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Musings Report 2021-51 12-18-21 Why is It So Difficult to Act on What We Now Know?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they're a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
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Why is It So Difficult to Act on What We Now Know?
I've been pondering this account of an epiphany, insight, conversion, decision and action that is increasingly common: San Francisco's vaunted tolerance dims amid brazen crimes: In San Francisco, homeless tents, open drug use, home break-ins and dirty streets have proliferated during the pandemic.
Excerpt:
Cassanego moved to wine country five months ago after stepping out one day to find a man who “looked like a zombie,” with his pants down to his knees and bleeding from where a syringe was stuck on his hip. A woman cried out nearby in shock.
"I went upstairs, and I told my wife, 'We're leaving now! This city is done!'" he said. (End Excerpt)
I know San Francisco fairly well and have many fond memories of the city. We can say that "there will always be a San Francisco" but that doesn't mean we want to live there during its decay spiral.
What I find interesting is the rarity of this resident's decisive response to decisively changing conditions. The vast majority of residents who have had similar experiences stay put and take no action even though it's painfully obvious that San Francisco's jobs and tax revenues are largely dependent on tourism, technology and property/stock bubbles and there are now systemic headwinds to all three: a virus that isn't going away, a free-for-all tech sector that is facing diminishing returns and much tighter regulations and a debt-asset bubble that's about to burst.
At the same time, the political status quo is immovable: whatever is viewed as progressive is sacrosanct and the beliefs of those who support the current status quo are equally fixed.
Booms and busts are famously part of the San Francisco / California story. When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000-2003, San Francisco lost roughly 15% of its jobs and perhaps 10% of its population.
This history supports the comforting belief that any bust will be brief and the city will right itself soon enough.
But this is clearly not realistic: the problems aren't of the boom and bust variety; they are systemic, structural, and embedded in the city's beliefs, zeitgeist, identity, etc.--what I term the social ontology--none of which change quickly.
In other words, that San Francisco is in a decay spiral that is self-reinforcing is obvious. The rational decision would be to exit from a self-reinforcing decay spiral (a very common cycle in cities) early and then return should a Renaissance emerge.
In my view, this is very similar to a business decision: is this a viable business in a viable business sector or not?
In both cases, we have a variety of means to cling on to whatever we have now, a mix of hope, denial, excuses and fantasy, typically leavened by a healthy dose of habituation: the homeless encampment a few yards from your front door goes from appalling to background noise.
Sticking with the status quo has obvious selective advantages in stable times and conditions: those who stayed in the valley could eke out an existence while those who ventured into the unknown faced risks which they may have been unprepared to deal with: Donald Rumsfeld's famous known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
But when conditions are changing in fundamental ways, sticking with the status quo is a dead-end: in those cases, the selective advantage goes to the early movers who not only recognized that conditions had changed fundamentally, but they accepted this rather than papering it over with hope, denial, excuses, fantasy and habituation.
And not only did they accept it, they acted decisively on this knowledge, converting insight into action.
Making big, decisive moves is almost always risky, costly, anxiety-producing and difficult on multiple levels. We tell ourselves we'll make those big, scary decisive moves when it's comfortable to do so: when the kids are out of school, when we're ready to retire, when we have a bit more money, and so on. This is another way of saying "I'm not making any decisive decisions or actions" but in a more palatable fashion: if everything aligns so we can make big moves comfortably, then we'll make them.
But that's not how big, decisive decisions and actions work: they are inherently risky, costly, anxiety-producing and difficult. If you conclude your business is no longer really viable, and neither is the sector (for example, the restaurant business), then the only logical decision is to get out while your business still has some value, or if that's no longer realistic, then get out before losses destroy your capital and agency, i.e. the opportunity to make big, decisive moves.
The younger you are, the less risk and cost you incur by making big decisions and moves because your sunk capital in a career, business, house, family, spouse, etc., is generally much, much smaller than the sunk capital of older people who have invested years or decades of effort and capital.
The irony of risky, big decisions and decisive actions is the sooner you make them, the easier they are, as you're not competing with the panicky herd you'll be dealing with if you wait until the last moment to act.
Like many others, I often refer to the Titanic as an analogy--one of my favorites being "don't let the dessert cart on the Titanic pass you by." I've often pondered what a passenger who did not have the privileges of First Class passengers to board a lifeboat might have done to improve the odds of survival had this passenger acted decisively on what was soon obvious--the great ship was sinking.
