September 30th, 2023: Greetings from Taichung, Taiwan. We’re celebrating mid-autumn moon festival with family for the weekend! Here’s a video from the train down south last weekend: + My friend Ravi is hosting a quarterly goal planning session today and Tuesday. He’s one of the most thoughtful people I know and is an interesting mix of tech founder and practicing Zen Buddhist.
“Can’t give people something for nothing” encapsulates so well the myth of the self-made individual.
I live in Europe and we have been influenced by the same myth. There is also a social angle. In Northern countries, it’s about finding your spot and doing something that generates tax revenue so that the welfare state can continue operating.
I think we have more acceptance for commonly owned goods and that you don’t need to “earn” access to them. But if someone isn’t employed normally, they may be perceived as freeloaders.
I'm really appreciating your insight -- part-way through your article -- yet this notion of "unlearning" is so unhelpful.
From everything I've learned about learning (NLP plus cross-cultural studies in many forms), the brain can't unlearn; the brain can only learn. So re-wiring or re-learning would be more helpful concept, I believe.
For my fellow Americans, what if we understood that we can change the money paradigms that underpin many people's thinking?
What if we re-wrote the near-invisible thought structures that so many think are just "true" and "just the way it is"?
The most striking thing about your article is the massive impact that these unconscious cultural narratives have on how the world works. "We start with our scripts about how the world works and then take action on the world in order to make that our reality." And then, of course, claim that it's the way the world works that is shaping our narrative and not the other way around. It's like having a magic trick explained to you and realizing you don't have to be fooled any longer. But the courage to live a different story when everyone is pretending the emperor has clothes is not something everyone can muster.
Definitely! I think we can only point to the magic trick but even still most people will ignore it.
And even me, I'm definitely remixing the path but when I really think about it assume I'm still in a very narrow range of what I see as "possible."
Living in different countries has made me realize both how stick and flexible these scripts are. We are all essentially the same yet behave quite differently based on the structures around us. In Taiwan people think the US healthcare system is a human rights issue, they can't even conceive of why we put up with it. But in the US, people think a universal healthcare system must be evil or terrible.
Exactly. And that "behaving differently based on the structures around us" can be a prison, but it's also an opportunity for an intentional thought community to provide an alternatively influential structure. Like you're doing with Find the Others. There's never an end to stalking one's own scripts and dropping them when they aren't serving you any more. Now that's a game worth playing.
There is an important macro reality that cannot be ignored; namely, the effects (seen and unseen) of going off a hard money standard back in the 70s.
We now operate in a credit-based, consumption-based, high time preference economy where money is printed up for almost nothing and currencies (USD, but other currencies even more so) are being debased such that purchasing power is in decline every year, responsible saving is disincentivized, and monetary premium finds its way into scarce assets (eg the housing market).
Quite frankly, this isn’t sustainable, and whether we notice it in our day-to-day or not, a broken monetary system absolutely changes the incentive structure for how we should view work - and not necessarily for the better. (Consider, for example, the not-insignificant portion of the economy focused on gaming our monetary and tax structure to their advantage, rather than by producing a good or service).
While the obvious (though not at all easy to achieve) solution is to return to a sound money standard; it’s not likely to happen without some serious suffering.
In the meantime, it’s worth considering what it means to be a worker within a broken monetary system and warped incentive structure.
i think a lot of this contributes to the weirdness of working in this economy for sure. I'm just not sure a "fix" is going to arrive...it could just keep getting weirder
Really enjoyed this article Paul, and I also agree with this comment from Ben H. However I see a fix that has already arrived, it is Bitcoin. We finally have a sound, decentralized and digitally native money that can return normalcy to the economy and markets globally while enabling a network effect of 8 billion people to participate, no matter their location or class. A Bitcoin standard would reduce US dominance and empower people everywhere to work hard, plan and save for the future once again. In our fiat world post 1971, the debasement of money and the silent theft of inflation has led to many of the inequalities you highlighted in this piece.
id call it more of an untested hypothesis. but sure, it is one a lot of people believe can work. I just don't think it's arrived in people's reality tunnels of how the world works which is my point in the essay - people's scripts about what is possible are VERY sticky and hard to shift. and we more or less try to prove the stories in our head. you might like robert anton wilsons writing on this - American Prometheus is a fun book
Appreciate the perspective-as always. Even though I’m on my own somewhat Pathless Path, I find myself thinking in the scripts that I knew so well growing up. There is an especially strong one running in my mind due to our growing family size and wanting to buy a house in the future. Or even when we have the conversation of ‘so what do you do’ at different meal times with friends and neighbours.
This is an important conversation to have but I have found that most people have the scripts so indoctrinated that it’s almost impossible to make an impact in a short setting. This is something that requires either the right place or the right time--when someone is ready to hear it--or a constant unwinding of scripts that live at home in the grooves of our subconscious.
