The Summing Up

January is around the corner, the month named after the Roman god Janus who had two faces — one looking forward to the future and the other backward to the past. He is the god of “beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings” says the wiki.

It was the Roman emperor Julius Caesar (100 BCE – 44 BCE) who decided that the first day of January will mark the start of a new year in 45 BCE. Thus was born the Julian calendar that is almost universally used today (with notable exceptions like in Ethiopia.) How’s that for power and influence?

Time to look back.

For yours truly, it’s been a fun year. Since I don’t have a family of my own, there’s nothing I can note in terms of transitions of family members. I mark the years in terms of what I have learned. The pile of books I’d like to read has increased monotonically, and I have made reasonable progress in my reading by my modest standards.

I traveled a bit. Twice to India, a couple of times to California, and a bunch of road trips — to Washington DE, New York City, Boston, and Chicago. They were fun. I consider myself so fortunate that I have the freedom, the desire and the ability to travel. Together with reading, traveling tops the list of activities that bring joy to me.

What have I learned?

I learned that nature “knows” best. It works from the bottom up; it is individualistic; it doesn’t command and control. It’s the Tao, the way. Because it is not top-down, it is not collectivist. Collectivism fails because it is antithetical to nature.

I learned that it is important to distinguish between things, processes, and outcomes of processes. You can manipulate and control things; you can design processes; you cannot control the outcomes of processes. If you get the process right, the outcome is right. Processes are dynamic and treating them as static entities is a costly mistake.

I learned that luck is a critical element in the outcome, and that the influence of luck is too often not acknowledged.

“Although most philosophers acknowledged the influence of divine providence, the deistic God of nature worked from the bottom up, through the voluntary actions of individuals, not from the top down, through the coercive decrees of emperors and kings.”[1]

***

As I find economics fascinating, I try my best to get others to understand the fundamentals of the discipline. I learned that that is really hard to do. Ask Frank H Knight said, “The serious fact is that the bulk of the really important things that economics has to teach are things that people would see for themselves if they were willing to see. And it is hard to believe in the utility of trying to teach what men refuse to learn or even seriously listen to.”

Am I giving up on that self-selected task of spreading economic literacy? No. Because I learn best when I struggle to teach the unwilling or the unprepared. I do it for my own benefit, and if that leads to social good, that’s just a positive externality (that’s intended.)

***

Looking forward. I have a couple of essays I am working on. The working title of the first is “How the World Works: A beginners guide” and the other “For the Time Being.” I expect to complete them early in 2020.

***

I plan to travel. Circumnavigate the earth on a ship. That’ll take around three months. And a week-long transatlantic crossing between England and New York. I want to take some trains — the Orient Express, the Trans Siberian Express, a train trip in Norway, and one across Canada.

Finally, I want to get started on starting a school for poor children in India. The model I have in mind is what I call “an intergenerational transfer scheme.” I have to get the funding worked out.

Well, that’s about it. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch. Best wishes for a New Year.

{Photo at the top of the post: I took that at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City last week.}

NOTES:

[1] Quote from George H Smith’s book The System of Liberty (2013).