On: Dignity.

Episode: N/A

Date: July 2019

Background: photographer, author, and former Wall St. trader. Traveled across America photographing and getting to know the addicted and homeless who struggle to find work and struggle to survive.

Key Subjects:

• Human need for community and socializing.
  • Example: communities that evolve inside McDonalds in poorer areas.
  • [Human pro-social tendencies drive the emergence of social order – see also Blueprint].
• Narrow road to financial well-being.
  • Path to financial well-being is narrow, weaving through elite (educational) institutions.
  • Driven by the emergence and dominance of post-industrial knowledge-based economy.
  • Widening gap between the educated (front row) and the non-educated (back row).
  • Growing number of people lack access to this “credential machine”:
    • Not aware of its existence.
    • Not willing or able to enter (for instance, can’t or don’t want to leave their homes).
    • Lack understanding of the “rules” (in order to be successful inside these institutions, you have to behave and think in certain ways).
  • The front row and back row:
    • Front row:
      • Tend to value things that can be measured.
      • Focus on credentials.
      • Better prospects of materialistic rewards.
      • Move around more easily (why limit yourself?).
      • Willing and able to pursue personal growth opportunities as and where they arise.
      • Break old and form new connections.
    • Back row:
      • Tend to value things that are more difficult to measure.
      • Non-credentialed forms of meaning.
      • Limited materialistic rewards; focus on intangible rewards (place, faith, community).
      • Less willing to move (“the problem of poverty is luggage”).
      • Less incentivized to pursue opportunities elsewhere (“why should they sell their luggage at a low, in a market that has crashed?”)
      • Retain and value existing connections.
  • [Trade-off between immediate material rewards of making new connections and longer term intangible benefits of deepening existing connections].
• Tension between (the pace of) economic change and social displacement.
  • Positive story:
    • Economic change produces steadily rising standard of living.
    • Perhaps disproportionately so for the “front row”.
    • Globally good.
  • Negative story:
    • It can also disrupt communities, weaken social ties and leave groups of people behind.
    • Perhaps disproportionately so for the “back row”.
    • Locally bad.
• • Dangers of utilitarian (spreadsheet) thinking:
    • Add up the good and bad stories, when outcome is a net positive: proceed.
    • Unlikely to capture or properly quantify all of the good and bad outcomes.
    • Difficult to think through the first, second, third waves of (social) impact of economic changes:
      • For instance, the impact of a small town factory closing or brain drain (loss of jobs, loss of resources, loss of community stability, rise of drugs, dysfunction and suicides, etc.)
    • Alternative way of thinking or decision making:
      • What is morally right to do [but how do you determine that..?]
      • A desire for a less materialistic outlook [pushing on a string…?]
  • Limit to the amount of change humans are capable of dealing with over a given period of time.
    • What matters is the pace of change (“the first derivative of change”).
    • If the pace of change is too fast, can be socially disruptive:
      • Loss of meaning, loss of connectedness, loss of dignity.
      • [Loss of social cohesion, loss of long-term deep connections].
    • The challenge is to determine the appropriate pace of change.
    • For instance, is it possible or beneficial to have a less-free market system, dialing down the level of economic growth?
  • • The way it unraveled, is the way it will be put back together.
      • Not through economic policies.
      • Through the ongoing evolution of culture and norms.
        • Changing social norms of what is acceptable and not acceptable change.
        • [Fast enough? Forceful enough?]
• The value of religion.
  • First, utilitarian: access (no barrier to entry), like-minded people.
  • Then, essential tool: for people living at “the boundary conditions”.
  • Acceptance that some things “can’t be figured out”.

Key Takeaways:

• Path to financial well-being is narrow, weaving through elite (educational) institutions.
  • Growing number of people lack access to this “credential machine”
• Trade-off between immediate material rewards of making new connections and the longer term intangible benefits of deepening existing connections.
• Tension between (the pace of) economic change and social displacement.
  • Difficult to think through the first, second, third waves of (social) impact of economic changes.
  • If the pace of change is too fast, can be socially disruptive.

Worth Listening:

9/10