No good actors

When it comes to money and power, there are no good actors. It’s a business game where those having power try to preserve and multiply it and those not having power try to acquire it. No one has good intentions, everyone serves personal interests, regardless of wether they are a web3 marketer or a president.

When it comes to business the value extracting formula is well-known: Income = Revenue - Costs i.e. earn as much as possible while spending as little as possible. As you can see, there is nothing about ethics, being a good human, or building public goods in this formula.

Sometimes to maximize Revenue or to minimize costs, it’s an efficient strategy to act ethically or socially-responsible, then the entity might act this way. Very often it’s enough to look ethically or socially-responsible without much action, if so then this is an optimal strategy.

What is performed by powers (governments and corporations) is performed behind closed doors. What we know is what we got from the media (what powers wanted us to get). Different powers have different goals that is why different media feed us with different narratives. Not because they are acting in a good faith. No one is acting in a good faith when it comes to power and money even though sometimes they want us to think this way.

We all are a resource

We got used to thinking that powers should take care of humans but in fact humans are a resource for powers. Does the office manager take care of printers? Yes it does, because he needs printers to work.

Humans can be physical resources (workers at factories), intellectual resources (workers at labs), emotional resources (protesting irl or on twitter fighting for a particular narrative), and body resources (corps at wars). For powers, we are a number of bodies to be used in an efficient way. When one cares about a specific power (e.g. standing for a particular political narrative on the square or in TikTok) it gives a feeling of personal significance, being a good human, fighting for right values. It also gives an illusion that if we are standing for the power today, the power will stand for us tomorrow. The truth is it won’t. The power will stand for us only if this is the dominant strategy in executing the formula Net Income = Revenue - Costs.

There is no good but optimal

The world is a game of narratives. What’s called left and right in one country is the opposite in another country, changes its meaning 180 degrees in five years, is pitched differently to different audiences based on data prediction of which narrative we will buy with the highest probability.

What was called liberal twenty years ago and now – are two very different ‘liberal’. Standing for umbrella terms (such as ‘liberal’) often means selling our minds and bodies to a particular power for free (or almost for free).

Choosing between different paradigms, regimes, or cults is usually about picking the least bad and the best. There are no good actors, no one cares about small human interests. Instead of making right choices, standing on the right side, and supporting right narratives – we better choose optimal right now, stand for it, and support it for a while. And in a while we make new choices that can be 180 degrees different from current choices.

For example, today two main world powers are pro-west and anti-west. The weapon of the pro-west is democracy, the weapon of the anti-west is terrorism. It’s not because one is good and another is bad, they both are bad. They use the ‘weapon’ that (a) works best with their target audience, (b) can confront the opponent’s narrative. They have to be polar, otherwise human resources won’t fight. And powers need human resources to fight.

Acting at a scale

If working in a grocery or taking care of animals at the zoo, one can speculatively stay out of politics. If building technologies, companies, cultures, and institutions – one has to interact with powers. Occasionally one has to take sides. Furthermore, it has to be done under very imperfect information because 99% of what we know – we know from the media and it has nothing to do with what’s done behind closed doors. Many decisions are to be done blindly. Many decisions will end up being terrible mistakes. Responsibility for all of that will stay till the end of our lives. It’s very heavy emotional and soul pressure but this is a cost of having agency vs passively existing (by the way, passively existing is totally fine, it’s just not what this essay is about).

Acting at a scale has its cost, the cost is very high. The only reason why powers will collaborate – they can increase revenue or decrease costs. They don’t care if technology is good or bad, if social impact is huge or it has awful negative externalities. They care about Net Income.

Sitting at the table with people you don’t like

The world is diverse, the humans are broken. By broken I mean very biased, unconscious, easily triggered, emotional, touchy, serving personal interests while claiming doing the best for the world.

Living in an echochamber is easy. The question is which power does the echochamber serve? Sitting in the room with people with the same opinion is easy because we know that we won’t hurt anyone, no one will be mad at us, we will be socially approvable, we will continue belonging to the echochamber.

Questioning dogmas is hard because powers don’t want to be questioned. Questioning initiates thinking. Powers don’t need humans to think. Questioning dogmas will mean most people won’t like us. Sometimes it means no one will like us. Questioning dogmas means not being invited for a b-day party or tagged on a LinkedIn photo. But if we want to create long-lasting things such as companies, arts, or institutions – questioning dogmas is part of the process. And sitting at the table with people you don’t like is part of this process too. Because to build in this world we have to play its rules. The world is enormously large, powers are very large, humans are very small. For powers we don’t exist. To enter the game we have to play the world's rules. Is it worth it? Everyone makes this decision on their own. Very often it doesn’t. Sometimes it does.

We need to learn to talk

When it comes to building long-lasting things we have to learn to talk to other people including those we don’t like or don’t agree with. It’s not to say we should like them, accept them, invite them to a bday party, or even enjoy spending time with them. We just need to be able to consciously, thoughtfully, and pragmatically speak with them. What do they want, how do they want it, what do they stick to, what is their narrative, why do they stick to it, which game they are playing, what increases their revenue, what decreases their costs, etc etc etc

Being hurt, slamming doors, shouting, acting emotionally breaks things (unless it’s part of the game). To be able to play long – one has to understand the real motivations of other actors and contribute to them. One has to learn to talk to very different humans under very different circumstances and understand what’s on their minds for real and how to give them what they want.

P.s. The world is made of blood

This essay was inspired by many conversations and debates, personal and observed, about politics and wars, mostly the October 7th and the war of Israel against Iranian proxies. While discussing politics and wars, there are two types of discussion participants: those with personal stakes and those without.

People who have medium to high stakes will stand for practical personal interests (sometimes it’s a very blurry border between personal interests and interests of family/ancestors). Those with zero to low personal stakes, will stand for what they think is morally correct. Powers will exploit both groups. While the groups will assume they are free individuals and independent thinkers. We are not.

The question is if we are conscious enough to understand that we are exploited, powers serve purely their interests, and that this is part of the game. The question is if we are conscious enough to understand that we are very small and powers are very big. The question is if we are conscious enough to understand that fighting is delusional. It takes time, it fills life with meaning, it feels like a mission, it injects adrenaline, but it is delusional. Fighting is a great way to hang out, but it doesn’t help building long-lasting things. Quite the opposite: fight degrades us to the childish level game, while real games are for adults.

Creating long-lasting things is about inserting ourselves into the system of the world and getting what we want while giving the powers what they want. It’s about being collaborative in a pragmatic way. Powers require respect, strict hierarchy, and following their rules. If one does not – they are kicked out.

Creating long-lasting things is about being able to talk openly and honestly, sitting at the table with people we don’t like, and being very sober that the world is made of blood.