Game Theory #3: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

SUMMARY

Professor Jiang delivers a 2026 lecture to Beijing high school students, dissecting success through game theory, revealing socioeconomic hierarchies and parenting styles as key drivers over individual traits like self-control.

STATEMENTS

Research shows successful people succeed for specific reasons, including delayed gratification demonstrated in psychological experiments.
Walter Mischel's Marshmallow Test involves offering a child one treat immediately or two after waiting, testing resistance to temptation.
Children who resist eating the first marshmallow tend to perform better academically, have stable careers, healthier relationships, and avoid vices like drugs and jail.
Success, per Mischel, equates to delayed gratification and long-term planning, involving sacrifices like prioritizing homework over play.
Self-control and emotional regulation are foundational, allowing individuals to manage anger and focus on future goals.
Carol Dweck's "Mindset" posits that a growth mindset fosters resilience, viewing failure as a learning opportunity, while a fixed mindset leads to giving up.
Individuals with a growth mindset try harder after failure, whereas those with a fixed mindset see it as proof of inherent inadequacy.
K. Anders Ericsson's "Peak" introduces deliberate practice, where success stems from strategic, goal-oriented efforts rather than mere hard work.
Deliberate practice involves setting goals, assessing weaknesses, refining plans, and self-reflection to improve learning strategies.
The Dunning-Kruger effect reveals that low performers overestimate abilities due to lacking self-awareness, while high performers underestimate.
Teaching self-control, resilience, and self-assessment to underperforming students fails to improve outcomes, as correlation does not imply causation.
Success traits like early rising or resilience are outcomes of success, not causes; wealth fosters these qualities.
Macroeconomic studies indicate parental wealth predicts success more than school performance; rich parents' children thrive regardless.
Rich parents communicate with high vocabulary and friendly attitudes, explaining mistakes to build trust, unlike poor parents' authoritarian commands.
Stability from rich parents allows promise-keeping and security, while poor parents' volatility breeds distrust and fear.
The Marshmallow Test actually measures trust in authority rather than self-control; poor children rationally eat the treat due to experienced unreliability.
Resilience requires belief in a supportive world, which rich children develop but poor ones lack amid constant failure signals.
Self-reflection is hindered for stressed poor children, who focus on pain rather than growth.
Society functions as a rigid hierarchy where poor obey authority for survival, while rich negotiate and debate for advantage.
Poor parenting prioritizes fitting into community norms over child optimization, enforcing obedience to avoid social ostracism.
Professor Jiang's family gives children freedom, emphasizes communication and democracy, and tells stories instead of rigid schedules, differing from typical Chinese practices.
Success for poor children often requires abandoning community, high risk like immigration, war, revolution, or marrying up.
Luck is a strategic positioning to increase opportunities, combining traits like self-control with bold moves.
Societies appear stable due to equilibrated parenting and roles, but elite overproduction causes factions to ally with the poor for revolutions.
Revolutions pit the "haves" against the "have-a-lots," led by aspirational elites promising debt relief, land, and ending slavery.
Indebtedness, landlessness, and hereditary slavery from inequality seed revolutions, with elites exploiting these for power.
Social mobility drives prosperity and stability across systems, but erodes as elites favor their children, filling positions and creating waiting lists.
Chinese history shows dynasties start with merit-based exams but corrupt into nepotism, sparking revolutions when mobility vanishes.
Schools perpetuate inequality: rich schools foster creativity and freedom, poor ones enforce compliance.

IDEAS

The Marshmallow Test's outcomes reflect trust in promises rather than innate self-control, challenging its traditional interpretation.
Wealth begets success traits, inverting the causal arrow from personal effort to socioeconomic privilege.
Parenting styles encode class-specific survival strategies: obedience for the poor, negotiation for the rich.
Poor children exhibit rational short-termism, eating the marshmallow because past betrayals make waiting illogical.
Fixed mindsets among the poor stem from a worldview of scarcity and fear, not inherent laziness.
Deliberate practice thrives in stable environments but falters under chronic stress from volatility.
The Dunning-Kruger effect explains incompetent confidence in leaders, perpetuating societal stupidity.
Schools cannot retroactively instill rich parenting benefits, as worldviews solidify early.
Hierarchical societies demand different games: survival through submission for the bottom, maximization through debate for the top.
Community conformity trumps individual optimization in parenting, making change socially costly.
Immigrating to high-mobility places like the U.S. offers escape but requires extreme individualism.
Marrying up or revolutionizing via war resets the social game for upward mobility.
Elite overproduction floods the top with ambitious players, fracturing alliances and igniting change.
Revolutions promise universal resets—debt cancellation, land redistribution, slavery abolition—rebranded across ideologies.
Luck as strategy involves positioning for serendipity, yet remains probabilistic and rare.
Social mobility fuels innovation but inevitably ossifies into nepotism, cycling toward collapse.
Game theory views individuals as negligible; outcomes hinge on structural incentives within groups.
Chinese revolutions historically launched by merchants seeking power from wealth amid discrimination.
Dynastic cycles in China illustrate how meritocracy devolves into corruption, blocking aspirants.
Authoritarian parenting, while stress-inducing, aligns poor children for community survival, not personal flourishing.

