Structures and Things

Opportunity Costs

When we experience a influx of opportunity and have a large amount of choices to make to better our lives and work, we sometimes become overwhelmed and lose through inaction. Opportunity is a way of perceiving actions that are placed in to our path. Some of them are seen as burdens or unwanted challenges, while other excite us and provide all of our present desires.

Opportunities can be found in life, love, work, education and travel. Rarely, the opportunity exists in many, if not all of these parts of our life, all at once. We just don’t see the chain of circumstance that connects them.

There exists the business concept of Opportunity Costs that involves lost revenue through a diversification of funds, time or resources. The idea involves choices made. This idea has carried over in to science fiction with the idea of parallel dimensions where each of our choices creates a unique time line with all potential futures and presents existing simultaneously. No decision is ever left behind, you just carry forward without it. There is a statement which asks, “If you knew you could not fail, how would you live and chose to act?” or something like that. Would it be safe to ask, “What if the world were an ‘AND’ and not an ‘EITHER-OR’ existence?”

Why must we chose? Is the world the dichotomy we envision and are taught by our elders whose choices have been made? Can there not be an option to have both or many choices?

Work sometimes overwhelms our schedules and resources. Most businesses today would be ecstatic to be flush with work and contracts. They would choose to have more, not less, and to have an ‘AND’ world. If they could achieve more with less and have their choices fulfill their lives and provide rich opportunities in their lives, would they not?

During a time of joy, whatever the reason, and especially in a time of sorrow it is best to be grateful, enriched by and positive for the opportunity choices we must make. The cost we pay is only our personal energy and time, the most valuable elements of our lives. Money costs nothing, is nothing and represents nothing other than faith. Fiat currencies are based upon trust, and if that trust is taken advantage of, you have inflation, recessions, and depressions. The trouble is that we have come to trust money more than other people. We have not invested in ourselves or our relationships. We have exchanged our time and energy for money (debt). We have given over our opportunities for money. Would you take money to spend time away from your family and loved ones? When we work for others and bypass the opportunities of our lives for money, we are shorting ourselves the rich treasures of life for fear of the opportunity costs. We fear they are too high for us and that we will never recover the lost money. We don’t fear the lost time and energy, why is this? We have been led to believe that we are not valuable and that our time holds some value which can be exchanged for money. Are your days for sale?

We all must eat, drink, shelter and care for our loved ones, especially ourselves so that we may continue to do so. Yet none today understands or practices the art of farming, gathering and building the structures and systems we require. We have exchanged our knowledge and labor to be taken care of by strangers who owe us not one selfless act. The doors may close tomorrow if their paycheck ceases to come to them and the cost of that situation is beyond measure. The opportunity came to provide for our love ones and we missed it in exchange for an instrument of debt. We cannot simply state that we will only work for money. There is more that we are working for from day to day. We cannot say we ‘were just doing our job or as we were told’ without any judgment. Are we imbeciles and automatons subject only to the whims of others whose dictates and pieces of paper (money, unilateral contracts, administrative rules, policies) are our sole judgment?

I believe the costs will be too high in the only true resource of our lives to say that is the truth of life. Opportunity is a moment in your life to reaffirm you foundations and stand firm. It is a time to fill in the cracks, grow stronger, and ask for assistance in reaching higher.

What are your opportunity costs?

Making it work, making it right

When something needs to be done, or even if it just wants to be done, there are two ways, technically three, to get it done. You have the wrong way, the right way and the no way. The way something gets done is often not practiced or even eloquent in its execution. We stumble our way through the various demands placed upon us each day achieving results for other people. Sometimes we do this to ourselves.

Working with other people to get things done often produces the most stumbling blocks. We don’t know each other or the varied methods that are used to achieve results. These may be good or bad results. The expectation is that everyone is attempting to provide good results and that is what professional behavior and respect are about. There is not an expectation that someone is trying to get away with anything that lacks true effort.

Reality and expectations are quite different. Putting forth the minimal effort to satisfy someone’s demands seems to be the new paradigm as people resent their positions and pay. As the economy is almost entirely shifted to a service base, there is very little pride in achieving the transitory successes available. There is joy in a well crafted object. The time provided to produce results is shortened and the robustness required of the results is minimized to achieve a ‘cost-effective’ solution that provides maximum yield in the marketplace. This provides us with manufactured goods whose life cycle is intentionally short. Corollary to this is the statement “You get what you pay for”, and the fact that a bargain will make you pay over and over again until the perceived value is gone. The cost is much higher than you were led to believe and you continue to pay in the performance quality of the object. This is fundamental to the cheap (poorly manufactured) goods, inflated costs and marketed perceptions that separate our earnings from our possession. This applies to most things that people contract to buy. This applies to your house, car, food, appliances, and supplies. Buying something for the short-term only provides it as a source of waste in to the landfills for the long-term much sooner. Most products cannot be re-worked, repaired, or otherwise re-purposed. Recycling cans, bottles and paper is flawed logic. It only supports the same system of short-term consumables.

The approach for the future is not about making it work, it is about making it right. We will bear the burden of our decisions. No one can escape this. Really they can, and people’s memories tend to be short, so they are abused and taken advantage of time and again. Some people pursue this path, they create havoc, reap the rewards and then move on to the next opportunity. The reality of this situation, is that eventually, there will be no more undiscovered country. By then, they will have made their money, in reality public debt, and have achieved the comfortable life they have sought. They didn’t directly kill or harm people, so there cannot possibly be anything to regret. They were just “doing business”, “following orders”, “working for a living”, “feeding their family”, or “doing what everyone else was doing”. Acting through paper, rather than getting your hands dirty, does not avail you to a clear conscious. Guilt is not inherent in people, it is learned, and if there is no other mechanism to guide your decisions (morals, etc.) then the only recourse is physical action against you to cease your activity. Civilization has recently, and most often historically, been about providing an opportunity for a few to leverage the work of many for their own benefit. Deception, lies, and violence have been used to achieve these ends. The use of force disguised as a “force of protection” for the community is in reality a force for regulating the community through the enforcement of administrative regulation. Law stands above these and requires justice. Justice is not fines, fees, incarceration, or the relinquishment of freedom.

Look at your actions and try to make it right by taking the time when you are working to achieve.