Satisologie IV: Capacity, Boundary, and Avoiding Duplication of Efforts.
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You can read Satisologie II: Direct and Web Satisologie, my spin on Macro and Micro Econ, here.
This particular write-up is about 3 different yet related topics, and I plan to thoughtfully expand upon each, as categories will permit, in detail in the future. They are “untapped capacity,” “the boundaries of we and they,” and “avoiding the duplication of efforts.”
In the human realm, I noticed that most economists believe that everything can be translated to-and-from money, a premise with which I have contention and disagreement based on my lived experience. To demonstrate this clearly, one must simply consider efforts and their resultant fruits as they exist before they are transformed into cash.
A trip to a riverside in the Carpathian range.
A fireworks display.
Being ported around in a wheel-barrow by a friend.
Not all experiences can be got with money, in fact a lot of the most precious experiences we have are only possible through efforts tangential to the acquisition and collection of cash. These experiences provide a felt and received value for us, and later become commoditized as
“rafting tours of a river,”
“holiday celebrations with fireworks at the baseball diamond,” and
“taxi services,” respectively.
Now, what was experimentally determined as a valued-experience is sold as an experience-able session likely to provide value, but still secondary in its successfulness to our state of mind and psychic appreciation of such sessions. I gloss over the practical utility of taxi rides intentionally, as I’m not interested in value derived from cash-based bargains at this moment of analysis; I’m interested in what is transformable to cash, and what is not.
Efforts Before they are Transformed into Cash
A kiss, a smile, a prank, a joke. You can pay for all of them, but the best ones are free.
So yeah, in transforming something to cash, something is lost. Namely, spontaneity, smoothness, unbridled openness, genuine receptivity, all of these things take a hit when we introduce cash and prices as our gate-keepers to “allocation.”
Of course, an economist might argue that there are few ways to allocate intelligently without money, and that’s not at all what I’m arguing against. I’m arguing against this notion that everything, every experience-able, every life-moment of greater than average satisfaction can be translated to and from money without loss of quality, spontaneity, smoothness, receptivity, sensitivity, and openness.
There’s a book about a man who “lived without money” — he really tried it out. “Things still happen, but they happen in a ‘big way,’” he said. Anecdotal experience, sure, and how do you live without money in 2021? Not sure. But, it makes intuitive sense that reducing friction of systems would lead to more harmonious resonances. Money is effectively friction for some engagements in life, while a tool to command greater reach in others.
Reaching Across Boundaries
In the family and your in-group of friends, people often do each other what are considered “favors” without notion of pecuniary recompense. This is like a boundary line for one’s “in-group” or “collective” — convenience and action are shared with a spirit of freely giving. If one wants to, one can charge for every action, which naturally renders their in-group exceptionally small, and if one sees the wisdom in it, one can offer much or all of their time, energies, and efforts freely to all, expanding their in-group to include all the beings in the cosmos. Whatever helps is helpful, but there is also the question of maximizing leverage, and maximizing benefit.
Essentially, we have highlighted the ends of a spectrum where much of our day-to-day obsession lands in the middle length somewheres. Max selfishness to Max generosity. The boundaries are fluid and change depending on context. When we are with family and friends of closeness, we are closer in our actions to maximum generosity, and when we are with people we consider “out of group” we introduce a cash register and use that as our orienting point.
Still, monies can be gifted to friends and colleagues and helpers and teachers to express gratitude because we know that money of all kinds can be converted into other, useful resource.
Untapped to Efforts to Cash is not Reversible
So my humble contribution to this idea of monetary transformations in economics can be viewed as a simple visual (remind me to make a nice image…) — Efforts contain all [effortful] transformations from the Untapped, and Conversion-to-Money is a subsequent action and a strict subset of Efforts. It is a unidirectional transformation, for Money-to-Efforts is not the same set as its reverse, but strictly tinier.
In brief, in language, we can go one way but not the other:
(Untapped -> Efforts -> Cash)
(Cash -> Some Efforts -> None of the Untapped)
Perhaps easily visualized as [the peel, fruit, and seeds of an orange] and [the seeds, some fruit, and no peel of an orange].
What an assertion! Absolutely nothing in the superset dodecahedron of the Untapped can actually be got via Money, nay, it can only be got from Efforts not anchored in cash-register-based-negotiations.
The strong assertion that cash cannot on its brightest day access the Untapped involves a distinction between Partially Untapped and Truly Untapped, which I will explain momentarily.
Currency conveys Creativity that has been wrought from raw resource or harvested from the fertile fields of Branch or Brain. (Link to Satisologie II: Direct and Web Satisologie, where I explain more on Wealth)
And to reach back to our heading “Reaching Across Boundaries” we are talking about the boundaries where cash is employed as the only means of allocation, which is in great likelihood only happening on the we=they boundary lines. I say we=they (we equals they) because that is the goal of such philosophical musing, to increase the empathy and mutual connection we have, but the boundary still exists as an either-or “we” or “they” when it goes unchecked and unexamined as in the current majority of contexts.
Partially Untapped
A pharmaceutical company pays researchers to work the fields of creativity within a medicinal context, bounded by a laboratory. Discoveries happen but do not occur in the Truly Untapped field of creativity, the discoveries are very specific and their instrumentation is narrowed down, so that the discoveries are, in a way, plants that were already growing in that field and simply awaiting harvest.
