In July 1683, the Ottoman Empire launched an attack on Vienna with a hundred and seventy thousand troops, besieging the city for two months. The campaign ended in failure with nearly eighty thousand casualties and captives. Subsequently, the Ottoman Empire's influence in Europe continued to shrink until the last Sultan abdicated in 1922. In 1683, Harvard University had only twenty-five students, and Boston was just a seaside town with 4,500 residents. Manhattan had just over four thousand people and had been taken from the Dutch by the British nineteen years earlier. Crowded, lively, and fiercely competitive places do not necessarily equate to opportunities. The vicious price wars in the market and the brutal attrition warfare between nations are essentially the same. Without a clear understanding of the situation, the harder one tries, the more one consumes, and the closer one gets to ultimate demise.