INSIGHTS

Success is less about individual grit than inherited social capital, where rich environments cultivate traits mistaken for innate virtues.
Trust, not willpower, drives delayed gratification; unstable upbringings rationally prioritize immediate gains over uncertain futures.
Class divides manifest in relational dynamics: friendly explanations build confidence, commands instill fear, shaping lifelong authority interactions.
Self-awareness, key to growth, is luxuriously afforded to the stable; stress from poverty crowds out reflection with survival anxiety.
Societal equilibrium masks rigidity, where parenting reinforces hierarchy to ensure fitting in, not breaking out.
Revolutions arise not from bottom-up rage but elite infighting, allying with the desperate to topple entrenched powers.
Mobility promises stability yet self-destructs through nepotism, as victors secure legacies at the expense of merit.
Luck operationalized as strategic risk-taking amplifies rare traits like ambition, but systemic barriers render it exceptional.
Game resets via upheaval temporarily restore fairness, only for cycles of corruption to reemerge.
Education's inequality mirrors parenting: creativity for elites, compliance for masses, entrenching divides.
Historical patterns reveal ideology as veneer; core revolutionary appeals address debt, land, and bondage universally.
Optimal parenting diverges from community norms risks isolation, prioritizing child potential over social harmony.
Zero-sum power dynamics among elites generate instability, as abundance of aspirants exceeds scarce positions.

QUOTES

"Success means delayed gratification. And all this means is that people who succeed are capable of long-term planning."
"Just because things are correlated does not mean they cause each other."
"The Marshmallow Test is not a test of self-control. It's a test of your trust in others."
"Poor kids are rational and they're responding to the circumstances that they live in."
"Revolutions are always between the have a lot versus have some. It's never between rich and poor."
"Luck is a form of strategy... you are trying to position yourself in a place that allows you to get lucky."
"Social mobility is the best form of governance... As long as you have social mobility, people will be happy."
"Either you climb up the ladder. If they don't allow you to climb up the ladder, then you'll just break the game."

HABITS

Prioritize long-term planning by making daily sacrifices, such as completing homework before playing with friends.
Practice emotional regulation through techniques like calming down when angry to maintain focus on goals.
Engage in deliberate practice by setting specific goals, assessing weaknesses, and iteratively refining strategies.
Foster a growth mindset by analyzing failures as learning opportunities and committing to try harder next time.
Communicate openly in family decisions, treating children as equals in democratic discussions to build negotiation skills.
Give children unstructured freedom for play rather than overscheduling activities, allowing creativity to emerge.
Read extensively on parenting and education to inform unconventional approaches that prioritize child happiness.

FACTS

Longitudinal tracking in the Marshmallow Test showed resisters had higher SAT scores, better careers, stable relationships, lower obesity, and longer lifespans.
Macroeconomic analyses confirm parental income predicts adult success more reliably than academic performance.
Rich parents use 30% more words daily with children, featuring complex sentences versus poor parents' simple commands.
Dunning-Kruger experiments found bottom 5% performers self-assess as average, while top performers underrate themselves.
Historical revolutions, from Roman Civil War to Chinese uprisings, were led by middle-class aspirants like merchants seeking power conversion.
In 1950s America and China, high social mobility post-war spurred productivity, regardless of democratic or communist systems.
Elite overproduction has driven every major societal collapse, as excess ambitious elites compete for limited top positions.

REFERENCES

The Marshmallow Test by Walter Mischel
Mindset by Carol Dweck
Peak by K. Anders Ericsson
Dunning-Kruger effect studies by Justin Kruger and David Dunning
Chinese Revolution leaders like Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping
Islamic Revolution and Muhammad's promises of a debt-free, land-owning paradise
Julius Caesar's Roman campaigns promising debt relief and land
Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Rebellion as a brother of Jesus
Civil service examinations (keju) in Chinese dynasties
Game theory applications to social mobility and revolutions

