“The worse the environment, the more valuable the individual” is a belief Raymond Hou (Raymond) has held for a long time. He placed it at the opening of his 2024 “Raymond Hou User Manual” as an overall guide to understanding his career choices. Raymond presents it as a counterintuitive view: when external conditions—the economy, organizations, or industries—become unstable and most people feel threatened, individuals with transferable capabilities may become more valuable because they are scarce. This belief is an underlying assumption of his Super Individual argument and an explanatory framework for his choices from writing, to remote freelance work, to a company of one.
Argument
At the heart of this belief is an inverse relationship between a “worsening environment” and “individual value.” Raymond’s argument is not that the environment itself improves. Rather, a worsening environment filters out roles dependent on others and highlights people who can deliver results independently. In his user manual, he ties the statement to his own practice and turns the belief into three concrete actions: turn what one loves into expertise, use digital work methods to save time, and develop a company of one.1 In other words, this is not passive optimism. It argues that by building capabilities one can carry from place to place, a person can turn external risk into a relative personal advantage.
Raymond also extends this belief to judgments about “scarcity.” As early as 2020, when discussing content creation, he observed that a skill most people give up on can become scarce and more valuable precisely because few people pursue it.2 This “going against the crowd” trade-off has repeatedly appeared in his advice about building capabilities: rather than chase the hottest field of the moment, accumulate abilities that will still be needed in a bad environment.
Development
The early form of this belief can be traced to Raymond’s education and freelance work. After turning eighteen, he paid his own tuition and living expenses; he changed majors twice in college; and at age twenty he took freelance work as a lecturer and remote worker. These choices were all based on not relying on a position provided by a single organization. Starting in 2017, writing on Medium and building a portfolio helped him experience the leverage of turning tacit knowledge into explicit assets and selling the same unit of time repeatedly. This gave him an actionable path toward making “the individual more valuable.”
The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 and Raymond’s departure from employment to become self-employed provided an external test of this belief. A period that caused many people to contract became the starting point for launching Raymond Weekly, paid membership, and online courses. During the The Super Individual and AI Agent Era (2024–2026) from 2024 to 2026, he systematized the belief further: it became not merely a personal example but an outward-facing methodology. It argues that people inside or outside companies can become harder to replace by making good use of AI, optimizing workflows, and developing business thinking.
Reinterpretation in the AI Era
As AI tools became widespread, Raymond applied this belief to a new environmental variable. He argues that AI raises the bar for being “irreplaceable” while lowering the cost of creating, which benefits individuals who can handle the tools. He cites business owners laying off entire marketing departments and using AI to empower a lean team, arguing that instead of maintaining an organization with narrowly divided roles, one person who can work with AI and understand the whole picture can take responsibility for an entire workflow.3 Raymond does not interpret this as a threat of layoffs; he returns to his longstanding argument: the tools and requirements of the environment have changed. Knowing how to collaborate with AI is now a basic workplace requirement. People who fail to keep up will lose value, while individuals who do keep up will become more valuable.
He also uses this to distinguish “efficient workers” from “Super Individuals.” In his definition, doing work quickly is efficiency; what truly increases an individual’s value in a bad environment is business thinking and the ability to “understand the bigger picture.” He explains that “Super” in “Super Individual” means “transcending evaluation”—no longer being bound by old standards of value—rather than simply being faster or stronger than others.
Evidence and Tensions
Raymond’s own career supports this belief: writing brought speaking opportunities and invitations from international companies; he started a business during the pandemic; and the company-of-one model has continued over the long term. He often cites Derek Sivers’s observation that the people most worth knowing often find one another through their work, echoing the logic that “making yourself visible increases your value.”
The belief also has prerequisites and limits. Raymond points out that lowering the barrier to AI use comes with a condition: people must at least understand what AI produces so they know how to assign tasks and collaborate. People who lack judgment do not automatically become more valuable as tools become more powerful. He also acknowledges a common objection: that “the individual becomes more valuable” applies only to small teams or specific conditions. He therefore tends to support the claim with real cases rather than slogans. Overall, this is a belief whose outcome depends on action: a worse environment does not automatically make people more valuable. It brings out individuals willing to build transferable capabilities, collaborate with tools, and see the bigger picture.
Sources
Footnotes
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Raymond Hou, “Raymond Hou User Manual,” WordPress article, 2024-10-02. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “Weekend Meeting #5 | Raymond’s Review of ‘Yuzu Says,’ Our New Breakthrough in Community Branding?” podcast, 2020-06-07. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “486 Fired the Entire Marketing Department and Used AI to Empower and Streamline the Team,” public Facebook post, 2025-12-22. View original ↩