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In the early days of this blog, when I was still using Google’s blogger service, I wrote this article.  I think about 10 people read it.  So take a quick read and see if it’s worth reading, or whether I should’ve left it buried…

Probably like a lot of other self-improvement junkies I have always been mildly interested in the idea of Buddhism if not the actual practice of Buddhism. I have not really been exposed to it very often, and honestly most of my knowledge of it comes via movies like Seven Years In Tibet and Little Buddha. I also was very fond of a book, Zen Buddhism, which helped me learn the practice of clearing my mind before sleeping. I don’t think that was the point of the book, but the ability to fall asleep in 5 minutes or less every evening has been a great gift throughout my adult life.

Continue reading…

photo credit: yeowatzup

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I wouldn’t recommend watching this unless you’re happy about last Tuesday.  In any case, it’s a very impressive summary of the events of the evening regardless of how you viewed the election.  Enjoy - I did.

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After Senator Obama passed 270 last night, I went to sleep. Hopefully now that the presidential election’s over I’ll be able to return my full attention to problogging, wealthbuilding and personal finance.  A good time, though, all in all - I love presidential election campaigns.

But today, I am quite happy.  As a Southerner, I never thought I’d see this day and I’m glad I was wrong.  America has the ability to continually amaze.  There are no limits for ANY of us…

photo credit: patrick dentler

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In game theory and economic theory, zero-sum describes a situation in which a participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant(s). If the total gains of the participants are added up, and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. Cutting a cake is zero- or constant-sum because taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others. (from Wikipedia)

Let me go all geeky for a moment. I was a math major in college. I was precocious enough to get admitted to a state university’s PhD program directly, jumping past the Master’s program. It was a terrible mistake - I was in well over my head, both academically and “attitudinally” (if that’s a word), but I did learn a few things in the year I stuck it out. One was that I wasn’t a mathematician. It takes a weird breed to live in the world of numbers like that. Another thing I learned was that math - once you get to a certain level - is less science than poetry. It gets almost horrifying in short order; I spent an entire semester on a single mathematical problem related to chaos theory (”a butterfly flaps its wings in South America and causes a tornado in Iowa, etc. etc.”).

My point is just that before I abandoned math for the routine money-centric world of finance I learned enough to alter my worldview about certain things. One of the areas I was very interested in was game theory, although primarily I did focus on chaos theory. Game theory had the interesting concept of zero-sum situations; if I gain, you lose. Me +1; you -1. The implications of game theory, as wikipedia points out, have been extended to economics and war and even personal relationships.

But is wealth zero-sum? Is your increase in wealth directly related to someone else’s decrease in wealth? If you do better in your career, does that mean someone else’s career suffers? And, to bring it (as always, in this election season) to the macro level, if you are taxed less does it mean that someone else must be taxed more?

Any reasonable person who isn’t sticking to ideological talking points can probably immediately identify the answer: no. Wealth is not zero-sum. If I create a new technology - a Delorean that uses table scraps to power a time-travel engine, for example - I will create wealth for myself and others. The benefit will spread and everyone will benefit. No-one loses. Wealth is created when the person GETTING the wealth gives more than they receive. Has Stephen King benefited others more than himself? If you could put a price tag on enjoyment, probably he has - he’s probably provided millions and millions of “enjoyment hours” at some nominal cost and received millions of dollars in compensation. The value he’s provided has far outweighed the value he’s received.

Too many people today view wealth creation as “stealing.” Yeah, the real estate boom created wealth at the cost of all of us - through bailouts and long-term economic damage. But REAL wealth creation means that you’re giving away MORE than you’re receiving. If you build a better mousetrap, you’re going to make millions - but people are going to benefit from your better mousetrap far more than you’re going to benefit from them buying it. Everyone wins. I think if more of us thought this way we’d be better off. The trick in life is not to think of how you can increase your wealth by taking but how you can increase your wealth by giving.
photo credit: the mad LOLscientist

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I meant to post something last night, but I had to spend most of the evening wrestling with password changes. I don’t know if it was related to my recent loss of my USB key, but many of my password-protected sites suddenly didn’t work with the usual password I assigned to them.  I had to assume my key had been found.  I rapidly changed the last few sites that I hadn’t changed.

So amongst other things I think that brip blap’s access has been secured; for about 30 minutes I couldn’t log in since it seems the password had changed.  Good times…

This is worth reading.  As is this.

In the meantime, I managed to waste time watching this (I realize hulu destroys the blog format but I don’t know how to fix it):

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