On Democracy, Free Markets and Self-Restraint (DB Exclusive, 5.28.24)
Can a paradox on giving help us unbreak the world?
An Intellectual Dilemma
One of my favorite quotes is “Always give without remembering, and always receive without forgetting”, by Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker. I love how economically it calls out our fundamentally self-centered orientation to life. More often than not, our instinct is to “give without forgetting” and to “receive without remembering”. By rearranging two words in a nine word phrase, Tracy not only challenges the transactional mindset with which we typically engage others, but prompts a deep yearning to be treated the way we rarely treat others, a result which, for me, generated an internal conflict which called for resolution.
I’ve been thinking about this. A lot. Unexpectedly, one of the places it led was to think more deeply about the nature of free markets. Free markets operate on price signals, which in turn assume that the value of a thing can be accurately ascertained – an essential measurement in any economic exchange.
When we agree to an exchange, we enter into a “transaction” – a voluntary swap of things between free actors in which the thing received has a perceived value at least as great, if not greater, than the thing proffered. Those who participate in, benefit from, or advocate for, free markets, are essentially asserting the primacy of such transactions, the ordering of life around such transactions - and therefore the quantitative calculations that underpin them.
But here’s the rub. I’ve been writing on this blog about the “porosity” between our working, home and inner lives - how do we show up as our authentic best selves in all we do? If transactions lie at the heart of free markets, but I do not want to live in a world in which I treat people, or am treated by other people, transactionally, does it then follow that I should advocate against free markets?
Hmm.
The Role of Agency in Systems of Volition
I struggled with this because I am a big believer in democracy and free markets. Born in India and raised in Singapore, I came to America because I believe that free expression and agency is essential to human flourishing. I call these “systems of volition” because they give primacy to human choice - in democracy, we express points of view, debate, vote, protest; in free markets, we allocate capital, produce, exchange and consume - all based on what we individually and personally think is best.
This preference is reflected in my career choices. One of the best things about my job is the comparative freedom I have to decide what work to prioritize. This has paid off handsomely in several respects:
Having the autonomy to investigate and develop consensus on which issues to focus on is intellectually stimulating and personally rewarding, and my role has grown over time.
This approach benefits my employer whenever I successfully anticipate, and prepare us for, emerging needs, such as the ascendancy of big data and financial analytics.
Being allowed the agency to apply myself has helped my team by enabling them to be game-ready to deliver against novel pressures and to be among the first in the market to acquire relevant skills, most recently relating to the deployment of artificial intelligence in financial services.
I extend this philosophy to my team management approach. More and more, I try to give people space, promote trust, and connect them to others where there are opportunities for impact amplification. Rather than direct the action they should take, I seek to learn, so I can benefit from their information gathering and facilitate their decision-making. I try to provide context and share my thinking so they can make informed choices about how they go about their work. I encourage connectivity so we can better move in concert by feeding off each other’s rhythms, which is a superior way to mechanical repetition. I try to organize our work so agency thrives: a system in which our individual and collective volition is trusted to yield the best outcome.
Systems of volition do not exist naturally. They have not existed for the majority of human existence - perhaps only the last 4-5% of 6 millennia of human civilization. For most of that period, human activity has been organized according to coercive power: tribalism, feudalism, enslavement, peerage, monarchies, colonialism, and empire - and we have spent much of our history killing each other in the pursuit of acquiring more to feed those we call our own.
Imperfect as they are, I favor systems of volition over the coercive power of institutions, to determine most of the outcomes in my life. Given how heavily I am invested in the idea of individual agency, any philosophical challenge to this premise gets under my skin. What follows is my effort to work this out.
Problems with Systems of Volition: The Limitations of Agency
Volition-based systems of interaction are not perfect. I will not attempt to describe all such imperfections, but some examples include imperfect information (e.g. when voters base decisions based on an incomplete understanding of a candidate’s positions, also known as low-information voters) and speed of structural reform (e.g. it would take a very long time to change the electoral college system in the U.S. even if many of us agree on some of its flaws).
The factor I am interested in most for present purposes is human failing. While systems of volition disfavor the concentration of coercive power in institutions, they are still operated by self-interested human actors – all of whom struggle to exercise personal restraint, whether acting individually (as citizens), corporeally (as companies or firms), or institutionally (as governments).
When we humans falter in our struggle with self-restraint, adverse outcomes follow:
A common example in the financial markets is insider trading (such as that which led to the $1.8 billion dollar fine of SAC Capital, and which inspired the Showtime TV series Billions).
Pyramid investment schemes (such as those perpetuated by Bernie Madoff) are another.
But there are also institutional failures – in which individual ambition inappropriately leverages institutional power. These have been extensively studied and include phenomena such as regulatory capture, abusive prosecution and bills of attainder. And heaven forbid that agency officials use the power of the Federal government to influence presidential elections (and no, I am not referring to 2016).
Agency, Restraint and the Moral Compass
Let’s get back to Brian Tracy. To give without remembering and to receive without forgetting is an expression of restraint – to “flip the script” on the transactional persona with which we principally engage with life, and to replace it with the giving persona.