Truly Untapped
Discoveries beyond the purview of business, cash, and its context, are closer to electric shocks spontaneously emerging from the Capacity of the cosmos; to be untapped means to be accessible and available, but unknown and with no clear route to harvest. Happy accidents might fall into this category, or Prometheus passing fire to humankind. It’s not something we can plan for. Maybe it can be called the Black Swan of innovation or discovery when it comes about. We have names and indicators for such things after-the-fact, but not a lot of language to predict the next star(s) in the constellation. I hope this gives a clearer sense of the Truly Untapped or Untapped Capacity in contrast to the over-determined, narrow scope of the Partially Untapped which is akin to harvesting new fruits in an old crop field. For the Truly Untapped, they are new fruits in a new field, to wax consistent with a good metaphor.
To amend our visual from earlier:
(Untapped -> Efforts -> Cash)
(Cash -> Some Efforts -> Some of the Partially Untapped -> None of the Truly Untapped)
The We=They Boundary
Let’s talk more about the we=they boundaries.
Simple Example: You need a scooter, I need roses.
Here I introduce the concept of Negotiator Lines, a useful concept upon which I shall rely in future writings.
The negotiator between we=they corresponds to the priority wishes/desires of the two or more parties.
Example: You want a scooter to get you across town to make an appointment (sense of urgency), and I have a scooter, but I need 30 pounds of rose blossoms to feed my pet rabbits, so we trade.
Rather than converting whatever it was the other party desired into cash first, we trade without involving any dead presidents as far as we can tell.
If the priority (the negotiator lines) of each party indicate something beyond the current purview of the situation in terms of material access, then converting to cash first, to then convert into things that exist “in the market denominated in cash” (or more simply dominated by cash) is the route taken.
“You call that a ‘market?!’”
Some “markets” are actually, for example, my new and transient, temporary need of a scooter to go get an espresso while you’re at the appointment, so maybe I will find someone who needs some rose blossoms who will let me borrow the scooter for 15 minutes to drive to a cafe and back. That (my want of an espresso and scooter availability) is a market. It’s a small market, it’s a one-person market, it’s a very contextual and specific market, but it is technically a market nonetheless.
Avoiding Duplication of Effort (ADE)
Where were we again? Ah yes, something about the we=they boundaries and resorting to cash as a somewhat desperate, last ditch effort on exchanging the fruits of our efforts, be they material or conceptual.
Well then, what the heck. What’s complicated about that? Surely we’re doing everything we can do and the market is efficient and therefore P=NP and we did it, blast the confetti boys it’s time to have a parade in honor of our cleverness and brilliance. (See: Markets are Efficient Iff P=NP)
Except that, we duplicate effort. Ants don’t duplicate effort and ants are hungry ghosts as they might be referred to according to Buddhist cosmology. They pace around looking for food to eat and they are really rarely satisfied, with a big appetite (represented by a long stomach in the cosmologies) and a teeny tiny mouth. They just can’t get enough. Still, ants take great efforts to avoid duplicating effort.
A Very Strong Cologne
Have you ever watched ants explore? Did you know they drop scent everywhere they go, and sometimes do a little jig / dance to emphatically drop a ton of ant cologne (pheromone) in a spot that was well-explored to let other ants know it’s safe and there’s not much there? This list has some intriguing details about how ants Avoid Duplication of Effort.
Ants gently drop scent everywhere they go go go.
Ants wiggle their gaster to drop a dense dose of ant-pheromone in areas they have explored thoroughly, likely communicating boring terrain (no food) and safe terrain signals (Thanks to Ryan C. for your insights on this)
Ants can be dropped into a fresh environment, like a field after a rainstorm, and eventually eliminate all the “fog of war” by leaving aromatic hints for each other.
Ants, therefore, avoid duplication of exploration of their environs by marking or labeling the terrain with ant-world aroma and fragrance.
When ants find food, you can imagine large dense clouds of pheromone in their “eyes” lined up in a row, likely indicating that there is something interesting at the end of this long aromatic hallway or line of cloud-nuclei.
Ants help each other through impersonal communication via ant cologne. This active avoidance of duplication of effort is something we humans have not perfected yet.
Cash and the Superset of Efforts
Cash cannot be transformed into a flawlessly smooth and unelaborated experience, but it can be transformed into necessities and significant improvers on quality of life. A car, or a train pass, or a food stipend are all improvers, are all things that actively improve the quality of one’s life. The comparison in results is tricky: the ineffable qualia of experience are different and nicer as subjectively perceived.
The superset of Cash is “efforts before they are transformed into cash,” and it is worth noting that this transformation to cash might not ever happen. Efforts before they are cash necessarily implies a sense of timeliness for satisfying satisfaction flows. As Alt-J sings, “like all good fruit the balance of Life is in the ripe and ruin.”
Addenda
Synopsis-as-a-List
This general thought scheme and system of ideas as a list or bullet points:
The rhythm, rhyme, and release of these musings are based on Fulfillment of Satisfaction Flows, please refer to S2: Web and Direct Satisologie.
Capacity (tapping the Untapped), is an idea similar but not identical to the Fruits of Branch and Brain in S2.
What is Partially Untapped Capacity versus Truly Untapped Capacity
(old fields, new fruit -vs- new fields, new fruit)Boundary, Boundaries, expanding the we=they concept.
Avoiding Duplication of Effort (ADE)
Efforts before they are transformed into cash.
Ants achieve ADE via very strong cologne
Future Work
To emphasize that de-duplication of effort and avoidance of duplication of effort ought be paramount, not on only the organizational level, but the greater collective of humanity as well, while honoring the Satisological imperatives of Fed, Bed, Med and joyful living.
We can be great.
Fare thee well for now.
Did you enjoy this write-up on Capacity (tapping the untapped), Boundaries (we=they), Avoiding Duplication of Effort, and Efforts before they are transformed into cash? You can e-mail me, vaso@satisologie-com, with comments, questions, research inquiries, grievances, and cool music suggestions. If you have the moment to spare, drop me a line or five.