Get the Game

Stilling anxiety and making decisions we are comfortable with can revolve around building agreements. Managing expectations through commitments to each other that are understood. An ability to build driven by confidence in intended consequences, and capacity to absorb and adjust to unintended consequences. A calm and inspired sense of general direction. 

If you feel like you “get the game” so you can apply yourself and get rewarded, and have a transparent understanding of the cost of breaking agreements. A world where there is consensual agreement making. Yes means yes, and no means no. 

People feel like they are honest with each other and themselves about what their needs are. Where people find other people who willingly and enthusiastically want to be part of each other’s lives. Where no one is forced to act against their will. 

The challenge is tolerance. We don’t live in isolation. Independent decision-making is very attractive. In your world, what do you think you should do? That results in multiple, very detached realities, that sit separately from the shared world and aren’t a part of it. That has consequences. 

A difference between an investor who makes independent decisions and an operational decision-maker, is operations have momentum and they have mojo (the morale of people). Changing an investment decision affects no one. Changing an operational decision has consequences, and you can never get momentum and start compounding if you are constantly changing your mind.

Do you get the game?

Being Conspicuous

There is a wrestle with the way people dole out respect. It is trite to say “don’t care what people think about you”, but umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a person is a person through other people). 

Even the most hardcore libertarian has to make agreements to engage with the world. That involves a meeting of minds. That involves respect, trust, and trade-offs. 

Now if you are wrestling for respect using conspicuous “success” that doesn’t resonate with you, it can be hollow. I sometimes get resentful when I do get recognition. 

When the thing being recognised is actually a trade-off I am making, and not what really drives me. When I meet the productive targets of others, but they don’t see me. 

They don’t see the inconspicuous, hidden, hard to communicate ways I am creating meaning. It can then be frustrating when the only time I get seen is when I am doing the things I need to do. 

Joint decision making is hard. Really seeing each other is even harder. 

“Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to.” (Marcus Tullius – Braveheart)

Feeling the Choices

Local markets should be more responsive to changes in preference, because they are able to respond to tacit knowledge. The stuff we can’t put into words. The stuff we don’t always understand ourselves. Our inconsistency. Our moods. 

Local markets mean relationship building and consequences. Huge markets become more abstract. If you sell someone something that isn’t a good deal for them (because you need/want the money) and it affects them badly, size matters. In a huge market, you disappear in search of the next sucker. In a local market, you still have to engage with the people. 

Local forces commitment, recognising that what we do matters. The boundaries between client, colleague, friends, and family blur. It gets complicated. Dealing with strangers is cleaner. It is transactional. Local and intimate means getting involved in the nitty gritty. Local means we experience the results of each other's decisions. Local means wrestling with issues. 

Standardization can give comfort. Where you do venture away from local to explore, some recognition is useful. When you (think you) recognise something, you don’t have to give it thought. Conscious choice is hard. 

Daniel Kahneman talks of “thinking fast and slow”. You want to embody a lot of decisions and make them fast. Jonathan Haidt talks of our rider (head) and elephant (body/habits). We think the rider is in control, but it is mostly the elephant. 

To embody and relax, we have to trust. It is hard to trust when you haven’t done the necessary wrestling to deep soak shared agreement.

International Standardization

Being Ridiculous

Freedom is not the absence of rules. The biggest defenders of liberty will also be the strongest advocates for rule of law. Rules are just agreements. Not divine in nature, but between people. You can make agreements with yourself.

You can also ensure that you do not become too fixated on the rules that they are not serving the people who agreed to them. Anything without the capacity to change has increased capacity to break.

A university friend teased me because when we were in study-weeks I would arrange to meet him to watch a movie in a break. I would go to the Common Room to watch the movie, and he would be late, and there wouldn’t be time for the movie. I would be starting my next study session. He thought I was ridiculous. He was probably right. But that was the stage I was in. My rules likely made relationships and friendships more difficult because my structure had consequences for others.

It is difficult to create agreements that work for everyone in every situation. Still, we must create little bubbles for stuff that is important. Pockets of focus. Pockets of made-up limits. 