The giving persona does not ask the question “how do I give you what you deserve” (which entails you sizing a person’s contribution), but rather “how do I give you more than you deserve” (which is essentially an expression of belief in the person’s essential worth, future potential, or both). Which world would you rather live in?
Transposing these personas to systems of volition, self-restrained actors do not ask the question “is it legal?”, but rather the question “is it right?” But in practice, very few people behave this way (which I find intriguing, because having to rely on the law to inform us what is right is an act of partial self-debasement). “Can I do this?” (as opposed to “Should I"?”) is how children behave during the critical developmental phase of the ages 2-3, when they test limits. We are meant to outgrow this, but we do not always. We build things like financial regulations and election laws into systems of volition because even adults outsource their moral compass, and fail to understand that the freedom to do something is merely a mirror image of the freedom to not do it, and that responsible citizenship is knowing the difference.
The Breaking of Society
I do not expect – and am too sensible to advocate for – a world built on self-restraint or the precept of “giving you more than you deserve” (let’s call it “over-giving” for short). It is neither realistic (nor, I posit, ideal) to expect companies to sacrifice profits for their employees to have a better life; for bosses to invest the extra effort to coach people to get better jobs elsewhere; for governments to honorably shut down programs that do not deliver results for taxpayers. The systems of democracy and capitalism that govern these spheres are optimized for efficient outcomes - not altruistic ones. After all, as Churchill observed, democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. These systems only get you so far as decent results and a less imperfect society.
We all know this, but somehow, we still (irrationally) expect more. Whether one’s preference is to “drain the swamp” or “divest”, either ask is impossible…and yet we press on. Yet, in insisting on the unachievable, are we perhaps weaponizing our sense of morality? Increasingly, it seems inadvisable to be so flippant with the sacrosanct. For if we continue doing so, we risk losing the ability to regulate ourselves – and we will end up with a society where the only two settings on the dial are outrage and indifference.
I am not quite sure how we got here. It feels like these are symptoms of some underlying dysfunction, what I call the breaking of society. Perhaps the social safety net became stretched so thin that our lives started to feel irremediably insecure. Does that explain the sudden and urgent emergence of safe spaces? I suspect social media played a role in creating this zeitgeist of distorted reality: by collapsing social space, it somehow created a vortex that transferred feelings and expectations appropriately meant to be worked out in the private sphere into the public sphere.
Let me explain.
The private sphere is where “over-giving” is natural, where self-regulation and the tapering of self-interest occurs effortlessly and often. At home, in our families, with our loved ones, we spend every grace on our spouses, our children, our friends. With them, it is not difficult to over-give. We want the best for them, and our self-interest is easily displaced by self-sacrifice.
But somewhere along the line, we became so deeply unsatisfied with the worsening social contract that we started to hope for, even to expect, that the over-giving that is natural to expect in the private sphere would be replicated in the public sphere. We asked the government to become our parents, corporations to be our communities, and our bosses to become our friends.
Do we really expect that to work? Churchill didn’t think it would.
How Does Unbreaking Begin?
So what are we to do? My best idea is we try to put jack back in the box: to accept the imperfection of the public sphere but throw everything we have at improving ourselves – to self-regulate – in the private sphere. After all, if you wanted to start somewhere, wouldn’t it be easier to practice reckless over-giving with your loved ones rather than the person in the next cubicle over?
I think we might not be doing enough of this, if you consider suicide rates (up 35.2% from 2000 to 2018, NIMH), marriage satisfaction (down from 71% of couples to 61% from 2017 to 2023, Gallup), and child anxiety (doubling between 2012 and 2021, APA). Instead of directing energy at demonizing “the other side”, what if we had a sustained campaign to love our spouses, children and friends more, in authentic and meaningful ways?
I wonder what the result of such an experiment might be.
Public service announcement: giving of self entails risk. It’s quite possible that your giving will be neither accepted nor rewarded. Nothing in life is guaranteed. But, as Brian Tracy suggests, the spirit of generosity is one in which the reward is in the giving, not in the receiving.
The analytically-inclined among us will ask how we gauge success. How do you know the over-giving is worth it? Can you measure what you get back? Absolutely not. The point is you shouldn’t be keeping count. The point is simply to give, and give, and give. I would ask you to consider: might the end point of all that giving be that you start to find ways to give more – in your community and at work? Would this not be a more reliable path to the better society we all want - rather than to expect great, but impossible, things from Presidents and CEOs? This is why I am so focused on porosity between our life spheres. I believe in the power we have as individuals, and I would like the good work we strive for with so little complaint at home to permeate every aspect of our lives.
It might be quite cool to see that happen on a grand scale, across entire swathes of our nation. This is one of the reasons Deeply Boring exists - and why I would ask that you subscribe, and share this essay if you find it helpful.
But thank goodness, such transformation cannot be achieved by fiat. We do not have to wait for an election or a corporate board meeting. Only a system of volition can nurture, and embrace, such freedom. And - at least at this moment in history - we already have everything we need to get going. That is, you just have to decide that you will:
Always give without remembering,
and always receive without forgetting.
- J