If you can’t change the world, change your story

The plot of the Wizard of Oz:  “a stranger comes to town and kills the first person she meets, she then recruits a group of strangers to join her in finding and killing the victim’s sister.”  We have a story in our head about the Wizard of Oz, and this story about it is just as factually true as the story in your head. We all have stories in our head about other things too.  And if you are telling yourself a story that is making you miserable, why don’t you tell yourself another story that is just as true, but makes you happy? 
I used to get frustrated when I was passed over for promotions by someone who was less qualified than me, and less skilled at the job, but more skilled at kissing the boss’ butt. I was frustrated because the story I told myself was that I worked at a place that was a meritocracy and treated people fairly.  In surveys, people rate my job as a terrible place to work.  When I started telling myself that this place is dysfunctional and erratic, then I wasn’t upset when I didn’t get the job anymore.  I have several resumes out now, and I’m still interviewing internally.  I have no negative reaction whatsoever anymore because I don’t believe this place makes good choices so **of course** they didn’t pick me.  Why would they make a rational choice at an irrational, dysfunctional place like this?  

Is cryptocurrency just an extension of the internet?

What does the internet do?  I’m not asking about routers and Wifi signals, I’m asking about the purpose. If you think about Amazon and Facebook and Youtube, what do they have in common?  The internet disintermediate things and eliminates time and space.  It cuts out the middle man. With commerce, like Amazon it cuts out the middle men like wholesalers and retailers and lets you look at a product, tap your fingers and it shows up at your day.  It eliminates time and space because you are no longer limited to shopping places within driving distances or your house, or within working hours.  Before the internet, if you wanted to tell your friends something, you had to call them one by one on the phone.  Now time and space is eliminated, you can do it on Facebook.  Hey, want to be famous?  Now you don’t need someone to give you permission to have your own TV show. If you’ve got Gmail, you’ve already got a YouTube channel. You just have to start broadcasting. 
Maybe we’ve been thinking about cryptocurrencies the wrong way?  Maybe it’s not digital gold.  Maybe it’s an extension of the internet?  If it disintermediates and eliminates time and space, what would that look like?  It cuts out the middle man because you can pay people who are aren’t close enough to you for you to give them cash, but without a credit card company taking a cut. You borrow or lend without giving your bank a cut.  And you can use smart contracts to enforce agreements without the lawyers getting their cut.  

 

 

Tradition isn’t a reason, it’s an excuse

Evolution normally produces efficient outcomes, but when a population is small and isolated, like on an island, you can get something called genetic drift and it will produce strange results. Isolated from predators, in a place like Australia, evolution is free to do it’s thing and produce strange new creatures, which wouldn’t survive other places.

In the public sector, there is also isolation from competition. In your city there aren’t two police forces. You can’t call the good police force, the one that actually catches criminals more, and let the bad one go bankrupt. Because there is no competition, they can do a bad job and still exist.

In the 1990s, the drug related crime in NYC was rampant. The narcotics unit of the NYPD, however, was only 5% of the police force. And it worked 9-5 Monday to Friday. Crime didn’t go down until a new Commissioner came in and decided to change it. By working when the criminals work, you are more likely to catch them. Instead of hiring more police, he made them more efficient. It used to take 16 hours to process someone who was arrested for a minor crime. He got that down to one hour by retrofitting some old buses to be mobile police stations. Instead of two cops escorting one suspect to the precinct for booking, then to the courthouse, you can have cops arrest someone in the subway, then take them to the police bus and book them. Then the bus can take many people to the courthouse all at once, while the police officers are free to go make more arrests.

When you look at a system that doesn’t work, ask yourself whether you would design it that way if you were starting over. And if not, then there is not a good reason to keep the old way. Do it better!

Hello,  welcome to my new blog.  I’ve thought about (re)starting a blog for a while.  I enjoy writing and sharing ideas, so this looks like as good as a place for that as any.  I’m not sure if this will be just personal finance, or general life advice, but I’ll start writing and we’ll see what happens. Thanks for joining me.