Money is Power, But Wisdom is Best

Money is Power, But Wisdom is Best

The goal when making a decision is to be right. The same goes for when confronted with problems and arguments. We want to solve them and win them, respectively. Doesn’t everyone, especially lawyers, want to win every argument? However, most non-mathematical problems and arguments are very non-binary (binary being true or false, yes or no, innocent or guilty, to do or not do, etc.) in that they have many prospective solutions and answers. In those cases, winning an argument does not always mean the winner is even correct. Is there a right or wrong answer on where to have the company’s Christmas Party? Among the people discussing, one person could seem more right to some, and another could be less right yet more convincing to others, and either could be speaking to the wrong or right crowd correctly or incorrectly. That illustrates what we all already know. Which is that for different people, the same problem often has different solutions. So then, what is the answer?

If there are many possible answers, the best answer comes from using knowledge of everything affected and everyone involved. The first step in coming to an answer using that maximum knowledge is to know what is irrelevant. An easy example of this is when a big storm is coming into town, the primary concern is protecting the people, saving the trees, as much as we love them, is irrelevant. Finding what is irrelevant is easy most of the time. But when what is irrelevant is you or your bias, pride can make accepting it impossible, which I will address later. Discovering what is relevant and its relevance is something different, because relevancy will almost always be subjective unless defined. Loosely, relevant is related to stuff that matters, and relevancy is how much it matters.

All variables that play a role in the problem, situation, or scenario that is being addressed, matters. I know that sounds mathematical and all of life isn’t math, but thinking is a sort of math, even with things that can not be quantified. For instance, one woman likes tall guys with long dark hair, and another woman favors clean-cut average guys. Those given tastes are the answers (or dependent variables), and all the nature and nurture variables that produced those answers are the equations. As new variables arise or present ones alter or change, the person’s taste, or the answer, can change. Thinking about it that way is very statistical by nature, even though the factors can not be quantified. The paragraph began by stating all variables. It is naturally implied that all of anything is a big-picture perspective of the given issue.

Taking a big-picture, macro, perspective of a small or big issue is the same because you always account for everything involved. To tie this together, say we want a pond to be healthy. There are many factors that contribute to the pond having or not having a healthy ecosystem, and those many factors are relevant and matter. For example, the state of the pond’s plant life matters, but the one solitary flower petal floating on the fringes does not. The pond’s life will continue on its course with the flower petal playing a negligible role. But if that flower petal was sentient, it would at least matter to itself.

Most individuals matter to themselves. However, every person doesn’t matter to everything, and some matter more than others in terms of whatever best decision is being made. That is the conflict. What is best for all might not be what is best for you, and vice versa. And the larger the problem, the more irrelevant variables there usually are. Most of which, if capable of thought, do not recognize they are non-factors. If at a random moment in time, a decision is being made about the country’s money supply, does the Fed and other decision makers care specifically about Jim, who is a middle-class Libertarian crypto-enthusiast? Of course they don’t. They care about inflation, the stock market, unemployment, wages, and economic growth, amongst other things. Does Jim care about money supply? He might since he loves crypto. But Jim cares primarily about his account, and his opinion on money supply would reflect that. In the context of the best decision for the USA, Jim is an irrelevant independent variable and the best money supply decision is a dependent variable. The answer for the Fed, on top of using the data, is incorporating all the relevant, often unquantifiable, independent variables along with having wisdom of the relative magnitude of each of those variables. From Jim’s perspective, money supply is a crucial independent variable, with maximizing his account being the end goal or his dependent variable. But in terms of this decision, Jim matters only to himself, and has a completely different goal, that might or might not correlate with the Fed’s pursuit of their ideal money supply. But say there are a thousand Jim’s in the USA population of 300 million. Does that change what’s the best decision for the Fed? No, because one thousand middle class Libertarians don’t have an enormous influence. What those crypto-junkies can do, though, is change the perception of that answer. And we know that our perception of things is influenced by what we know about them.

