Snake Oil

Early medieval tradition recognised three professions – divinity, medicine, and law. These Professions realised that not all good ideas are good business ideas. The “learned professions” all work in areas that are difficult to commodify (standardise) and where there is clearly unequal negotiating power. You can put a price on anything. It is just a form of communication that lets two people swap something. There is no right answer. Pricing something works best when there is standardisation and lots of people who are both buying, and selling the thing. Pricing is dangerous when the product/service is bespoke. Then what matters is the story. Our obsession with specially tailored solutions that meet our needs as unique snowflakes, opens the door for Snake Oil Salesmen. If you want a rule of thumb that can stop you getting taken advantage of, it is to only buy democratic goods. Things that lots of people can afford. The original professions had “higher callings”. They were paid enough to meet their expenses. That required financing. Capital or patrons that recognised the value, but didn’t pretend to price the priceless.

Big and Fragile

The size of your work income doesn’t determine your financial security. You can earn £10,000 a month in London and be more fragile than someone spending R4,000 (about £175) a month in rural South Africa (an estimate of the living wage for an individual). Work Income is fragile. Ask 2020. Hand-to-mouth living doesn’t work if the hands are tied. A Pass-the-Parcel economy doesn’t work if the music stops playing. A work income is usually the initial source of financial security. But what you do with it matters. The key is what you spend. Price indicates scarcity, not value. So if you want to maximise value, be a Cultural Billionaire. Spend on things everyone can afford. Democratic goods. Build a Buffer/Emergency Fund that covers 3-6 months of expenses (for the unexpected). Invest in an Engine that earns an income independent of your hands. Invest in your Community. Be wary of committing to fixed expenses that keep knocking at the door when you are at home because the work has gone. Your financial security is determined by your ability to endure and capacity to cope. Strong and flexible provides the foundation for creativity, learning, and building a meaningful life. Autonomy matters, not size.

Osmar Schindler (1888)

More than Enough

Intrinsic Value is the idea that something has an internal worth separate from the price. Price is a communication tool. A crude number that triggers exchange where for one person the value is more (buyer), and for one person the value is less (seller). Value doesn’t need to be quantified unless it needs to be communicated. To be reduced to a number. To be managed. I like the idea of Democratic Goods. A high price is a better indication of scarcity than value. Like a pressure cooker, not enough to go around pushes the price up. If there is more than enough for everyone, the price is likely to be lower. Value sits separately, and doesn’t care about things like success, respect, hierarchy and peacocks. A good rule of thumb for not paying a scarcity premium is asking whether everyone has access to this thing? Can everyone afford it? Buy Democratic Goods. Sell Conspicuous Consumption.

What is going on?

British East India Company

Before Capitalism, under Mercantilism, the lines were blurred between Companies and the State in the same way as they were blurred between the Church and the State. Given a Charter, a Company could raise an army and make laws. The British East India Company ruled India from 1757-1858. Things changed. Now there are concepts like Public Equity and Multi-National Companies. Public Equity democratises ownership. Shares of listed Companies are traded freely and can be bought and sold by people who aren’t Citizens of one competing tribe. Multi-National Companies have employees, customers, and owners, from all over the world. Stock Markets allow customers to own shares in the companies that make the products that they buy. You don’t “play” the market. You can invest in a real company, doing real things, for real people. The heart of Fundamental Investing is the question, “what is really going on?”.

Amsterdam Stock Exchange

Personal Editor

One area I believe Artificial Intelligence could be very powerful is as a Personal Editor. Many discussions online suffer from boiling blood and personal insults. The aim is to win. Our memories are short. Our reasons often made up to justify a feeling. Our areas of interest wider than our areas of competence. Our Personal Editor could ask us questions, refine, collect, and challenge our opinions. Not in a 'you are a bad person way'. In a 'have you read this' way. The intent of editing isn't to tear down, but to improve. A Personal Editor could fact check things for us, and filter the stuff we read to the set of things that will challenge us in new ways rather than reinforcing our bubble. Thought Leaders often benefit from editing. We just see the cheerleading. We don't get to see the rough path they took to get to their views. Democratising intelligent editing would do as much for communication as the printing press.

Democratising Editing?

Empowered and Connected

Rather than looking at individual companies that are gathering information about us to affect our decisions, it is more powerful to look inwards. I am not particularly concerned about my privacy for my purposes. That is because I know I am an incredibly stubborn person. I am a contrarian. A Donkey.

I often wish I was more compliant. I completely understand the Conservative World View. I just can't help myself. Instead of unravelling everything, there is someone to whom you can go and ask, 'What should I do?'. There is an answer, 'This is how it is done'. The Abrahamic Religions all emphasise surrender. Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac, and 'God wills it' is sufficient justification.

Abrahamic Surrender

I grew up in Protestant Churches - Methodist, Anglican and Baptist. The heart of the birth of Protestantism is in the name. Protestants didn't do what they were told. They read the Bible in their own tongue. Translated, from the translation, of the story that had been past down over the centuries. Then they thought about it. Prayed about it. Then acted. That powerful step of 'personal thought' combined with the democratisation of knowledge was a powerful driver of the enlightenment.

I moved away from the Church while at university. The problem with answering 'What should I do?' , with 'What do you think' is that it is an open question. It opens up options. Choices. Discussion. Worries. Doubts.

What we think is heavily influenced by what we see, who we spend time with, and what happens to us. We are primed to act far more than we would like to believe. 

I do worry about Privacy. Not my own, but that of the people who make me who I am. My story is not my own. It is the combination of all the people in my life. People who I trust enough to ask me really hard questions should I make decisions that do not resonate with the relationship we have.

