At Scale

'Big Solutions' take a lot of people agreeing and a strong vision of where the destination is. Bringing empowered people along with you is difficult at scale. Like herding cats, getting a bunch of strong-willed individuals to 'get on board' requires top-down control, and (strength to unsustainably overcome un-)willing followers. Complete individuality doesn't scale either. We have to cooperate given we don't live on desert islands by ourselves. There is a middle ground. Voluntary Association can scale. Pushing ourselves outside our comfort zone in who we mix with, but not so much that we break. Accepting our foibles and dark-sides as people, but not at the expense of rejecting the better angels of our nature. Micro-ambitious 'solutions' may just be questions, but the spreading of questions may be more powerful than the spreading of answers.

Accepting the dark side?

More Mitzfahs

Who pays? In a world with fewer rules and more freedom to create your own path, there is bound to be more confusion. One of those areas is etiquette. The feminist male who wanders into the world of dating has to decide how to approach this with care. When the bill comes, my approach has always been to put my card down and wait and see. If the waiter comes comes and the bill is settled. I have my answer. If she puts her card next to mine. I have my answer. Some ladies want you to then say, no let me get it. Some ladies will get offended if you say that. I choose not to second guess. A friend of mine cheekily suggests you cover your bases and say, 'No, let me get this. You can get breakfast.'

Then there is the bravado dilemma when a group of people go out, and one person insists on paying. A discussion ensues where a couple of people are saying they would like to be the one to pay. They certainly can't accept the other one paying for their meal. One of the sneakiest players of this game I have seen stirred between two of the arguers. In the mean time, he 'went to the loo'. He returned and stirred some more. Peacock feathers on full display he stirred some more. Then suggested we go somewhere for a drink. Apparently, someone had already settled the bill.

I have never been in a situation where someone has argued that the other person should pay. Sometimes, a person will wonder off to look at something or simply make no movement towards the bill as if it hasn't appeared, but I have never seen an argument. It is much easier to offer than to ask.

Because money simplifies things to an exchange, and most things are offered by the market, asking isn't really a skill we feel all that comfortable with. Beyond asking, accepting an offer is something that seems to be hard to do to. I was chatting to a new Mum recently asking whether she was able to team up with other new parents to grab a few hours here and there. Dropping little man off with another parent for just a little while could allow a regathering of energy. She said that there were often offers but people seldom took each other up. Accepting an offer can feel like an imposition. Even with close friends.

I love the Jewish term of a 'Mitzvah'. The way I understand it, you are giving someone a gift by giving them the opportunity to help you. It is a Mitzvah for them to do an act of human kindness. This makes sense to me. Whether it is paying for a date, paying for a group of friends at dinner, doing some babysitting or helping a friend move house - there is pleasure in feeling like you have helped someone out.

Doctors in South Africa do a couple of years of community service. Lawyers are known for doing Pro Bono work. The Yoga centre I go to is run completely by volunteers. Even the full time staff only receive a nominal allowance rather than compensation. Doing something without it being an exchange feels good.

We spend a lot of time thinking about earning a living. Ideally something we are good at, that people need (so it pays reasonably) and that we love doing. That's awesome. But if we can create muses we can free up time to do and to receive more mitzfahs.

Free

The dynamic is very different when you charge for something. The Yoga Centre I go to is a not for profit. The culture of running something purely on donations/alms did not translate well from India, so they started to charge. The full time staff live at the centres and beyond food and lodging, do not receive much more than pocket money. Their lives tend to revolve almost entirely around the organisation. The rest of the input comes from volunteers. I, for example, volunteer as a teacher once or twice a week. They rely on people to donate time to help cook, clean, market, tend the gardens and generally keep the centres running. It provides a very different atmosphere. There are times when it leaves the staff who are there rather thin on the ground. It is difficult to know when people will give of their time, and plan. There is no sense of contractual obligation.

Volunteer Teacher at the Sivananda Yoga Centre

How to finance and do charity work is a challenging question. There are those who want to commit their lives to doing work for others. You have to eat though. We also have to recognise that we are people, not saints or heroes, and we are going to want to do some things for ourselves. One of the most effective ways to make a difference may be to work at the job that pays the most. You then have money to donate to charities or good causes. This was the conclusion of one of Peter Singer's philosophy students. Singer gives practical examples of ways to respond in his book 'The Life You Can Save'.

