Why Aren’t We All Rich Yet?

Books on entrepreneurialism, weight loss and investing all tell simple truths. Just get started. Change your eating habits. Buy low and sell high. But they don’t offer magic; there is no special pill. To be thin, successful or rich, we have to do actual work (eat differently, start a business, learn valuation methods), and mostly we don’t do that. Instead, we use finance books in the same way we use self-help books — more as a reminder of possibilities than anything else. Ask a successful financial publisher what he sells, and if he is honest he will say not solutions but “hope.”