We only have one life, and as we grow older we tell ourselves a story about ourselves. It is hard not to grow attached to the story, and want it to make sense.
As if we need to explain or justify ourselves, our path, and our identity to others or to typically our harshest critic – ourselves. Most other people don’t care about our stories as much as we think they do. They are too busy beating themselves up about their own.
Capital on the other hand, is inanimate. It can be allocated to any problem, and can move around the world (if the rules allow) to change shape and form almost instantly to apply itself to different problem-solving. “Permanent Capital” is valuable, because it is sufficiently patient to wait for compounding to kick in rather than seeking short-term returns, but it is still detached enough to be available to move should the need arise.
Much of our opportunity as people is tied to the lottery of birth, which means our meritocracy has individualized denominators. Our potential is grounded in artificial and temporary constraints. Grounded in biases and boundaries.
Freedom of movement of goods, services, capital, and people looks to chip away at the weight of those constraints. We should be able to solve problems wherever they are, and have people from wherever they are and whatever their irrelevant constraints are solve them if they want to.
We can dismantle the illusions that separate opportunity. If you have freedom of movement for Capital, Goods, and Services, but not for people... that has a name. Apartheid. You get areas around the world that are far better at mixing groups so that you don’t have bubbles of wealth.
Moving between illusions of difference
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