Waves Matter

While the idea of meritocracy might focus on the best skills and knowledge, it misses other components of money-making. Specifically, capital and containers. 

Capacity for risk is a form of strength. The way you view risk can depend on how much capital you have behind you, and the risks YOU can take. It is not, and never will be, the same for everybody. 

We don’t start from scratch every day. We don’t want to start from scratch every day. On the surface, you might have “alignment of interests” where the surface noise is “shared” by everybody. It is not the same if you have deep support networks. 

That is why a lot of entrepreneurs are just rich kids with safety nets. It is not that they are more willing to take risks. It is that the consequences are not the same. History matters. 

Yoga might be about stilling waves, but it acknowledges the waves matter. Waves are karma. We all have a history to work through during our life. The sum of past karma. The results of current decisions and actions. Our ability to act, relies on acting mattering. An impact on the next generation. On those around us. Positive and negative. 

That is why it is so important to be aware of intended and unintended consequences. If you genuinely want to have the ability to see underlying merit, you have to be aware of context.

acknowledge the waves

Being Reduced

My primary objection to hand-to-mouth living and anyone being reduced to a productive asset, is the inability to see each other. Whether it is reduction to money, muscles, and sperm. Or reduction to feeding, caring, and reproduction. Breadwinner. Homemaker. I don’t object to any of the things that need doing. Just to us being defined by the things that need doing, or forgetting the reason why we are doing the things that “need” doing. 

You may get marriages where the couple never see each other, but one pays the bills and the other holds their world together. Some would call that a good team. I call BS. Unless that is truly what you want… then I have no problem with that. Other than the risk involved if that world gets bumped. That is not what I want. 

I love deep conversations. I love “democratic goods”… things that are valuable but cost very little because they are plentiful rather than scarce. It’s not that I don’t like scarce goods or see their value. It is more the trade-offs that take the shine off. How much time do I sacrifice for those things? What conversations do I miss out on? What are the unintended consequences of choosing to work for that thing? What we do matters. 

Our actions have consequences. Consequences connect and build. Constraints, boundaries, and agreements create and destroy the worlds we experience, and how we see each other.

Reducing the Sauce

When All Thrive

Fundamental investment management is the simple idea that the job that money does matters. You can trade anything with a pulse. Buying and selling based on a moving price, without even looking at what the price is connected to. Speculating on whether the price is going to go up or down. With fundamental investing, it is the underlying business that does the heavy lifting. A share is a slice of ownership in a real business with real products solving real problems. The price is not just a good or bad deal. Buying or selling is not a way of tricking other people. The price represents Capital that the business is custodian of. If the company handles the complex, random, and ambiguous world in way that solves problems creatively, it should be able to create value. It ceases to matter whether other companies do well or badly. Adam Smith’s great insight was that Capitalism can be Win-Win rather than a battle between Nation States. David Attenborough points out that Nature’s great insight is that a species can only thrive when those around them thrive.

What we do, matters

Actions have Consequences

Karma Yoga is one of the four paths to stilling the waves of the mind. Karma means action. The other three are Bhakti (love/devotion), Raja (meditation), and Jnana (knowledge or intellect). Part of reducing anxiety is understanding how you are wired, and plotting a very bespoke practice that works for you. My understanding of Karma is that actions have consequences. Even though the world is random, complicated, and ambiguous… even the yogis believe in some cause and effect. The waves knocking us around are a function of both current free will and past human action that set the circumstances. Sanchita Karma are the accumulated actions of the past. History matters. Paarabdha Karma are the past actions you unpack in your life. You can change the circumstances. Kiryamana Karma are consequences of your current actions you experience immediately. Each day matters. Aagami Karma are the seeds you plant that affect you or others later. Our actions impact others. Like Fundamental Investing, the idea of Karma is that what we do matters. We have free will. It is just hard, and contextual. We have to do the deep work.

Continual Process of Unpacking

Endless Knot

Actions have consequences. Some are intended. Intention and incentives matter, but the world is so complicated (and getting more so) that we don’t, and can’t, have a strong grasp on cause and effect. The stories we layer on the world are glitchy and built on our own personal faulty understanding. Then thrown into the mix is a double helping of randomness that tends to swamp our efforts. The only thing you can truly plan for is that things won’t go according to plan. Build in a feedback loop. A little lesson from each step. Realise that each step taken changes the world. The lesson you learnt applies to a world that no longer exist. And is only relevant to one of the ways that world could have played out. Complicated. Ambiguous. Random. In a way that is empowering. No one understands. Don’t expect yourself to. The main goal is to create an environment that gives you time. Then the ability to adapt, adjust, and accommodate. Then create. Do something meaningful to you. Build. Learn. Rebuild. Every day.