Echoborg

An Echoborg is a person whose words and actions are determined, in whole or in part, by artificial intelligence. The outsourcing of decisions. My wife and I participated in a discussion panel with an Echoborg designed to do hiring interviews. Our group's goal was different. To try get the Echoborg to discuss how people and AI could work best together. In some ways, companies are like Echoborgs. We talk of them as people because they act through people. There is the pretence of an agreement between people in the employment contract (but one is just a legal person). The challenge our group faced was speaking with/arguing with the Echoborg as if it was a real person, because it spoke through a real person. The most echocult like of companies aim to only develop talent from inside the manufactured club, not hire outside, and have a revolving door where people who leave are no longer welcome. These companies are not real people, even if we anthropomorphise them. The key is to remember companies serve us, and we are all part of a bigger container. Companies are merely useful devices that serve a (temporary) purpose. It is the people, both inside and outside, that matter and to whom we owe our loyalty.

Messy Decisions

One huge advantage of being an Investment Analyst is yogic sage level detachment. You pass judgement on the value of a business, but active investors are still not activist investors. They stand apart. Management, customers, suppliers, competitors etc. need not even be aware of the investor’s existence. I remember one young (at the time) analyst moaning about what he was supposed to do with the next five years. The time it would take to get a sense if 50-60% of his decisions were “correct”. Like a dentist can fix a tooth in a couple of minutes, or take hours just for the sake of it, the main “job” of active investors isn’t the investment, it is the business of raising capital to invest. One huge disadvantage of being an Investment Analyst, is thinking you can make the same detached decisions in the real world. The real world has momentum and morale. Decisions do impact other people. Changing track has a real cost. There is no such thing as an independent decision. We must engage in the messy interplay of coordinating with other real people who see differently, want differently, and do differently.

Muddied Decisions

Build Capital and Free Labour

For my Batchelor’s Party, my Best Man knew the normal ways of embarrassing me would not work. Instead, he dressed me up as White Jesus with a MAGA hat. Politically and economically, I am of the “The Future and its Enemies” (Virginia Postrel) and “The Righteous Mind” (Jonathan Haidt) school of thought. We are all best placed to make our own decisions and agreements. My main objection to the politics of the last few years is the gunk in our ears. The picking of teams. The lack of acknowledgment that decisions are complicated, and we cannot see into each other’s worlds clearly enough to make decisions for others. We can just do the hard work of breaking down barriers and building agreement. With the available resources and technology, we are in a better position than we have ever been to empower people rather than looking towards putting people in power. We are in a better position than ever to build endurance and resilience, and release each other’s creativity. To build capital and free labour. I am tired of being tired. Let’s build.

Not My Decision

Polis Smous

I started my career in Finance in South Africa and the United Kingdom during two watershed moments. Just after the bursting of the Internet Bubble, and during the cracking of the walls around endowment policies and remuneration of Insurance Sales. Endowment Policies pay a lump sum after a specific term or on death. They combine investment and risk cover. The sales people often were not professional financial advisors giving appropriate advice. They were remunerated up front, in commission. If the client stopped paying their premiums, or another “Polis Smous” (Policy Hawker) convinced them to churn/swap, there were big, indefensible, clawback penalties. The scandal made the environment ripe pickings for “Pure” investment or risk products, and saw a massive professionalisation of the advice industry. Allow time to pass, and even the pure grow and get legacy skeletons in their closet. The constant trade off between starting from scratch, and keeping the good bits of the old way of doing things. As the environment changes, we need to change. The question is whether we are brave enough to be transparent and honest.

Navigating the Madness

Decisions aren’t made in isolation. Value is relative and dependent on both how we see the world, and how the person we are interacting with sees the world. Our options depend on their options. There are trade-offs and unintended consequences. Actions have reactions. One thing changing means everything else ripples. How do we end up navigating our way through this complexity? One way is empowering decision makers and reducing the size of those decisions. More decisions. Smaller decisions. More awareness. More transparency. More commitment to a feedback loop. The world is noisy and ambiguous, but we can each adapt and adjust to accommodate change if it is small and we are willing. The beauty of markets, trade, and prices are they don’t reflect permanent value. They reflect agreement. When two informed decision makers engage and consensually support each other through exchange. Voluntary, autonomous, sustainable relationships.

Complex Decisions

Mapping Ignorance

It is important to map ignorance. Here be dragons. My impression is that we don’t have the necessary tools to unpack many of the complicated issues we are currently facing. There is far too much false confidence and debate going on. I have been part of “Men’s Groups” and “White Men’s Groups” trying to create containers for conversations to self-reflect. One common thread has been the over use of challenge. Like in the public debate, there seems to be limited ability to genuinely listen and gather information. Superficial curiosity is often strategic, still anchored to a particular pre-packaged conclusion the questioner is looking to confirm. It is like we are still engaged in the long history of Crusades and Civilising Missions. Having not learnt the lessons of the unintended consequences of true believers pushing into worlds they don’t understand. New tools are required. New rules of engagement. New honest map building.

