Boxing for Respect

When relationships are transactional, there is a need for conspicuous action in order to earn respect. 

Like insisting that someone does half the chores. Famously, in most relationships if you ask everyone what percentage of the chores they do, it always adds up to more than 100%. We know what we do. We only see what is conspicuous from others. 

When you have to box for respect, there is a temptation to indulge in destructive behaviour. If you don’t get recognised, you may tear the other person down, “I don’t think your choices are all that fantastic”. Or you have to pump yourself up, “I am actually quite a big deal.” 

To release yourself from this wrestling match, there is a need to internalise your own sense of value. To let go of the need to be a conspicuously productive asset. To let go of the constant call to prove yourself to other people, particularly if it is conflicting with your own values. 

Then your choices can become relational. There is no scorecard. There are no metrics. You give (and receive) without measure.

Ancient Greek Boxers

Allowing Space

If you are time rich, rather than money rich, you need to learn to create boundaries. It's very similar to the rich-rich when people start asking for money. People start using your time more conspicuously, if they feel entitled to it because they are busy. When you create space and someone else doesn’t. It's a little bit like being punctual. The people who aren't punctual arrive late and make people who are punctual, wait for them. Which even though it is perhaps not intentional, is a way of saying their time is more important. Tim Urban writes about chronically, late, insane people (Clips). He calls it time optimism. They (and he includes himself) always try fit too much in. I am typically on time, and part of the reason for that is I stop doing whatever I'm doing early. People like me are time pessimists because we leave gaps for the next thing. I do a lot of waiting. We need to build a whole new way of looking at respect and how we recognise people, if we're going to change the way we make our decisions around money. Allowing for gaps. Allowing for the things we can’t see. 

"Why I am always late" Tim Urban

 

Understanding Incentives

The world is getting progressively (but bumpily) less racist, sexist, homophobic, and classist. We are breaking down barriers, but we still have hierarchy. The concept of people being better and lifting groups of people. The directionality of that is interesting because living a simple life can be a choice. There is a story of Alexander the Great out empire building and he comes across a sage sitting on a rock. The one doing external work. The other doing internal work. The Gini Coefficient measures inequality. A Gini of Zero (0) in a two-person world would mean Alexander and the Yogi had the same. One (1) would mean Alexander had it all. If we shared everything, there would be no incentive to get more because it would immediately be watered down (particularly if it was among the 7.8 billion people on the planet). We want to have a sense of reward for what we do. Conspicuous reward. Well done, here’s a gold star. Here’s some money. That’s how we do incentivization. You do something. You get measured against other people. You do something more. Understanding what we do, starts with understanding what incentivizes us.

Gini Coefficients by Country

Beyond Contest

Meritocracy is supposed to be a push back on Hereditary Privilege. The idea of social mobility where you can still make a success of life and “climb” even if you are born into difficult circumstances, “if you deserve it”. Money and consumption as a measure of personal worth. One of the mistakes made during the European Colonial era was a pissing contest revolving around Civilising Missions. Different colonial pretenders trying to spread their world view faster as a superior form of civilisation. Simplifying our drive down to a road from savage to sage. Progress. Development. Upliftment. A linear step ladder. Assuming we know the goal. Meritocracy says it is still okay to divide people into groups of better and worse, as long as there is a path to move between them. We obviously want the people we care about, and ourselves, in the best container. Incentivising us to create more than just for ourselves. Barriers to entry and exit protect people from instant and true meritocracy. This constant weighing and measuring stops us from seeing. Money is made with Capital in Containers that solve Problems. But the good things in life aren’t problems, and personal worth isn’t measured.

Manneken Pis

Find Shelter

First, find shelter. It is impossible to build if you don’t survive each day. Warmth, sustenance, and protection from the elements aren’t negotiable. To still financial waves, there is groundwork that needs doing first. If you are spending more than you are earning regularly, you are bleeding. Stem the flow. If you are being knocked back to the start irregularly but reliably, you need to find refuge. Living aggressively within your means may feel like a lack of ambition. It is the opposite. There is way more to learn from people with less than us, than from people with more. More is the distraction. We can only see the conspicuous. We can’t see other people’s storms. We can’t see other people’s foundations. Shelter is normally internal and subtle. The ability to breathe slowly, smoothly, and at length. Then with time, and constraint, you can build each day, on the day that came before, for the day that comes tomorrow. With strength, flexibility, and control.

