Why the Best Ideas Stay Behind People, Not Paywalls

The Best Ideas Are Usually Gatekept

I’ve started to believe something that sounds cynical, but keeps proving itself true: some of the best ideas in the world—real ideas, real tactics, real “this actually works” knowledge—are hidden behind gates.

Not behind paywalls. Not behind “course launches.” Behind people.

Behind networks. Families. Communities. Old friend circles. Alumni groups. Closed chats. Social dynamics. The quiet rule that certain things are shared only with “us,” and never with “them.”

And once you see it, it’s hard to unsee.

The Alumni Network That Shares Everything—Except What Matters

My father has friends from his MBA alumni network. They share a lot with each other: introductions, small favors, updates, opportunities, gossip, the usual stuff that makes networks powerful.

But there’s one category of information he’s noticed never gets shared with him: how people actually invest and profit from the stock market.

Not the generic “invest for the long term” stuff. Not the motivational one-liners about patience. The specific ways people find opportunities early, structure their moves, manage risk, and quietly make money without turning it into a public personality trait.

My dad took it personally. He chalked it up to prejudice—maybe caste-based, maybe just class-based, maybe a subtle social hierarchy where some people always get “the real information” and others get the cleaned-up version.

Whether or not he’s right about the reason, I understood the feeling immediately: there’s a kind of knowledge that exists, and you can sense it, but you’re never fully invited into it.

And here’s the uncomfortable part: I’ve been on the other side of that gate too.

I’ve Made Money Investing. I Still Don’t Want to Share How.

I’ve made good money through investing and crypto. I have my own methods. They’ve worked for me.

And I would never share them publicly.

Not because I’m evil. Not because I enjoy hoarding. But because once you tell people what you do, you inherit their outcomes.

If someone copies you and loses money, they won’t blame themselves. They’ll blame you. Even if you warned them. Even if you explained the risks. Even if you said, explicitly, “This is not guaranteed.”

Investing is one of those areas where people crave certainty, but the entire game is uncertainty. They want a formula, and if the formula fails, they want a culprit.

So I get why profitable strategies stay within small trusted circles. It’s not only selfishness—it’s liability, social risk, and emotional fallout.

That doesn’t make it fair. But it does make it real.

Gatekeeping Isn’t Just Finance. It’s Everywhere.

I saw a very different version of the same thing through a friend who’s a yoga teacher.

She showed me videos of people doing extreme, frankly disgusting yoga practices—things like inserting cloth into the stomach as part of cleansing rituals. These aren’t the sanitized yoga flows that get packaged for mass consumption. They’re the esoteric practices that exist in certain lineages, taught quietly, passed down with warnings, and kept away from casual audiences.

And I understood immediately why: if the mainstream saw that as “yoga,” yoga would lose half its reputation overnight.

So what happens instead?

The world gets a carefully curated version: flexible bodies, calming music, breathwork, spirituality that doesn’t scare anyone. The deeper or stranger stuff stays inside the walls, shared only when someone is deemed ready—or loyal—or safe.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons Finance does the same thing. So do careers. So does social climbing. So does health. So does politics. So does almost anything that creates real advantage.

Public Advice Is Usually Not the Good Stuff

The moment a tactic becomes popular, it stops being a tactic and becomes content.

That’s why I don’t take public advice too seriously—not because all public advice is wrong, but because the incentives are wrong.

Think about the advice that gets broadcast widely: billionaire interviews, viral threads, podcast wisdom, investment slogans. It’s usually:

• broad enough to never be falsifiable
• safe enough to avoid liability
• flattering enough to keep audiences listening
• aligned with the speaker’s brand and interests

When Warren Buffett gives advice on TV, it’s not a secret playbook. It’s a worldview. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes it’s boring, and sometimes it conveniently reinforces the kind of investing that benefits someone who already has scale and patience and access.

When famous founders or tech celebrities give advice on podcasts, it often benefits them whether you succeed or fail—because the advice usually grows their influence, their narrative, and their ecosystem.

That doesn’t mean these people are lying. It just means public advice is rarely the sharpest knife in the drawer. The sharpest knife cuts, and nobody wants responsibility for where it lands.

The advice that uniquely benefits the person receiving it—the advice that creates asymmetric upside—is rarely broadcast.

Why “Real” Knowledge Stays Inside Networks

There are a few reasons gatekeeping happens, and not all of them are malicious.

1) Scarcity and competition

If an investing edge works because few people know about it, broadcasting it destroys it. The moment everyone piles in, the opportunity gets priced in.

You can make an analogy with a stock: when the “secret” becomes mainstream, you’re probably late. The upside shrinks. The peak might already be behind you.

2) Reputation risk

If you share a method and someone loses money or gets hurt—financially, physically, socially—you become the villain in their story.

That’s why people only share certain things with those who they trust will take responsibility for themselves.

3) Social boundaries

Networks are not just about information. They’re about identity. Who belongs, who doesn’t, who gets access, who stays outside.

Sometimes it’s explicit. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes it looks like politeness and “we should catch up,” but never actually turns into a useful introduction or real guidance.

And yes, sometimes it follows caste or class lines. People don’t like admitting that, but life has never been as meritocratic as it pretends to be.

4) Moral cover

This is the sneakiest one: people tell themselves they’re protecting others.

“I don’t want you to lose money.”
“I don’t want you to misuse it.”
“You’re not ready for that.”

Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it’s an excuse. Often it’s both.

The Problem: Gatekeeping Creates a Fake World

When the best tactics stay hidden, the public world becomes a theatre.

The public gets watered-down advice and then gets blamed for not succeeding with it.

People follow the “safe” rules and wonder why they’re stuck. They work harder, hustle more, read more books, listen to more podcasts, and nothing really changes—because the real leverage was never in the public material.

That’s what makes gatekeeping so frustrating. It creates a world where:

• outcomes are unequal
• the reasons for unequal outcomes are concealed
• and anyone who notices gets told they’re just bitter

And the worst part is that gatekeeping is self-reinforcing. The more powerful a network becomes, the more it can afford to keep things private. The more private it becomes, the more powerful it stays.

What I’m Still Wrestling With

I don’t have a clean moral conclusion here, because I’m implicated.

I want to live in a world where good ideas circulate freely and anyone can learn. But I also understand why people keep certain knowledge inside tight circles—especially when sharing it creates risk, destroys the edge, or invites blame.

So I’m left with a messy truth: the best advice is often not public, and when it becomes public, it’s often already too late to matter in the same way.

Conclusion

Gatekeeping isn’t a conspiracy so much as a social instinct: people protect advantage, avoid liability, and stay loyal to their circles. Public advice tends to be safe, brand-friendly, and vaguely true—while the sharp, practical edges stay private. Once you accept that, you stop expecting the most valuable knowledge to be broadcast. You start looking for how it moves: quietly, through trust, inside networks, and always a little out of reach.