People have varying degrees of concern about any issue. That level of concern only rarely matches or correlates with their respective knowledge of the issue and the factors affecting it. That is common sense. Fans love sports and want to make all the calls and referee all the games but often know little of either discipline. Personally, I love fighting games and like to see them mirror my taste, but I admittedly know nothing about how to play them or what makes them good. Jim from our prior example definitely has a biased outlook in that his account is most important to him, and there is a good chance his understanding of what goes into the Fed’s decision is incomplete as well, yet he and others still have their own views on what is right or wrong for the economy, just like fans want the coach to “run the damn ball!” Everyone has a view on most things even though they rarely know much about it and/or carry a bias.

Say someone that doesn’t matter is adversely affected by a best decision, yet has a voice. There is a chance they realize that the best decision is actually best. But there is also a chance he or she uses that voice to inhibit the best decision from being enacted or even being made. School segregation is a perfect example of this. The more we get out of our citizens, the stronger we are as a country. A simple and correct answer to a lot of questions. Better schooling is going to help black kids get a better education. A better education often leads to a more productive life, which improves the country’s human capital. With that all being obviously true, desegregation was still a long and hard fight to get done. Showing what is beautiful in the eyes of the beholder, even if it is ugly to everyone else, is a significant hurdle to making the best decision. That is because of folks have an insistence on their personal, but often incorrect, view mattering because they don’t think, or think they matter to more than then they really do given the issue at hand. Their personal variance from the what is best, is a function of their bias and ignorance, and as a consequence finding the optimal answer is often a frustrating fool’s errand when faced with non-binary dilemmas.

Given all that, I think people need a better way to frame, or define, what best is. That definition being the most net positive possible outcome is the best decision. This definition would help make finding and implementing the best answer more achievable. To make sure we are all on the same page, a net positive is when a problem affects a lot of things, and you want to find the outcome with the greatest overall gain. You can have a net positive result, and with someone having a personal negative outcome. Almost every decision has winners and losers. For example, the President is faced with a decision on a lingering military-related problem overseas. He sends a small Special Forces unit because they have an extremely good chance of resolving the issue with the smallest total commitment, however, the Navy SEAL’s children and wives might still be sad.

We now have a proper context for best, with the context being the best net gain that can be achieved amongst those affected or concerned. If you disagree with this context, meaning you do not want the best net positive and want something else means you are being selfish or biased, both of which by definition are not the best way to approach decisions of any magnitude. Say the problem is trying to find the answer for how best to eliminate dehumanizing labor. We want to find the solution that is best for everyone, because society at large (taxpayers, employers, and employees) would probably be affected. To reiterate what is best, it is a decision that would achieve its goal with minimum sacrifices out of those affected. Those affected usually fall into groups. And there are groups within groups, such as those with demographic, economic, and political differences. If what is best for the most macro group conflicts with the interest of a specific small neighborhood, it is still the best option if its aggregate effect is the highest achievable net gain. To illustrate this, say the most macro entity is a team. The best game plan for a football team heading into the next game dwindles the importance of a particular player. The team benefits by giving themselves a better chance to win, but the player career will probably be negatively affected if it keeps happening. I did not initially mention salary, but a player’s contract will often play a role in the decision-making process. If the player was making an abhorrent amount of money and had plenty of time left on his contract, he would almost always be very important, because the team’s options with the rest of the roster would be limited. In that case, the best decision for the team would be to utilize him effectively as possible. In that case, for the most macro entity, the team, the best decision depended on how much money the player was making.

Wonder if the most macro entity did not have the power to make decisions, let alone the best ones? Say the overpaid player forced an exit, and the team had to fork over cash that negatively affected their ability to field a satisfactory squad. The player is still rich and playing a professional sport, which he would be doing whatever the case. The team though is financially and competitively worse off, and the fans are disappointed. That is obviously not the best choice for everyone involved. There the most micro entity, the player, did what was best for him at the detriment to the team and fans. Overall that non-best selfish result, led to an outcome that is a net loss and we are not just talking on a numbers basis. That brings another thing into the equation that is a part of every decision, magnitude. Say TV (for lack of a better term) Ratings had a slight increase after multiple players made self-serving decisions. As a result, some revenue increased, but in an insubstantial way. That increase in revenue had a cost that goes with and beyond dollars and cents. Going from contending to rebuilding has a greater magnitude of effect on those on the negative side, than the effect on the individual player, or the unsubstantial increase in revenue. Unsubstantial is often pretty relative, but something that does not tangibly change anything in our case is unsubstantial. Which applies to the sports league that is financially healthy, and a relatively small increase in money changed nothing. Therefore, putting it all together it is not a net gain.