One possibility would have been to gather wooden deck chairs nobody was using on that frigid night, find some rope (or fashion an equivalent out of sheets, etc.), lash the wooden chairs together, toss the makeshift raft overboard, lower oneself down and clamber onto the raft. Would this imperfect raft have enabled survival? Perhaps not; the fact the raft was partially submerged in the ice-cold water might have doomed the risk-taker to freezing to death anyway.
But the odds were certainly better than waiting around to join the majority thrashing around in the water for a few moments before their certain demise.
Why do so few people take decisive action after the fundamentals are clearly visible? One dynamic might be that we can't bring ourselves to have the epiphany ("this is no longer tenable, we've got to move") because then we would run out of excuses for not acting.
The greater the sunk costs and commitments, the greater the challenges of extricating ourselves and arranging the big move. When I finally concluded (in my early 30s) that being a building contractor was no longer tenable, it took me two years to wrap up commitments and arrange the move to a new livelihood and home.
This is another reason why all the advantages go to early movers: it's easier to get things done and liquidate possessions when everything is still functioning. Once the decay gathers momentum, then many things lose value and various avenues close down.
A final factor is mourning what's being surrendered / given up. We can't help clinging to our comforts, routines and the security of the known and so we do not give them up easily.
Leaving is hard, sad and wrenching. I will never forget the day we left the house we built, the business we'd put everything we had into and our friends and all that we'd loved about the town and terroir.
But when things are no longer viable or tenable and the situation is in a decay spiral, change will only become more difficult and increasingly out of our control. All the advantages flow to those who act decisively before the herd 1) understands the situation is no longer tenable or 2) is willing to act on this insight.
On the other hand, when we're done with a career, business or place, and I mean really done, we feel an immense relief to be rid of it all and an enthusiasm for the unknown, for there lies opportunity.
An old friend sent me this quote from nitch.com by one of the most unique and insightful writers of the 20th century, Philip K. Dick. I think it applies to today's topic and the progression of epiphany, insight, conversion, decision and action:
"Do not believe... do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new." Philip K. Dick
Highlights of the Blog
podcasts:
Jay Taylor and I discuss why Inflation is a Runaway Freight Train (21 minutes)
A Grand Strategy to Address the Global Crisis (54 min., with Richard Bonugli)
XI's GAMBIT: A Bridge Too Far? (41 min, with Gordon Long)
posts:
One Chart Traders Might Want to Ponder 12/17/21
Smart Enough to Get Rich, Not Smart Enough to Keep It 12/14/21
Get in Crash Positions 12/13/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Recorded four solid podcasts as a guest of Gordon Long, Richard Bonugli, Jay Taylor and Dave of X22 Report. The first three podcasts are listed above, and Dave will release the X22 podcast in the next week. I appreciate being the guest as the host and their staff have to do all the technical work while I just blather on--definitely the easy part.
Honorable mention: a cousin gathered wild fiddle-head ferns (called warabi locally) which my Mom-in-law made into a delightful cold salad. Each stem has to be cleaned carefully by hand, a very tedious task which I break into several sessions.
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
'One Has This Feeling of Having Contributed to Something That’s Gone Very Wrong'--interview with Jaron Lanier...
Is society coming apart? -- short answer: yes, but not necessarily in the way or for the reasons listed here...
"Slow Living" Is The Fastest Growing Trend You Probably Have Not Heard About-- from slow food to slow living...I'm thrilled reading books is part of slow living....
Other articles and technical reports on Marine Debris Research (via Maoxian) -- the ocean as rubbish dump....
The America that Almost Was and Yet May Be
Electro pulse drilling -- potentially scalable advance in geothermal well drilling...
Incredible Cave Paintings 8 Miles-Long Revealed Deep in Amazon Forest: The Sistine Chapel of Ancients
Collapse in a Nutshell: Understanding Our Predicament (33 min)
Sitting out the season: A record number of Americans say they won’t be buying holiday gifts this year -- nice reduction in the Landfill Economy....
Goodbye to job: how the pandemic changed Americans’ attitude to work -- consequential changes in society, labor, capital and agency....
The Riches Are in the Niches -- interesting essay about brands..."A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product, service, or company."
China’s Growth Model Is in Crisis -- well worth a careful read; you will understand the fundamentals of China's economy much better after absorbing this essay...
Drawing bought for $30 at estate sale is actually worth $50 million (via Maoxian) -- we should be so lucky, right?...
"If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." Orson Welles
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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