Give me a lever long enough...

“Give me lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” — Archimedes

A lever, a simple yet powerful tool, allows us to move heavy loads with less force by utilizing a pivot. Picture a crowbar: while one would need immense strength – and stubbornness – to open a crate barehanded, anyone with the right technique can achieve it with a crowbar. Other common examples of levers include scissors, wheelbarrows, and staplers.

Now, you may question the relevance of this information if you have no interest in yard work or DIY projects. Besides, you already know what leverage is, right?

Here’s the thing: leverage exists not only in the physical sense but also refers to the use of any tool to increase the outputs generated by a given input. While an exhaustive list of forms of leverage doesn't exist, Naval Ravikant, a startup founder, angel investor, and famous tweet storm writer, identifies four main types: labor, capital, code, and media. Although this list is not meant to be exhaustive, I believe it encapsulates the most important forms of leverage.

Labor

Labor is probably the easiest to understand. Picture this: you are the proud owner of a widget company, and you can assemble one widget per hour. If you hire someone to work with you, assuming the other person is as skilled as you are, your output now just doubled. Scale it up even further by enlisting the help of nine people and you can now build ten in the same hour.

Moreover, and this is where it gets interesting, with the power of specialization and synergy, you could make even more than ten widgets with these ten employees. Imagine that, instead of building the widgets from start to finish, each contributor focused on a specific part of the building process. Efficiency would improve, leading to even higher speeds. With this method, you could potentially build 15 widgets per hour with the same ten workers. Congratulations, you've now multiplied your output fifteen-fold through the leverage of labor!

The problem is people are complex and some morally conscientious readers might be concerned with exploiting others for labor. Without transforming this text into a discussion on the merits of Marxism, other forms of leverage can prove superior in that regard.

Capital

Ever heard the phrase: “Make your money work for you”? It implies using capital to amplify output – or leveraging your capital. Investing in machinery, employees, businesses, real estate and so on can drastically increase one’s productivity. In that sense, capital is an intermediary form of leverage. While it can’t accomplish tasks by itself, it finances tools and people who can.

I don’t intend to delve into the intricacies of financial markets, but I will say in passing that while capital itself is a form of leverage, financial leverage, notably through the form of debt can further magnify your capital’s impact. In that sense, it’s like using a lever to exert force on another. Is your head spinning yet? Let’s move on.

Technology

Here I use “technology” to capture not only coding as suggested by Ravikant, but also hardware, machinery, and robots, among others. Technology has been used as leverage throughout history. The industrial age was fueled by the advent of machines that increased human output. By employing machinery and specialized labor, industrialists achieved higher efficiency and lower production costs than artisans ever could.

Today, robots and AI are yet another step in that same direction. By building robots or writing code that can execute repetitive tasks, you simply need to put in the initial input of building them – which I concede is not actually that simple. However, once they’re built, you can sit back and reap the rewards. In exchange for one input of work, you get infinite output.

Media

Before the invention of the printing press, to share a written message, you would need to tediously write everything by hand. Want to share it with two people? Well, you had to write it twice. With the invention of the printing press, and this is why it is regarded as such a disruptive invention, we became able to write the message once, and then share it to a limitless number of readers. One input became limitless output.

With the invention of the radio and television, the same became true for the spoken word. Instead of having to repeat the same message multiple times, or all gathering in one room, we became able to share speeches to entire countries, all at the same time.

With the internet, media leverage has become even easier. Social media, YouTube and blogging allows us to create content once and share it with the entire world, thereby drastically increasing the potential impact of content. I will say in passing that while this can be true, it isn’t necessarily, as is the case with this humble newsletter that currently gets exactly one reader per post. However, and this is what is important, the potential exists for unlimited readership.

What does this mean for the future?

Hopefully, by now, you understand that leverage carries massive potential. On an individual level, understanding its significance and various forms allows one to create incredible wealth and benefits for society with a relatively limited amount of work. It is through it that startup founders such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have been able to create some of the most successful companies in the world and amass incredible wealth as a result. The combination of all these forms of leverage – labor, capital, technology, and media – is what made them so successful.

On a societal level, it could prove even more meaningful. With technological advancements, its forms went from physical tools, like the crowbar, to the internet, robots, and AI. Who knows what new forms of leverage will exist in the future? We might be able to build unimaginable monuments, harness inaccessible resources and energy, and even terraform and inhabit other planets. With leverage, the output of our species, mere descendants of four-limbed apes, could become boundless.

When Archimedes said: “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” he probably meant it metaphorically. With scientific advancements, and the use of technology as leverage, we might one day be able to accomplish just that.