Desert Storm

Prove or Build

Conspicuous allows you to justify yourself. Something you can count. In a world that is complex, ambiguous, and random, having a cause for every effect gives you something to hold on to. An explanation. This inhibits foundational investing. A need to prove swamps the need to build. It makes ego and confidence our primary focus. The most powerful investment forces are time and compounding. The time frames we think in are too short. This means the real impact of what you do is only felt after you are gone. Unless you live hand-to-mouth. Then what you do is felt now. That is the problem. You need a genuine sense of ownership to be willing to reinvest rather than consume. For that to become a habit, until the amount reinvested makes the amount consumed a rounding error. Until you are a custodian. What you see is not all there is. Don’t prove. Build.

Rabbit Hunting

Rabbit Hunting in Poker is when you fold, then ask the dealer to deal the next card anyway to see “what would have happened”. Serious Poker Players don’t hunt rabbits. Because it isn’t relevant. Hindsight doesn’t give you any information at all, because the deck is always reshuffled before you play for real. Insurance is often treated as a Grudge Purchase. You don’t “get” anything if things go well. We are a little too obsessed with the conspicuous and the version of reality that plays out. Obsessed with predictive power. Obsessed with results. The world is complex, ambiguous, and random. We learn more from people who get it wrong, than people who get it right. If we thought the person was going to be right, and then they were wrong. The best we can do is build endurance and resilience to handle whatever cards we are dealt. Then do something we value whatever the outcome.

Productive Performance

The deal most of us have is that we work to survive. Some of us get to do work that fulfils a deeper purpose than that, and some of us enjoy the benefits of paid work we really connect with. Most of us have to deal with being productive assets. Life as a job description. The first insurance I bought when I started working (my first post studies job was in Risk Product Development) was Disability Cover, Severe Illness Cover, and Future Cover (the ability to get cover I hadn’t thought of without medical tests). All these protected my ability to earn an income. If I was still alive, but was no longer “a productive asset”. I kept this cover until my Engine was bigger than the amount I would get if something went wrong. Part of my decision to stop working for money in 2014 was a distaste at being a productive asset. At being weighed, measured, and paid. Capital is far better suited to paid work than people. Not everything that counts can be counted. The biggest strength of Capital is empowering people to choose the nature of work that they do. Perhaps work that can’t be simplified into performance measures.

What Counts?

We overvalue the conspicuous, and things we can count. We undervalue the internal, and things for which there is no market. The caring professions are most brutally hit. The economics of 1-1 care, or anything that requires the time and effort to see an individual, are poor. A homemaker raising poor children does the “same” work that a homemaker raising wealthy ones does, but homemaking would be an awful business. No one else would put the level of effort in. Conspicuous is easier to manage. Work where you can clock in and clock out. Work where you say you will dig eight holes in an hour, and you dig nine. Or you dig eight, but in fifty minutes. This means we overvalue things that are easy to communicate. If something is hard to explain, it requires trust and confidence. It requires letting go of a desire to manage and control. The only way the economics of care work is by releasing them from the constraints of monetisation. By empowering them with engines of capital working in areas where the economics do work. Not all good ideas are good business ideas. Not all good work can be seen.

Space to Learn

Some things take time. A lot of time. We marvel at how children learn, and yet forget just how much space and time we give them to learn. An adult who had a 10-year-olds mother tongue capacity would not be considered fluent. That is a decade of learning! But the 10-year-old becomes an adult and slowly the flavour is added to the foundations. One of the obstacles to adult learning is we know about the idea of flavour. Once you are a specialist at something, we expect that Halo of competence to spread. Like we are 'essentially' a Specialist. Better than others. That makes us less willing to be rubbish at things. To build new foundations. The pressure from others to demonstrate progress. To be conspicuous about our development. Some things take time. Some growth is internal. I would love to see us give the kind of love and space we allow children, to each other. To ourselves.

Shallow Foundations - House

Deep Foundations - Skyskraper