This way if thinking is critical. I call every day with people who ask for “best practices” from “experts” who have little to no knowledge of their business or environment, this every fail to foresee 2nd or 3rd order impacts.
The "and then what X3" and sunk costs fallacy are you things I already do and thoroughly recommend them 🤭
My only suggestion is to maybe change the format and deal with each one separately, or maybe it's better to do as you did and deal with multiple similar themes in each post (I don't know which is better).
But I found the essay clear and concise, so thanks for that 👍🏼
I especially liked the example of Thales. One of my gripes about the modern age is the Cul-de-sac infatuation people have with making money instead of living life. Culturally, across countries, everything seems geared towards transmuting money as the most important signifier of success, which while it can be important, we've forgotten about getting to "the truth" or becoming "wise" or living healthy, etc, which are almost priceless.
Your thought about our cultural obsession with money is something I consider frequently, and when writing this piece I asked myself if I was learning too much into that.
But I think economic tools/models/thinking/incentives would be critical to understand even if we lived in a world without money or capitalism because the underlying human drives and biases would transmute into different forms with the same underlying principles.
I think it's fascinating to consider communism, in its multiple implementations across the world in the 20th century, and how economic tools still applied and wreaked havoc. I'd also suggest that the Spanish Civil War was probably lost because one side gave more thought to markets and human psychology than the other.
Money and markets aren't the only thing by a long shot, but if you get it right you can get a lot of other things wrong and still win.
I agree on the need to reinforce thinking and tools, bringing back what could be considered old world tech to better navigate our present.
Communism was a disaster, mostly everywhere. That said, the critiques of industrial and financial capitalism its adherents made shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. I'm not well read on the Spanish civil war.
It's worthwhile to keep in mind we've had different forms of capitalism since at least a couple millennia bc. But the financialization of the world since the 80s and the modern legal frameworks post WW2 have reduced our current western civ (in general terms) to a farce. Money as a store of value and unit of exchange should always have a place. But human beings placing capitalism on a pedestal, idolizing it without looking at the details and reducing meaning to life from money, commodifying everything, the ubiquity of usury, etc, it also sort of looks like "in the name of capitalism" we're blinded by the same ideological convictions and blinders of past communists who were also striving towards "progress" ad infinitum. At the moment there's no opt out and a cursory glance at how dystopian 2020-22 was, coupled with current AI, drones and Ellison's vision of everyone needing to be on their best behavior... At some point we need to find a better way and mitigate the downsides.
Gained a lot from this read, the map you made was very intuitive and revealing of how incentives drive the individual and economy as a whole.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
This way if thinking is critical. I call every day with people who ask for “best practices” from “experts” who have little to no knowledge of their business or environment, this every fail to foresee 2nd or 3rd order impacts.
These thinking tools are life changing. I would definitely be interested in seeing more.
Will do. Thanks.
The "and then what X3" and sunk costs fallacy are you things I already do and thoroughly recommend them 🤭
My only suggestion is to maybe change the format and deal with each one separately, or maybe it's better to do as you did and deal with multiple similar themes in each post (I don't know which is better).
But I found the essay clear and concise, so thanks for that 👍🏼
I especially liked the example of Thales. One of my gripes about the modern age is the Cul-de-sac infatuation people have with making money instead of living life. Culturally, across countries, everything seems geared towards transmuting money as the most important signifier of success, which while it can be important, we've forgotten about getting to "the truth" or becoming "wise" or living healthy, etc, which are almost priceless.
Your thought about our cultural obsession with money is something I consider frequently, and when writing this piece I asked myself if I was learning too much into that.
But I think economic tools/models/thinking/incentives would be critical to understand even if we lived in a world without money or capitalism because the underlying human drives and biases would transmute into different forms with the same underlying principles.
I think it's fascinating to consider communism, in its multiple implementations across the world in the 20th century, and how economic tools still applied and wreaked havoc. I'd also suggest that the Spanish Civil War was probably lost because one side gave more thought to markets and human psychology than the other.
Money and markets aren't the only thing by a long shot, but if you get it right you can get a lot of other things wrong and still win.
I agree on the need to reinforce thinking and tools, bringing back what could be considered old world tech to better navigate our present.
Communism was a disaster, mostly everywhere. That said, the critiques of industrial and financial capitalism its adherents made shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. I'm not well read on the Spanish civil war.
It's worthwhile to keep in mind we've had different forms of capitalism since at least a couple millennia bc. But the financialization of the world since the 80s and the modern legal frameworks post WW2 have reduced our current western civ (in general terms) to a farce. Money as a store of value and unit of exchange should always have a place. But human beings placing capitalism on a pedestal, idolizing it without looking at the details and reducing meaning to life from money, commodifying everything, the ubiquity of usury, etc, it also sort of looks like "in the name of capitalism" we're blinded by the same ideological convictions and blinders of past communists who were also striving towards "progress" ad infinitum. At the moment there's no opt out and a cursory glance at how dystopian 2020-22 was, coupled with current AI, drones and Ellison's vision of everyone needing to be on their best behavior... At some point we need to find a better way and mitigate the downsides.
Yep. I'm pulling for some better incentives.