to be broke.” - Christian Echeverría
On Wealth Creation.
“Like, for example, one of the things that I'm appreciating now even is how working hard is not really what gives you like material gain, like, yes, you need to work hard. But if working hard meant that you were rich, the poorest people would be the richest people.” - Christian Echeverria
On Poverty and the Rich.
“So you just have this sense of lingering doom where you know, the rich man or the banks or whoever is going to fuck you, like some arbitrary point in time for snow arbitrary reason, right? And you think that the work that you're doing at some arbitrary employer, and all that effort that you're putting in should be translated to, you know, a fruitful life and a fruitful existence that happiness and it never does, but you get stuck in that wheelhouse.”
On Poverty in America.
“I think the culture here in America is poverty is seen as a negative. It's seen as your fault. It's made fun of a lot of it's I think it's fairly widely misunderstood. And to some degree, there's shame in it.”
On Poverty and Stress.
“One of the worst things about poverty, right, is the stress that it creates for a person. And the distress does more harm than any of the material things or actual circumstances around you. It is that stress that just kills you. I mean, it is it is, it is chronic, it's like depression, it is a mental health thing. It is, and when I when when Chris says poverty is a mindset, right? I really think that, that that shift, the first thing is detaching yourself from that stress. Right? Because that stress will literally eat you alive and kill you. Right? And it's unproductive and it gets you nowhere.”
On Sexuality, a Cuban Perspective in America.
“I had gotten in trouble three four times already. For being too friendly. Um, and I wasn't trying to, like hit on anyone or anything. I was just literally being friendly but people took it the wrong way. And so I was like, I can't be friends with people then I guess… keep your hands to yourself is like a huge thing here… that was a huge shock. Going from always hugging, always kissing, and if you didn't do that, you were mean, right? It was so backwards to me… because you're trying to be loving. You're trying to show someone, gratitude and friendship and bond with them.”
On Sexuality, a Cuban Perspective in America.
“I think that it feels like a prison to some degree living in this country. In that regard, I feel like I can't share anything or do anything. I'll be out, and I still think like, do I give my wife a kiss in public? It's just such an annoying fucking thing to deal with.”
On Poverty.
“I would say poverty gives me the drive to keep going. Or, you know, today, escaping, like, I want to set myself up so that I never have to imagine a world where I am poor. And then I want to go further, which is I never want to imagine a world where anyone's poor. And that can be in thought, right? In education that can be in, in food and water, and, you know, basic human needs.”
On Poverty.
“There's a certain level of poverty which when you fall below, it almost doesn't matter if you go lower, right, that it's just this, this incredible discomfort chronically. So throughout the day, like every day of your life, it like pervades every minute of your life, like every action you take, is somehow tangentially related to poverty. For the first you know, 15 years of a life it”
On Poverty and Focus.
“I think there's a couple things that when I look at poverty seem to be like almost constant, which is you develop a skill to problem solve, but you're always focused on immediate problems are so focused on how do I get food on my table? Today, you're focused on how do I get water? Today, you're focused on how do I feed my kids…. thinking about a week is normally too big of a risk, because you neglect the things that will kill you immediately.
On Poverty and Innovation.
“And so that in a bit like this, this quote of like poverty stifles innovation is critical, right? Like, I honestly do think it's incredibly vital, because that that person isn't going to be focused on on, you know, solving infrastructural problems and thinking outside of themselves, if they haven't been able to eat food for two weeks, and like, they have no way to source it, they don't have water near them. And like, they're, they have no thing or nowhere to turn to, to get it. Like, that person does not give a shit about aqueducts, that person does not give a shit about like, economics, that that person can care less about any of those things. That person cares about a bite of food, and some water, and like, never even the concept of guaranteeing that for themselves later on. And so that short term thinking becomes a habit.”