I’ve sort of mentally decided owning a home is not something I want to think about for 3-5 years. So we’ve decided to go all in on renting exactly where we want to live. Has been
Great post. Low economic inequality also leads to less depression. Suppose a person was doing well in middle school in Taiwan, and you dropped him into the United States where he suddenly couldn't speak English: the sudden change in hierarchy, the loneliness of looking upwards at people who've got it, who talk about you like you don't possess language, will destroy one's idea of self.
Meanwhile, in Taiwan, which is affordable, where the best pleasures (food) can be bought for very little price, a relatively "poor" person does not face the same humiliation as the same "poor" person in China where he sees rich people doing things like showing up to expensive restaurants in bath robes just to perform a fuck-you to the restaurant. When my parents grew up in China, because of Mao's epic economic mismanagement, everyone was poor: thus, though everyone was poor, they lacked a sense of their own poverty: they did not FEEL poor because there were no rich people flaunting their wealth and destroying their sense of worth.
Yeah and I sense social media has hyper-charged this. I do feel that in Taiwan everyone feels much better and know what you are talking about moving between countries. Angie definitely feels a change in status going from Taiwan (where she is "successful") to the US where she is still trying to find her footing
Of all your articles Paul this really connected with my experience of work and career. Some big issues here that scream ‘UBI’ or some other big picture rethink. Have I missed any articles you have done on UBI or do you prefer to steer clear of policy (and political) talk? Probably wise! Thanks for this :)
i find most policy discussion simplifies down to this take versus that take. I find that is more about power dynamics than ideas so just generally don't get as excited about it. The thread of my writing is really about personal awakening and playing your own game, I sense thats my best contribution to any discussion. I think its quite obvious to me something like UBI will be neeeded but is already sort of built into our economy. healthcare is already free below a certain income but I'd love to see these things be less tied to employment
Yeah I just dont know - I still can't predict the future yet haha
I have a similar thing with my parents. I think a lot of it is projecting fears on other people. We have a hard time "trying on" other people's realities
“Can’t give people something for nothing” encapsulates so well the myth of the self-made individual.
I live in Europe and we have been influenced by the same myth. There is also a social angle. In Northern countries, it’s about finding your spot and doing something that generates tax revenue so that the welfare state can continue operating.
I think we have more acceptance for commonly owned goods and that you don’t need to “earn” access to them. But if someone isn’t employed normally, they may be perceived as freeloaders.
I'm really appreciating your insight -- part-way through your article -- yet this notion of "unlearning" is so unhelpful.
From everything I've learned about learning (NLP plus cross-cultural studies in many forms), the brain can't unlearn; the brain can only learn. So re-wiring or re-learning would be more helpful concept, I believe.
For my fellow Americans, what if we understood that we can change the money paradigms that underpin many people's thinking?
What if we re-wrote the near-invisible thought structures that so many think are just "true" and "just the way it is"?
We can do such things...
ah thats interesting! Can you point me to something to read on the relarning/nlp front?
Sure.
Transformational NLP by Carl Buchheit. Who I studied with.
work by Lisa Feldman Barrett, like 7 1/2 Lessons about the Brain
The most striking thing about your article is the massive impact that these unconscious cultural narratives have on how the world works. "We start with our scripts about how the world works and then take action on the world in order to make that our reality." And then, of course, claim that it's the way the world works that is shaping our narrative and not the other way around. It's like having a magic trick explained to you and realizing you don't have to be fooled any longer. But the courage to live a different story when everyone is pretending the emperor has clothes is not something everyone can muster.
Definitely! I think we can only point to the magic trick but even still most people will ignore it.
And even me, I'm definitely remixing the path but when I really think about it assume I'm still in a very narrow range of what I see as "possible."
Living in different countries has made me realize both how stick and flexible these scripts are. We are all essentially the same yet behave quite differently based on the structures around us. In Taiwan people think the US healthcare system is a human rights issue, they can't even conceive of why we put up with it. But in the US, people think a universal healthcare system must be evil or terrible.
Exactly. And that "behaving differently based on the structures around us" can be a prison, but it's also an opportunity for an intentional thought community to provide an alternatively influential structure. Like you're doing with Find the Others. There's never an end to stalking one's own scripts and dropping them when they aren't serving you any more. Now that's a game worth playing.
Appreciate this week’s newsletter, thank you.
There is an important macro reality that cannot be ignored; namely, the effects (seen and unseen) of going off a hard money standard back in the 70s.
We now operate in a credit-based, consumption-based, high time preference economy where money is printed up for almost nothing and currencies (USD, but other currencies even more so) are being debased such that purchasing power is in decline every year, responsible saving is disincentivized, and monetary premium finds its way into scarce assets (eg the housing market).