Another approach may be to divide your career in parts. Once you have the firepower to 'be your own patron', you can independently pursue what you would like to do. Bill Gates is clearly his own patron and doing amazing things, but you don't have to be a bazillionaire if your tastes are simple. You may also not have Gate's talent at running an effective altruistic organisation. Warren Buffet decided his core skill lay in growing money and he would make the most difference by growing that money and then (much later) giving it to someone else (his buddy Bill) to spend effectively. Buffett isn't that much of a spender. Although we may think wealthy people hoard piles of money like Scrooge McDuck, money isn't actually a thing. When someone has their money in an offshore account, they don't actually have anything there other than a paper trail. Buffett doesn't actually even like or understand why you should own gold. He doesn't understand why you would dig something out of the ground just to put it into a safe. Instead he invests in productive assets. Businesses. These businesses make stuff and do things people want. Since Buffett is happy with a simple(ish) life and doesn't need the profit, he prefers to invest it back into businesses and increase the ability to provide more goods and services that people want. He isn't stopping people from getting things, he is helping them in a different way.

Dig it up. Hide it away. But why?

I don't know the figures, but I suspect Yale university could provide education for free. They have a huge endowment that carries on growing. Free has a different dynamic though. It would certainly mean the application process would change. MOOCs are close to free. I suspect the drop out rates are higher than at Yale. Paying a lot for something is one way to ensure you value it. If the Yoga Centre suddenly had a massive endowment and could provide the Yoga, the books, the courses, the food, the accommodation etc. for free - should they do it? Money gives us a way of understanding transactions and what the rules are. When it is removed, we move into more confusing, emotional territory. Nassim Taleb describes relational vs transactional: 'when you buy goat cheese from your grocer, you have a relationship, not just a transaction, with some kind of bilateral commitment, loyalty, friendship.' Relationships are messy. You can't pay friends and family to be there we you need them. You can't pay them to be thoughtful. There is no service level agreement, and expectations are not guaranteed.

There is something priceless about free. There is something intangibly wonderful about a volunteer organisation. The rules are taken away though and the only thing that makes them work is the investment of time. 

Sustainable Boundaries

Being poor is horrible. Being rich is 'great'. I use the inverted commas because there is definitely a case of careful what you wish for. Malcolm Gladwell touches on this in 'David & Goliath'. 'Getting bigger' is a real challenge for businesses trying to maintain their culture, and for individuals with poor regulations trying to compensate for a loss of trust (see 'sent away'). If you look at an individual as a tiny business, they face similar wealth scale issues. Beyond a certain point where people largely leave each other alone to sort out their own affairs, money actually falls away as a useful 'tool of exchange'. When a really wealthy person walks into a restaurant, the owner may decide to give them the meal on the house. Once we go beyond things that we need into 'Placebo World' the rules go out of the window. You are in story land. People are unsure how to deal with each other and their behaviour changes. Normally considerate people may go the party of a wealthy friend and start wastefully leaving leaving half drunk glasses of expensive champagne, just cause they can. Like the entourages surrounding young rock stars, the Star may not know who their friends are, and who the hyenas are. In 'Sex at Dawn', Ryan and Jetha talk about how students of our closest animal relatives realised that providing food to chimps, to attract and make them easier to observe, changed their behaviour. They became aggressive and instead of helping each other, reciprocating for food that was difficult to come by, they fought over easy pickings.

Money falling away as a signal is also difficult, whether at the two extremes or in the middle, when we look at another source of happiness: Volunteering. When you take money away as a source of compensation and your time becomes a gift, it can be incredibly rewarding. Knowing how to balance this is a challenge. With money and jobs, you don't feel any guilt at all for not working for the competitor. Perhaps the closest we come to this is during interviews where there is a choice between job offers (you should be so lucky say struggling job hunters). When giving time to good causes, typically the need is great. A bottomless need. The more you give, the more those who receive know you are available and it is unlikely they are going to stop asking if they still need help. Saying no when you know that you are using your time for something less important doesn't feel great. Even though you are just a person, not a hero. Peter Singer argues in 'The Life You Can Save' that examples are more useful than heroes anyway. If you can do something sustainable, others are more likely to try and imitate you. If you are a martyr or a saint you are less likely to be able to keep up your ways, and observers are less likely to see that a slight positive change in their behaviour is possible.

Jeffrey Cufaude, who recently wrote a guest post on lifelong learning, is working on a book called 'Say Yes Less'. I hope he touches on the emotional side of saying no. It often sucks. Setting boundaries sucks. But whether it is volunteering just an hour to wash dishes at a yoga centre, or limiting the amount of champagne your chimp friends drink - boundaries are important for sustainable happiness. Being able to set them may mean you volunteer more. That is a good thing.