I have lots of friends who hold me to account. Who ask me challenging questions. We become far more difficult to manipulate when we are empowered and connected.

Empower

Tacit Knowledge is powerful. We should push decisions as close to where the understanding lies as possible. Often we understand, but we don't know how we understand. As soon as decisions are extended beyond intimate groups, they lose nuance, and people get summarised into 'the people'. Although central decision making can allow for a much bigger impact, the world is complex, unambiguous and uncertain. Whether we go left or right can have unintended consequences. Making small, micro-ambitious decisions allows us to learn with the only certainty that the engine of that learning will be our mistakes. The four freedoms of movement (people, goods, services, and capital) are learning tools that partner the written word, numbers and money. We learn and empower through exchange and sharing. Democracy should be a tool of empowerment, not a tool of power.

Single Market

Freedom of Movement of People, Goods, Services and Capital

Get Stuff Done

Before we looked to Government to provide basic human rights as part of the social contract, we had to do it ourselves. Although for most of humanity, we have lived in material poverty struggling for basic survival, many of us have a natural instinct to support each other. Voluntary Associations (clubs, religious groups, charities) sprung up where need existed. One of the things that hold us back now is the sense that everyone, particularly those wealthier than us, should pay for this support. If they don't, we don't. We can't be so scared of free loaders or scrooges that we don't just get on with it. A downside of the welfare state has been that we think we have to vote for change. We think that if we lose a vote, the change we want won't happen. In liberal democracies, we are largely able to get stuff done if we are willing to find people who voluntarily want to help. Don't vote for change. Change.

Democracy

South Africa Election 1994

Democracy is not about voting. Voting is a symbol for enfranchisement. I believe in a world beyond archy. For a long time after we started to think beyond our immediate world, we lived very separate lives. The world we see is the world there is. Gradually, our world has become shared. Each new relationship, a connection between worlds. We are still constrained by biology and experience from understanding each other, but we are getting closer to having the institutions and constitutions needed to build trust. That is what I believe Democracy should be - not 51/49 brute force, but the subtle building of community. 

World We Have

We think in stories, but stories are summaries. The truth is far more complicated. Most politics is a Game of Thrones driven by these summaries. Leaders, parties, ethnicities countries, religions, ideologies and various other groups float above and dip into reality. Reality is made up of relationships. Complex, juicy, emotional, connections between real people who don't know everything there is to know about each other. Relationships which discover. Relationships which change, grow, break, renew, linger, inspire, depress and create the meaning that makes life worth living. 

We shouldn't look to leaders to see what type of world we want. 

We should grow relationships within the type of world we have.

Mirror Mirror

One way to choose a career is to make the thing you love the thing you do for a living. Get paid for your passion. BUT... there are other ways. The free market is the most effective democracy machine I have come across. When there isn't enough of something to go around, a freely moving price will make sure that thing goes to the person who wants it the most. Not needs it the most. Wants it the most. Want is defined purely by how much other stuff they are willing to give up to have that thing. Effort, intrinsic value, skill, empathy, intelligence, perseverance blah blah blah mean nothing. Supply and demand are king.

I say the free market is democratic because democracy is blind to deep analysis. Democracy doesn't care if you have done your homework. Democracy doesn't care about what we should do, it reflects what we want to do. Our politicians have to moderate what they say based on what we believe. We may say we want politicians with conviction who will lead us, but if they don't get the votes, they don't get the job. The same thing happens with the market. Even huge multi-national companies can nudge our wants and needs, but in truth they spend most of their time trying to respond to our wants. McDonalds is going through an existential crisis of sorts at the moment as demand starts to shift away from burgers to healthier foods. Politicians and Corporations do have power to influence us but we give them their jobs. What they provide is largely a mirror for what type of society we are. We get the leaders we deserve. We get the products we want.

We get the leaders we choose, and the products we want

If your job is your passion, you will likely have to do the same democratic flip flopping. Some people manage the tight rope brilliantly and get incredibly lucky. That is wonderful. Another way to go about it is to stop thinking about how to monetise your passion. Instead, create a mental wall around a certain amount of time you are prepared to do what you must. Without sacrificing any personal beliefs, do the thing that pays the most in the time you are prepared to give. FastCompany.com gives a few stories of famous creative minds that didn't give up their day jobs. "I was careful," Philip Glass explains, "to take a job that couldn't have any possible meaning for me."

What Glass is doing is putting the job in its place. It is a muse. It is there to allow his passions to develop elsewhere. His 'meaning' could come from his passion. Effectively this releases his passion from responsibility as breadwinner and allows the passion to be a homemaker.

If you can release your passion from supply and demand, it will have a democracy of one. You.

Let the Sole loose

Intelligence is difficult to define because it comes in so many forms. Curiosity is a good proxy. Teaching then Testing someone on a skill is still a little like giving them a fish. Developing curiosity is like teaching them to fish.

I like the idea behind Sugata Mitra's Self Organised Learning Environments (SOLEs). It goes along with the democratisation of everything. Letting people loose with well intentioned but cynical curiosity (don't believe everything but come up with bold theories and test them) is bound to be a better way to learn. Teacher's as cheerleaders for learning rather than dispenser's of knowledge. All very exciting stuff.

I don't agree with everything he says. I don't think 'knowing is obsolete'. I regret the fact that my mental maths is worse than when I was 12 because of Excel (and laziness). The mind is still a super computer and incredibly powerful. Having the tools to find things out is clearly incredibly important - but knowing things helps connect the dots. Mental muscle memory will still smash a Google search.

I fully agree that democratising the way we learn is the way forward.

Exciting times.