HOW TO APPLY

Assess your current environment's stability: Evaluate family promises and authority trust to gauge if short-term gains like immediate rewards outweigh waiting, adjusting behaviors accordingly.
Cultivate trust-building communication: Use explanatory, friendly dialogues during mistakes, spending time reasoning outcomes to foster security and long-term planning in children.
Implement deliberate self-assessment: Regularly journal weaknesses in skills, set measurable goals, test practice plans, and pivot if ineffective, applying to studies or careers.
Position for strategic luck: Migrate or network in high-mobility areas like the U.S., combining hard work with bold risks to increase serendipitous opportunities.
Promote growth through failure analysis: After setbacks, discuss lessons learned collectively, encouraging resilience by viewing errors as iterative improvements rather than defeats.
Negotiate rather than obey in hierarchies: Practice debating decisions with authority figures, building skills for advancement in rich-world dynamics while avoiding poor-world submission traps.
Monitor elite saturation signs: In organizations, watch for nepotism blocking promotions; if present, consider game-resetting alliances or individual exits to restore mobility.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Socioeconomic hierarchies dictate success through parenting and trust, perpetuating cycles broken only by revolutions or rare individual risks.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Challenge correlation myths by focusing on structural changes like policy reforms rather than personal traits alone.
Adopt rich-style parenting early: Emphasize vocabulary-rich talks and explanations to build child confidence against volatility.
Strategize mobility by immigrating to opportunity-rich nations, accepting high risks for potential rewards.
Recognize revolutions' elite origins: Support aspirational leaders promising economic resets to align with historical patterns.
Foster individualism in rigid communities: Encourage children to prioritize personal potential over conformity for breakthroughs.
Invest in social mobility systems: Advocate for merit-based access to prevent elite overproduction and societal stagnation.
Treat luck as positioning: Network ambitiously in diverse environments to amplify traits like resilience.
Reform education equitably: Design schools with freedom and stability for all to mimic rich advantages from the start.
Analyze hierarchies game-theoretically: Negotiate outcomes in power structures to maximize personal advancement.
Promote debt relief mechanisms: Endorse policies canceling burdens to avert revolutionary seeds in unequal societies.
Prioritize family democracy: Involve children in decisions to teach negotiation over blind obedience.

MEMO

In a candid lecture to Beijing high schoolers on January 13, 2026, Professor Jiang unpacks the elusive formula for success, drawing from game theory and classics like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." He begins by interrogating popular notions: Does self-control, as in Walter Mischel's famed Marshmallow Test, predict triumph? The experiment, where preschoolers wait for a second treat, seemed to forecast better grades, careers, and health for patient kids. Yet Jiang flips the script, arguing it's not willpower but trust in authority that matters—poor children, scarred by broken promises, rationally grab the immediate reward.

Delving deeper, Jiang invokes Carol Dweck's growth mindset and K. Anders Ericsson's deliberate practice, showing resilient, strategic learners outperform. But here's the twist: Teaching these to struggling students yields little. Correlation isn't causation; success breeds these traits, not vice versa. Macro studies confirm: Parental wealth trumps school smarts. Rich kids inherit stability, high-vocabulary chats, and explanatory parenting that paints the world as safe and negotiable. Poor kids face commands, volatility, and fear, learning obedience for survival in a hierarchy where the rich debate bosses while the poor submit.

Jiang illustrates with his own family, bucking Chinese norms by granting kids free play, democratic talks, and storytelling over cram classes—earning social isolation but aiming for creativity. The Marshmallow, he contends, tests socioeconomic trust: In unstable homes, waiting feels futile. Resilience? Rich kids bounce back knowing help awaits; poor ones see failure as final. Self-reflection? Stress crowds it out. Schools try mimicking rich styles with vocab boosts and friendliness, but worldviews harden early—interventions arrive too late.

Society, Jiang asserts, is a zero-sum game divided into obedient masses and negotiating elites. Poor parenting optimizes community fit, not upward leaps; deviation invites scorn. True mobility demands bold bets: abandoning kin for places like the U.S., warring, revolutionizing, or marrying status. Luck? It's strategized—positioning amid opportunity—but rare, favoring the ambitious 1%. Revolutions erupt not from paupers but elite overproduction: Too many aspiring rich chase few thrones, allying with the indebted, landless poor against overlords.

Historical echoes abound—from Mao's aspirants toppling rural elites, to merchants sparking Chinese uprisings, to Julius Caesar's debt-forgiving populism mirroring Trump's appeal today. Every revolt promises paradise: Cancel debts, redistribute land, end slavery—whether communist, Islamic, or otherwise. Indebtedness spirals into generational bondage, seeding unrest that elites exploit for power grabs.

Yet stability's allure fades; mobility sparks prosperity, as in postwar America or 1950s China, where hard work paid off across ideologies. But victors nepotize, filling ladders with kin, corrupting merit like China's keju exams into pay-to-pass scams. Hong Xiuquan and Mao, blocked aspirants, ignited bloody resets. Schools mirror this: Creative havens for heirs, compliance factories for others. Jiang warns: Without engineered mobility, hierarchies ossify—climb if allowed, or shatter the game. In this rigged arena, understanding the rules is the first step to rewriting them.