Give more than you Take
I like venture capitalist Chamath Pahihapitiya, and I was watching him talk about how at this time in his life, he knows what he has to offer is his ability to take a 3 or 4 billion dollar balance sheet and 10X it. So we all have something to offer.
What I’m actually thinking about today is how, at any given cycle in your life — cycles like those I described yesterday being theoretical, but also very real — you have to make choices about how to pull yourself up. And ultimately any choice about growing oneself is, in my capitalist mind, a choice about what kind of value you offer the society around you and how to provide it. (Separately, not discussed here, how to get paid for it.) I think economists would actually describe this in terms of, maybe, productivity? Being more productive means providing something to the market — to someone else — that adds more value than it cost you to make it.
I think if you are upside down, in debt of various kinds, increase in productivity can be about minimizing the costs you’re putting on those around you. No matter your station, I think you can move in the right direction.
That homeless guy who shorted me 7 cents on his cigar could start panhandling for the taxes on his swisher cigarettes so he’s not pushing externalized costs on an undeserving distributor of his purchased goods, my employer of one week, 7-11. If he knows how to write, he could buy paper and start writing his thoughts down and handing his thoughts to other people who will hear him. Perhaps there isn’t going to be many interested readers, but I bet he could find one. Is this value? Yeah, I think so.
When people create a thing and show it to somebody, it’s got a significant chance of being valuable, if it’s done sincerely.
I’m not saying he can get paid for this. I’m not talking about solving the problem of poverty, I’m talking about solving the problem of having subtractive value to those around you. You solve that problem by finding a way to give more than you take, at whatever level you can do that.
I do not think this is any different in shape than Chamath the billionaire using his skills to help someone grow their 3-4b balance sheet to 30-40b. I think it’s the exact same behavior.
Now, this won’t get you fed today. The Spiritual practice of giving more than you take will not buy bread tonight. But, learning to behave in this way is the way out of any hole.
And it’s not straight up, it’s a cycle that circles back on itself, without exception. But this is the way out. This is the way out if you’re stuck with a dangerous psychopath in a relationship — you insist on finding a way to give more than you take from the people you interact with, and then you realize that the physics of psychopaths actually necessitates you escape from them in order to begin providing that value, because in their orbit, it’s impossible to give anybody more than you take, and if you are tied deeply to one, you have to cut ties and survive that tie-cutting first. The gravity of psychopaths sucks everything away from you and everything away from anyone you touch. So, first, you must escape. That’s step one in beginning to provide more than you take.
All your baked in disadvantages and advantages will apply. I’m weak at protecting myself against psychological attack, but have a degree in literature. I’m good at reading widely to learn and I’m good at seeing opportunities. That homeless guy, he’s probably not so great with literature, I’m going to guess, but he’s impervious to psychological attack. I stared him down hard when he underpaid for his cigarette by 7 cents and he didn’t mind.
So, you lean into your strengths, give more than you take, and keep leveling up. It’s the only way out of the hole and it always works, probabilistically. It’s like buying scratchy lottery tickets, but the opposite. 100% of the time when you buy a scratchy, you have a mathematical “expected value” return of somewhere less than the amount spent, it’s an EV- move. 100% of the time when you give more than you take, you have a mathematical expected value return of somewhere more than the amount you spent. An EV+ move.
EV is probabilistic so it can only be measured over the long run, never moment to moment, since you’ll mistake losses for being meaningful when they aren’t (just like lottery winnings are not meaningful). Sometimes you get hit by a bus, or killed while unarmed by a racist police force, or you land on the massive slide just before the end of the shoots and ladders game. But none of those things are meaningful, ultimately, as reality is not zero sum the way Shoots and Ladders is.
So, the reality of human existence is certainly a grind, but because of this EV+ spiritual return on generous behavior, it’s not too bad a situation to be in. We’re doing okay for primates.