Allocation

Last weekend I was talking on the phone to my friend Nora, who has managed to parlay into a vocation a life traveling the world -- first with her father, a famous anthropologist -- studying, creating, listening, and writing. We were talking about all that is going on in the world, Covid, protest/riots, global warming... And she told a story of talking to Jerry Brown sometime about the state of the world and she said to him: "Jerry, why can't you do something about this," to which he replied "Nora, you have to understand what my job is: it's to make sure that all the parts of the government get their budget allocation for the year. That's the job."

On the one hand, it seems to oversimplify and trivialize the span of influence of a very senior governmental role, but on the other hand, he's pretty much spot on. And the fact is that his job is pretty much the same as all of ours, except that we are allocating not just money but time, and we have to decide on how to allocate the money, i.e. buy something to consume or to appreciate, give it away (if so, to whom? to do what?), invest it in equities or bonds or something else, or stick it in the bank or credit union/CDFI, and thereby delegate the capital allocation function first to a bank CFO -- who could buy bonds, offset losses, or loan it out either to commercial enterprises or to residential borrowers, and then sell the loan on to a GSE so as to loan it out again. Or spend it to fix up something we already own. In which case, is it better to insource and do the work yourself or outsource and focus on doing one's own job, which earns more money? Or just rest, so you can do your job better tomorrow? I'm sure I've left something out.

In "normal times", this allocation process has a certain gravity or valence. Right now it feels different. We feel compelled to do and spend differently. To force ourselves to eat out when saving feels right, just to keep businesses afloat. To drive across town to FlyLeaf for a book rather than order it online. We were already trying to do that, now we are focusing harder. The calculus of giving directly vs. supporting political candidates feels more complicated...

In the "developed world," we are fortunate that, on average, we have something like 20,000-30,000 24 hour periods per life to allocate out our time/money, to figure out whether to earn, retain (by insourcing tasks), or spend money either on ourselves or on others. And there's no clear distinction between the two. Right now I really want a new couch for my study, I've probably written about it. The futon in here is 30 years on and not nappable. If I spend $2k on it, that's $2k I can't give to Josh or to a food bank or a job training program or medical research. But it supports a number of businesses, who have employees...

It's all enough to wear a person out. But we gotta keep plugging, because the infinite dance of this allocation process is what, per Hegel and MLKJ, bends the arc of history to the good. We hope.