Psalter World Map

Consenting Adults

Some people like hierarchy. That’s okay. Everyone has their kinks, and anything that goes on between consenting adults is fine. It’s the consent part that bothers me. I believe in institution building, but I worry about the power of “legal people” over people. When the institution gets so big that the individuals become abstractions. Roles, categories, functions, grades. Turning people into numbers for memos to pass up to boardrooms. Particularly when the negotiating power is lopsided, and on one side there is a person “speaking for the institution” (be it a Country, Company or a The People). For markets and communities to function well, there has to be full transparency and a sense of peers working together. Otherwise it is just bullying. Using the fact that someone has limited job opportunities or capital to incentivise them to do as they are told. 

Need a Crown?

Dirty Teacup

A good friend of mine loves being micro-managed. He says it means he doesn’t have the pressure of responsibility. He can just do the job to the best of his ability, as he is told, and leave at the end of the day. I hate being managed, policed, or parented. It is all good if I agree, but only without constant saying. An agreed pattern. Rule of law I accept. Like if you see a teacup that needs to go to the sink, and are about to take it, then someone tells you to take it. The stripping of autonomy grates the third of three brothers in me. I crave feedback. I like mentors. I am insatiably curious about where I could be wrong. But at the end of the day I like feeling like I am making decisions. Not over other people. I believe in reciprocity, and not expecting of others what I wouldn’t accept myself. Double Standards are a pet peeve. Consent and empowerment are the foundation of whatever agreements and approaches people prefer in a world with multiple options.

Take your cup to the sink

Easily Rattled

Morality and ethics remain even when you have different religious beliefs. Even if you don’t have a higher power. They are the agreements we have with each other that allow us to cooperate and exist in the same physical space. None of us opted in. We were born without our consent. We were born with different lottery tickets. Our effort, skills and knowledge (merit?) determine much of our success, but most of that is determined by the lottery of geography, genetics, prejudice, and social networks. I am no longer religious, but I still have deeply held beliefs about right and wrong. I try hold them loosely where they don’t impact others. But fury still bubbles at injustice. I am easily rattled. Fury isn’t that helpful, but there are lots of big shared problems (Climate Change, War, Poverty, Pandemic, Financial Meltdown) where we have to have the horrible conversations we would rather not. We have to figure out how to have a shared conversation despite different world views.

Noise or Music

Community Investment

A Stokvel is an invitation-only club which can serve as a rotating credit union (pool money and take turns to get the pot) or a savings scheme (pool the money to reduce the costs of saving and investing). I am a Soutie. One foot in South Africa, and one foot in the United Kingdom (my wife is British)… so my interest in Stokvels seems appropriate. The name (but not the idea of group saving) comes from the rotating cattle auctions of English Settlers to the Eastern Cape in South Africa (“stock fairs”). Stokvels have a Constitution which dictates who contributes, how much, what gets done with the money, and how it gets paid out. A Community Wealth Fund could be a Stokvel that pays a Universal Basic Income to all the members of the community. A Universal Basic Income is a periodic payment delivered to all on an individual basis without means test or work requirement. This could be funded partly through redistribution, and partly through building a long-term solution in the form of Capital. We can talk about the kind of world we believe in, or we can build it together. Starting with agreement, and following through with action.

Photo: Rodger Bosch

Agreements and Action

A Community Wealth Fund is analogous to a Sovereign Wealth Fund. A Stokvel is a savings or investment society to which members regularly contribute an agreed amount, and agree to a constitution which controls how the money is dispersed. A Community Wealth Fund is a form of Stokvel. A group of people can come together and build an Engine which could pay the whole Community a Basic Income. This could start Pay-As-You-Go redistribution (while the Engine is being built), and part investment (then fully Capital funded when the Engine is big enough). The difference between a Community and Sovereign Wealth Fund is that “The People” isn’t abstract. It starts from the bottom up with names and faces. It starts with agreements. Agreements to build, and agreements to support each other. Agreements followed by action.

