Author: earl

Universal independence

We’re all looking for ways to monetize our values.

Why not just live them? Well, any method for living a comfortable life today requires money. And it requires significant risk and skill to live a life that both embodies your values and acquires money. It’s far easier to 1) come into money in a way that doesn’t embody your values, then use that money to stop and live comfortably or 2) become comfortable with less money and potentially risk catastrophic circumstance for your family (medical bankruptcy, insufficient access to child education, etc).

I myself have worked for companies I could justify in my mind but deep down I knew were problematic. I acquired money from them, now I live comfortably and write about my experiences – taking on some risk that’s cushioned by my self-assessed dirty money and using skills I acquired from my means acquiring it.

Ultimately, shouldn’t each of us opt to climb the economic ladder the best we can even if we have misgivings along the way? Who can blame us for taking the path to this comfortable life while being served just enough koolaid to free ourselves from guilt? Nevertheless it seems there must be a better way.

How can we retain the people-centric benefits of a market-based economy while radically widening the access to a comfortable life? Universal access to a comfortable life is right. And capitalism is what enables us to acquire the money to redistribute that enables it.

I understand that it’s scary to design your life around multiple generations of guidance that “wealth acquisition is the key to freedom, the best chance for your children to pursue their dreams, and personal happiness.” I am a child of those generations and I can attest is it scary.

Independence is coveted and glorified and idolized in America. Self-sufficiency. How do we create a society where people feel self-sufficient while relying on a government check?

The answer is that any of us who have become “self-sufficient” only did it by building on top of the public infrastructure of society. How many of us get to work on the roads we publicly pay for and own with your taxes? How many can participate in the economy because of public education system for your children? How many can retire and care for and love and spend time with our grandkids because of social security? How many have had someone in our family unexpectedly hospitalized and not gone bankrupt because of medicare? These are measures that ENHANCE our economy – not detract from it. They don’t make you less independent, they enable you to be more independent.

Freedom from the control and influence of massive companies is more independent than freedom from public infrastructure that makes opportunity and comfort universal.

Public, universal services pave the road to our personal independence.

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Our convenience addiction

One of my favorite writings from the past couple years is called The Tyranny of Convenience. It neatly captures the primary, often unspoken driver of many decisions we make.

But our obsession with convenience may be even more dangerous than the oppressive rule of tyranny. If it were oppressive rule, a band of people could come together to overthrow it – either via democracy, revolution, or coup.

Instead, the danger of convenience is that it comes from inside each of us like an addiction. And how could we not love convenience? It saves us time. Increasingly, it saves us money. We love convenience so much we will sacrifice seemingly any other priority for it.

I espouse many beliefs. But I seem to only put my money where my mouth is when it’s sufficiently convenient. My money says Amazon’s convenience is more important to me than my concerns with their labor practices and ruthless optimization of our society. My mouth says it’s not.

For my own mental health, I’ve sent the past year trying to align my behavior with my beliefs. A primary method of doing this has been this simple 3 step plan:

  • Consider not buying something at all unless I plan to keep it for at least the rest of my life
  • When I do buy something, spend more time researching and shopping for the right product
  • Whenever possible, buy that product second-hand from a local and independent business

But who has the time to do this while all of our own jobs are increasingly optimized so we can make other people’s lives more convenient? We spend a lot of time thinking of companies as product offerers. Perhaps we should spend more time thinking of them as employers.

The dual role most of us play as employees of a company and consumers of many companies’ products perpetuate the cycle. We don’t have enough money so we want prices to go down…so companies cut wages and lower prices. By focusing more on our roles as employees / workers rather than our roles as consumers, we may be able to break the cycle.

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Just do it (for yourself)

Our market-based economy is built on the foundational assumption that behavior can be significantly influenced by extrinsic – external – factors. These external factors – money, rewards, positive feedback, impressing others, etc – have proven to change our decisions from what we may do intrinsically. The external motivators that create the “market” motivate us to do what’s best for others…by aligning it with what’s best for ourselves. 

This may not be such a bad thing. Human nature may make it too tempting to wallow our lives away without external incentives. But it’s taken me years of therapy to rediscover how to even sense my intrinsic – internal – motivations. In fact, a fully realized market economy requires that we ignore or infinately obscure our intrinsic motivations. A fully realized market economy, by definition, means complete “optimization” of human behavior. It means blindly supplying what others demand without regard for our own desires, morals, or feelings.

Internet software radically accelerates our progress towards this future. All the biggest Internet services are simply unemotionally optimized marketplaces: Amazon for products, Uber for transportation, Facebook for communication, YouTube and Netflix for entertainment, Google for information, etc. 

Yet I still believe we can find our intrinsic purposes. It takes more intention, more effort, and more will than ever – but it is perhaps the most important ingredient I’ve found for fulfillment, for peace, for satisfaction, for happiness. There have been many attempts to find the “market value” of intrinsic purpose. But as soon as it has a market value, it’s no longer intrinsic. By calculating and triangulating a “purpose” that will be most appealing to the widest audience, it no longer comes from inside ourselves.

Ironically, acquiring a good bit of the most common extrinsic motivator – money – has given me the privilege (time and freedom) to investigate my own intrinsic motivations. But it’s also caused me to need to. 

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Writing for me for you.

Over the past year or so, I’ve written 3-5 notes for myself in the Bear app each day. In total, thousands of notes in 2019 alone. Most are fleeting observations or thoughts on a few consistent themes:

  • Optimizing convenience (and thereby everything else – especially labor)
  • The relationship between ecological survival and economic growth
  • The cultural impact of prosperity glorification and wealth inequality
  • Wondering what to consider success in modern society

Most thoughts boil down to examples of how our world is governed by human psychology, not cost-benefit analysis.

Writing helps me think better. But writing for an unknown audience makes me write worse (because I over-explain almost everything).

So this is my attempt to write for myself and let other people see it.

A few other miscellaneous bits:

  • I’m writing anonymously because some of these thoughts may be at odds with my employer’s financial success. Earl was my imaginary friend when I was a kid. So that’s the author name.
  • Everything published here is stream-of-consciousness – these are not edited essays.
  • I’m susceptible to over-organizing – so I won’t here. I’ll share random ideas, observations, data analyses, links, and anything else.
  • I’ll try to publish every day. That won’t be difficult if I can become comfortable sharing what I already write privately.
  • Sharing my thoughts here will not replace discussing them with people I know and trust. If it does, I will stop publishing here. Those conversations are much more valuable to everyone involved.
  • I haven’t published to any social media channels in over a year and I plan to keep it that way. Divesting my attention from feeds has been one of the best feelings of my adult life. As a result, you’ll have to visit this site directly to find this information.
  • Nothing is off-limits.
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