But if the owner is super rich and can pay whatever luxury tax or fines involved while still having the financial capacity to rebuild the team quickly, then the fans and the player can be happy at the same time with the owner using his or her surplus resources being the best solution. It is no coincidence that money optimally solved this dilemma. Money gives the best answer to many questions. Just like the earlier prompt of how we could eliminate dehumanizing labor, would that be free?

The more money you have, the greater the cost that is needed to influence you. Some people are impervious to cost. Meaning they are basically immune to having any type of meaningful financial loss. Money, success, and the hard work that went into achieving those things are worth respecting. But the most admiration comes from achieving what is best in things that matter. So if in society the best answer to a situation involves financing something, those with vast amounts of excess resources are often the best answer. But those individuals with extreme wealth are often the obstacle, as they are individuals that have their own views and beliefs, which sometimes differ from what is best. The excess they possess amounts to power, power to be wrong or right. In a lot of cases, what is best does not matter, because money will decide as it sees fit, not wisdom. But no matter what that mega-rich person wants or thinks, he or she can not change what is best, or the greatest aggregate net positive. Now it very much looks like it is up to wealth to decide our fate on whether we go the best or another route.

In the real world there are often many answers to a situation besides the best one. And each answer usually has its preacher with her own segment of listeners, even if the best answer has been identified. On top of that, each individual has their own beliefs and bodies of knowledge, or lack either, and can be swayed, informed, and misinformed. People care about whatever they care about, not what is best. If what is best marginalizes or goes against those cares, people would often rather be wrong. America having slavery for three centuries, despite people of that time witnessing its brutality firsthand, illustrates that. Nowadays, if you criticize anything that has a brigade behind it online, you are in effect wrong, not because you are wrong, but because they won’t change and hold their errors sacred; like QAnon.

We all know what is best is often not achieved or even pursued. Therefore, having the wisdom required (individual or group) to discover what is best is problematic, because all it pragmatically amounts to is realizing how everything that is not best is wrong, and not being able to do much about it. For example, in America, directly and indirectly, there are a lot of poor people who vote against increasing their own pay. There is nothing anyone can do about that, because deciding for them is not an option. It is also widely known and agreed upon that equality is best, yet there is still plenty of discrimination in the world. As much as I wanted to describe how to think in a helpful way, and I hope I did to some extent, but what I have found is ignorance and money supersedes the best decision. Money and ignorance are primarily mutually exclusive, yet still way more powerful than knowledge in the real world. You can only realize, appreciate, empower wisdom, and make the best decision if you can understand it. Most people do not want to bow to intelligence, they want to be together in their incorrectness or collectively worship something, not attempt to understand reasoning of things that are foreign to them. The best is what is, but how should we think? That is an equivalent question to asking if we should care about what is best? We don’t live in a world where wisdom answers that question.

What about, what is the worst? Can people relate to fear? The worst being the opposite of the best. Do people want to avoid the worst possible thing that could happen? If the best possible decision alleviated the world of the worst outcomes, would that best decision be valued and made? A major bridge collapsing would be horrendous. A western world coup d’état would be a monumental negative. Another offshore drill platform exploding, or the crypto market collapsing, would be significant disasters as well. These are all the worst likely outcomes for those concerned. But we know oil companies do not want to stop drilling. There are plenty of opponents of infrastructure programs. The crypto market to this point has not wanted relegation to ensure its health and account for its substantial risk. All those decisions go against what is best and they are our reality. So this little rant on the worst reinforces that the best is not valued, and therefore the intellect to find it is worthless as well. What is valuable is not caring, or being gullible enough to go wherever you are steered, which both represent ignorance. The other thing valued is money because that decides, not knowledge. You can say they sometimes work together, but if the goal is what is best, they mostly do not. Money keeps oil rigs in the gulf, people working dehumanizing jobs instead of robots, and buys all the weapons if there ever is a coup. Intellect and using it to discover the greatest net positive solutions to relevant issues, as precious as it might be, is an annoyance. Money is power, and ignorance is bliss. Old idioms that are as true as ever.