Who You Know

Malcolm Gladwell has a new book, Outliers, which, good for him, will likely end on the bestseller list and pay his mortgage for a few weeks. In it he seeks to answer the question of why some people succeed, while others don’t. Matthew Yglesias picked up the book to see if it would explain why The Economist thinks he’s an up-and-coming public intellectual.

In response to Gladwell, and to clear the air for Yglesias, let me proffer some trite observations.

  • Nothing succeeds like success.
  • It helps to be in the right place at the right time.
  • It’s not what you know, but who you know.

I think most people can only juggle about 50 or so acquaintances, so when the time comes to think of others, either to fill out a list in The Economist, to help pull a TARP over a pile of shit, or to fill open posts in a new administration, one selects from those 50.