Bennett's Five Links #074
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Bennett's Five Links #074
Expensive agony; Little Green Lies
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Expense regardless of pleasure ..
I’ve spoken before how much I enjoyed Morgan Housel’s recent book, the Psychology of Money (affiliate link). And so it’s no huge surprise that I loved his recent blog post along similar themes.
Some snips —
Behavioral finance is now well documented. But most of the attention goes to how people invest. Welch’s story shows how much deeper the psychology of money can go. How you spend money can reveal an existential struggle of what you find valuable in life, who you want to spend time with, why you chose your career, and the kind of attention you want from other people.
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In 1875 an op-ed said socialites “devote themselves to pleasure regardless of expense.” A Vanderbilt heir responded that actually they “devote themselves to expense regardless of pleasure.”
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Part of this is the belief that spending money will make you happier. When it doesn’t – either because it never will or because you haven’t discovered purchases that bring joy – your reaction is that you must not be spending enough, so you double down, again and again.
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People generally aspire to be respected and admired by others, and using money to buy fancy things may bring less of it than you imagine. If respect and admiration are your goal, be careful how you seek it. Humility, kindness, and empathy will bring you more respect than horsepower ever will.
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There’s a saying that if you get public recognition for donating money, it’s not charity – it’s philanthropy. And if you demand recognition, it’s not even charity – it’s a business deal.
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The thing to recognize is that spending money “on yourself” is often done with the intent of influencing what other people think.
That should spark three questions: Whose opinion are you trying to influence, why, and are those people even paying attention?
The Art and Science of Spending Money
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Sweet little lies ..
Some of these ‘dangerous lies we tell ourselves’ really hit home.
10 Dangerous Lies We Tell Ourselves
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Cut. Let’s go again ..
I can’t be sure why, but I feel these skills could come in useful some day.
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Defies explanation ..
This is a different vibe to the usual links I post. I found this story, about a man who seemingly killed himself via agonising radiation poisoning, morbid but fascinating.
I’m not much of a ‘true-crime-podcaster’ person but if you enjoy that kind of mystery then you might get something from this story also.
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The little green man now lies down ..
I’m all for innovation, but should we be developing technology to enable people’s walk-with-head-buried-in-phone habits?
In an effort to keep their citizens safe despite them being glued to their phones, the city is now testing ground-level signal lights at pedestrian crossings.
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Although they might be perceived as overbearing, particularly compared to current systems, there does seem to be a real need for Hong Kong’s ground-level signaling. Although the total number of pedestrians killed in vehicle impacts in Hong Kong has decreased in the last year, the number of such accidents caused by pedestrians who didn’t obey traffic signals, specifically, over the same period, has increased from four to six — a 50% increase. Between January and July of 2022, seven pedestrian deaths occurred at signalized crossings, and four of these cases involved these pedestrians not obeying traffic signals.
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Bennett
bennettgreen.com