2-3-4 Friday
‘Seeking to spark the most potential within you per word of any online newsletter’
1 thought
Here’s a thought I’ve been wrestling with.
We might go extinct.
Yes, this is not a nice thought for a cheery Friday morning, as you think about the weekend, but you only have to feel the heat you’re having this summer to see how our
Earth is not well, and, we are consequently not feeling too comfortable too.
This isn’t a newsletter about sustainability and how you should recycle your trash and use less plastic bags.
Rather, it’s about the idea behind why we are possibly going extinct.
Hat tip to Thomas Friedberger, co-Chief Investment Officer at Tikehau Capital, who pointed this out.
In February this year, I was on a Zoom call with Thomas and his team at IREIT, a real estate investment trust based in Singapore that was investing in European office and retail buildings. He shared about how IREIT was shaping its portfolio in response to our global focus on efficiency, over resilience, over the past
decades of our growth.
Efficiency over resilience.
Just flip over your shirt, and you would see your shirt made in Bangladesh, so that we can buy it at $19 from Uniqlo. 50 years ago, we might not even have bought an extra shirt because it didn’t make sense.
Or how the cleaner at your block is from a less developed nation, so that wages can be kept low.
In his
October 2023 CIO Letter, he wrote,
This globalised development model, centred around Western culture, has prioritised efficiency over resilience, global over local, lower prices over higher wages, companies over individuals and standards over human beings.
Standards, over human beings.
1 talk
By prioritising efficiency over resilience, this model has compromised the long term in favour of the short term.
1 tip
Sure, it may not be your problem that someone else is earning less than you. It keeps things affordable.
And you might be in a position where you can change how much someone else is being paid. But there may be value in paying attention to what Friedberger calls ‘the human factor’ in your economic decisions.
You can see it play out in:
- Whether you should buy that new iPhone, or stick to the 4 year old one that might be a little slower,
- Whether you need that new bag/shirt/shoe/trousers, or whether you can simply mend the old one
- Whether you need to eat meat everyday
Yes, all of these are small actions, and they may not add up to much.
But if done at scale, it changes how our world heals from what we have done to it.
It also determines how well the least in our society, experience our society.
We can’t always stop to help everyone, but we can stop for just one.
John
Live Young, Live Well - Work Your Love
Think others might benefit? I’m counting on you. Forward this on.