Get Started

Creating Agreements

Freedom isn't the absence of rules. The absence of boundaries and constraints can end up being a constraint. It can stop you building. Rules are just agreements. Agreements that allow you to relax into something because you understand the game being played. One of the games we play is hiding our struggles. I think this is partly because we don't agree on rules for how to deal with struggles being shared. If someone shares their struggles, it is hard not to jump in with advice. In my experience, that is normally the last thing people want. Particularly if that advice comes with an obligation to be followed (don't ask for my feedback if you don't listen to it). I think we would benefit from more spaces where people are simply able to share their struggles. No advice requested. No response necessary. No pity. Just people dealing with the stuff that we need to deal with. Together.

No Response Required

A Little Winey

When I was 19, I went to Europe for the first time. I was in the UK for 18 months before that working, and did my traveling in one big binge. 45 days camping tour around Europe with £20 a day of squirreled away spending money. Some of those days were traveling days where we spent almost nothing, and a few of the days were "Cultural Experiences" which cost more. It was more like seeing the menu of Europe than experiencing it properly, because we weren't in any place very long and I was surrounded by Aussies and Kiwis. It was a cultural experience in learning about those characters.

One of our early realisations, as we arrived in various new cities, was to restrict the size of our day-tripping groups. Any more than 3, or maximum 4, people and you spent more time waiting for someone to get back from the toilet than actually seeing the place you were at. It was important to limit the quantity of Whine consumed. People want different things. That is fine. Let the people who want to visit coffee shops go there. The Museum people do their thing. The Foodies binge out. At some point, it is more worth empowering people than trying to gain consensus. 

Even "gaining consensus" among two people is really hard work. You need to pare back your ambitions the bigger the group is. Ask any two people working on their relationship, and even seeing the world from the perspective of the person you love is a real challenge.

Then come together for the things you love to do together. Big groups were easier for events like the Oktoberfest, where the options are simple. Beer.

Too much whine, and you don't get to do any tasting.

Consistency

One of our strengths as humans is our ability to believe two things that can't both be true. If we become aware of the inconsistency, we will only change our mind/heart if the clash causes stress. If new evidence means we have to choose. If we don't have to choose, we are pretty good at parallel lives. Consistency makes communication easier. Agreement between two people is effectively a choice. If we don't want a new discussion every time, we need a rule. Rules need consistency. Like computers which think in 1s and 0s. It can't be both or you will get 'the blue screen of death'. It may be possible to have a world where the answer is 1, and a world where the answer is 0. Each of us live in our own little worlds. Our worlds bump into each other. Consistency is the way we smooth those bumps.

Constraint

A world of scarcity and abundance have different rules. We have flipped the two as people have become richer. Our resources are finite, but we have freed ourselves from the enforced desperation when they were relatively infinite. There is a strong case that we could end poverty by choice. The problem isn't the lack of resources, it is the distribution of those resources. Our total consumption rate isn't sustainable, even if some of us still don't have enough.

I believe it is important to answer the question 'how much is enough?'. I also think the one answer that shouldn't always be allowed is 'more'. A friend of mine doesn't like the word 'should'. He feels it carries implicit judgment. I agree with the principle that we right and wrong are determined by agreement and consent. Largely, people should be left alone to do whatever they like... unless it harms others. That is where I am okay with judgment. That is where I get very judgy. We don't live in isolation.

I am a rule-loving anarchist. I am allergic to non-consensual hierarchy. In my ideal world, everyone would be empowered to say Yes or No, always. That doesn't mean that we should be allowed to do whatever we want.

Rules make the game more fun. Constraints stop winning being the result of someone else losing. The two strongest cases for constraints at the moment are (1) our joint unsustainable consumption, and (2) our joint unsustainable poverty. Rules are just agreements between people to make things better.

One of those agreements should be a consideration of what is enough. You can live a life of abundance within constraints. 

The Blue Marble

Tongues and Ears

Before elections in the United Kingdom, political parties release Manifestos. These are supposed to detail the mandate they are given. In South Africa, the same happens and the party then chooses members of Parliament. In the UK, a Member of Parliament directly represents and is chosen by their constituency. The step I believe is missing is how each party, and MP, will incorporate the desires of the opposition. The current method is like a Utopia Sale followed by a fight. 'Us' gets a fat 'Them' carved out... and the carcass is left to bleed out. The heart of Democracy isn't the ballot box. It is consent. It is the feeling that the Government is about empowerment rather than control. Somehow we have empowered our tongues at the expense of our ears.