Abacus Brief Ch 8: Business Hacks

Specialization is a boon to society. If you are the best member of the tribe at installing shark's teeth along the edge of a war club, when we go to war I want a club you've worked on. You will make them faster and craft them meaner than myself. Maybe our enemies will know we have them and we won't have to fight. I'll be happy to trade some fish I'm so good at catching for one or two of your clubs. We both end up with better results by sharing.

Like most things, specialization can go too far.

Simple concepts have different definitions for different specialties. Physicists may think they understand a biologist or a chemist but arguments will arise because their terminologies are languages that only sound alike. "I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." - Robert McCloskey

Enter The Hackers

Hackers that work with code become conversant with many computer languages, and can quickly learn a new one if needed. They realize computers are essentially very dumb, literal machines that work extremely fast. Hackers function as a creative bridge, translating between machine and reality. Sometimes they program the machine, other times they reshape reality.

Somehow the hackster skill sets work with scientists too. They end up acting as a creative bridge between brilliant but stubborn intellectuals trapped on their definitional islands of specialization. Hackers are the glue that holds our newly formed, multi-discipline teams together. It is not just words, but techniques that separate, A mathematician has been trained to approach problems in a vastly different manner than a physician. Hackers can span the divide, deciding which approaches and which meanings to apply.

The results are phenomenal.

In just a few days our common lexicon and diverse selection of approaches have enabled significant breakthroughs. It is almost as if humanity has advanced by an order of magnitude, with attitude. There is a scientific and technical revolution started in the cities of The People.

We've also been able to organize some quiet revolutions. By common consent among the hacker/facilitators we've moved social scientists like economists, adding them to the pool of mathematicians. They will not forsake the liner math they use when pretending people are rational. We've put them where they can do real science. Poets are better at understanding human irrationality, and more accurate in their summations of cause and effect. Elegance instead of complexity. The economy was murdered by Professor Plum, in the conservatory, with excessive money creation.

Business Hacks

This is fun.

Business has changed in only one way since the days when tribe members traded fish for war clubs. Back then, I wanted clubs and got them at a price I agreed to, My warrior brother wanted fish, and got them at a price he thought was good. This is important - we both thought we won. If we didn't think we got a good deal, we wouldn't have traded. It was not just fish/club, there were intangibles traded also. He might feel a bit safer knowing another superior club is in tribal hands. I may feel I've scored points with his cute sister as a good provider. But we both win, the whole tribe is now more prosperous.

How has business changed? A chief may declare all clubs are worth three fish. I Think that better club is easily worth four fish, but he can't sell it for that without being punished for price gouging. No deal, the tribe is hurt, our safety is impaired, we are now weaker and poorer. Cheap clubs show up everywhere, not worth three of my fish. I fish less, make my own club. You can carry this story into other realms -- I've said enough.

So why is business now fun?

The tribe is an anarcho-monarchy and the rightful government of this island. We don't pay property tax on our lava-flow dwellings, or sales taxes on our exchanges. We basically ignore all sorts of unjust laws. I like that.

Just because the invaders used force to steal our land a few generations ago, and use force of arms to enslave the current Other population, does not mean I need to bow before their tyranny. I may loan them what they consider tax payments, but I'll take it back with interest before they leave, tails between their legs. Any taxes I can avoid I will, and rightly so.

I'll voluntarily pay for value, and even overpay for the exceptional. I do not willingly loan to extortion. The island and any people that choose to stay will be much better off under the light whisper of existing tribal rule. This is not a civil war, there is nothing civil about the pirates that now occupy our land. Their aim is not to maintain a civil society but as always; to dominate, spoil, rape, and plunder.

Not on our island.

"Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations!

And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works."

Claude Frédéric Bastiat 1801-1850