Quite frankly, this isn’t sustainable, and whether we notice it in our day-to-day or not, a broken monetary system absolutely changes the incentive structure for how we should view work - and not necessarily for the better. (Consider, for example, the not-insignificant portion of the economy focused on gaming our monetary and tax structure to their advantage, rather than by producing a good or service).
While the obvious (though not at all easy to achieve) solution is to return to a sound money standard; it’s not likely to happen without some serious suffering.
In the meantime, it’s worth considering what it means to be a worker within a broken monetary system and warped incentive structure.
i think a lot of this contributes to the weirdness of working in this economy for sure. I'm just not sure a "fix" is going to arrive...it could just keep getting weirder
Really enjoyed this article Paul, and I also agree with this comment from Ben H. However I see a fix that has already arrived, it is Bitcoin. We finally have a sound, decentralized and digitally native money that can return normalcy to the economy and markets globally while enabling a network effect of 8 billion people to participate, no matter their location or class. A Bitcoin standard would reduce US dominance and empower people everywhere to work hard, plan and save for the future once again. In our fiat world post 1971, the debasement of money and the silent theft of inflation has led to many of the inequalities you highlighted in this piece.
id call it more of an untested hypothesis. but sure, it is one a lot of people believe can work. I just don't think it's arrived in people's reality tunnels of how the world works which is my point in the essay - people's scripts about what is possible are VERY sticky and hard to shift. and we more or less try to prove the stories in our head. you might like robert anton wilsons writing on this - American Prometheus is a fun book
Thank you Paul for the shout out! I really like this reflection and something I have personally noticed since entering the workforce too.
"They didn’t suddenly all become interested in technology, they just knew where the money was." - this is awfully true
Also coincidentally that you touched on individuality in America, am just reading this piece by Rex Woodbury on it
https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/the-hyper-personalization-of-everything
Appreciate the perspective-as always. Even though I’m on my own somewhat Pathless Path, I find myself thinking in the scripts that I knew so well growing up. There is an especially strong one running in my mind due to our growing family size and wanting to buy a house in the future. Or even when we have the conversation of ‘so what do you do’ at different meal times with friends and neighbours.
This is an important conversation to have but I have found that most people have the scripts so indoctrinated that it’s almost impossible to make an impact in a short setting. This is something that requires either the right place or the right time--when someone is ready to hear it--or a constant unwinding of scripts that live at home in the grooves of our subconscious.
I’ve sort of mentally decided owning a home is not something I want to think about for 3-5 years. So we’ve decided to go all in on renting exactly where we want to live. Has been
Wake up, Uncle Sam: Is the US military ready to take on Russia and China?
30 years after achieving total dominance, has the Ukraine conflict exposed the limits of American power?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes
Great post. Low economic inequality also leads to less depression. Suppose a person was doing well in middle school in Taiwan, and you dropped him into the United States where he suddenly couldn't speak English: the sudden change in hierarchy, the loneliness of looking upwards at people who've got it, who talk about you like you don't possess language, will destroy one's idea of self.
Meanwhile, in Taiwan, which is affordable, where the best pleasures (food) can be bought for very little price, a relatively "poor" person does not face the same humiliation as the same "poor" person in China where he sees rich people doing things like showing up to expensive restaurants in bath robes just to perform a fuck-you to the restaurant. When my parents grew up in China, because of Mao's epic economic mismanagement, everyone was poor: thus, though everyone was poor, they lacked a sense of their own poverty: they did not FEEL poor because there were no rich people flaunting their wealth and destroying their sense of worth.
Yeah and I sense social media has hyper-charged this. I do feel that in Taiwan everyone feels much better and know what you are talking about moving between countries. Angie definitely feels a change in status going from Taiwan (where she is "successful") to the US where she is still trying to find her footing
Of all your articles Paul this really connected with my experience of work and career. Some big issues here that scream ‘UBI’ or some other big picture rethink. Have I missed any articles you have done on UBI or do you prefer to steer clear of policy (and political) talk? Probably wise! Thanks for this :)
i find most policy discussion simplifies down to this take versus that take. I find that is more about power dynamics than ideas so just generally don't get as excited about it. The thread of my writing is really about personal awakening and playing your own game, I sense thats my best contribution to any discussion. I think its quite obvious to me something like UBI will be neeeded but is already sort of built into our economy. healthcare is already free below a certain income but I'd love to see these things be less tied to employment
Yeah I just dont know - I still can't predict the future yet haha
I have a similar thing with my parents. I think a lot of it is projecting fears on other people. We have a hard time "trying on" other people's realities
agreed - I wasn't trying to simplify that issue, sorry if you thought I was!