Josh Allred's Blog

I am unsure if Albert Einstein said this, but famously, he is attributed to have said that compound interest was the world’s eighth wonder. “He who understands it earns it; he who doesn’t pays it.” Translated, debt grows, and savings grow slower. A simple example is if someone who views money as a tool may figure out how to save a few bucks each week and put it into the market, where it compounds until one day you have a healthy retirement account after 40 years. However, someone who tells themselves a story of money as this burden may buy themselves a 500-dollar television on a credit card will see the interest compound at 20+ percent rates, and the debt grows out of control. 

Yes, money is a story. But it isn’t that simple either. It would be unjust to say it is the only thing that drives us into wealth or poverty. Economist Raj Chetty’s work has shown that we can accurately predict someone’s chances of economic mobility based on their zip code. Race, incarceration, discrimination, education opportunities, social engagement, family dynamics, short-term assistance, and even landlords play a part in upward economic mobility. It’s a map that is already drawn for all of us now. It feels like determinism based on circumstances of when, where, and whom you were born to. The culture says it is the individual players’ fault if you are not rich.

Attribution theory is the idea that when we are successful, we point to internal forces that got us there. We are likely to give ourselves credit for making the right moves. When we fail, we are more likely to blame external forces. “The dog ate my homework.” That’s because our narrative works overtime to protect us from ourselves. We don’t want to be wrong, we don’t want to be blamed, we don’t want to be judged, we don’t want to be seen or exposed. 

Recently, I went through a Wendy’s drive-thru to get my kids something. We sat in the drive-thru for 20 minutes. When we pulled to the window, they told us the credit card machine was down, and they could only take cash. I didn’t have any, so the question is: Does the cashier holding the bag of food still choose to give me the food we waited for, or does he keep it and just throw it away. After all, they can’t put it back on the frier once it is in the bag.

Dumbfounded about what to do, the cashier said he couldn’t give the food away. I asked. “So, you’ll just throw it away?” And he said yes. We ended up driving to McDonalds.

The story’s point is this: Industrialism has sliced the working class’s task on the assembly line so small that we no longer need to think or make decisions. Remove decision making and you can increase productivity. The answer was just give the food away and hope I come back soon to pay. Better to feed someone who waited 20 minutes then to watch it go into the trash. Perhaps, you delight the customer and it comes back in increase. The cog in the machine doesn’t understand this because it wasn’t in the simple set of instructions he was given. The answer wasn’t in the manual. It is exactly the system we have set up. Make the worker on the assembly line like a robot. Because if he was treated with dignity as a human, given authority, trust, and decision-making, I guarantee, outcomes look different.

When managers are left scratching their heads wondering why someone below them made the decision they did, it is because that organization doesn’t foster leadership, it fosters compliance.

Every aspect of all our lives is ready for some revolution—healthcare, education, democracy, capitalism, nuclear disarmament, climate crisis, food processing, water rights…Everyone is feeling dissatisfied with how things are. It’s time to introduce a little anarchy. However, we don’t need torches to burn it down and start over for this to work. What we need is to reimagine. Political thinker and Linguist Noam Chomsky defines what anarchism should be and that any system or person imposing authority over someone must be justified. If it can’t be justified, we must find something better to replace it. That’s it. If a system isn’t working, why can’t we replace it with something more fair? A parent can justify pulling their four-year-olds to get them out of the street when a car is whizzing by. That is justified behavior. Is it justified to work people to the point they get chronic illnesses in exchange for a few years of retirement? Is it justified to deny healthcare to another human being because they don’t have the correct insurance? 

Convenience is a relativity new problem in human history. For most of human history, convenience wasn’t an issue. To make bread, you had to bake it. You had to pull the grain, grind it, and prep it to bake it. It lasted for a couple days, and you needed to do it again. Now, you can buy a loaf of bread and store it for weeks. The industrialists saw this and created whole industries around the power of convenience. Now, convenience has turned to one-click shopping.

But it is also killing the only planet we live on.

We might need to take a step back to take a giant leap forward.

The disease of more is a side-effect of industrialism and consumerism. You can listen to plenty of podcasts and watch plenty of Tic Toc videos of someone who says they found meaning in being more efficient than the rest of us. We created a whole industry called “self-help” to cope with the world of corporations. Another fad diet or app to help you become more efficient to keep up with the constant speed. Decision-making is faster than ever because of the speed of information and communication. It has worn us down. So much so people are just sick of making another decision. How do we make hard decisions if we are inundated with a constant stream of easy ones? We must start saying no to every email, every text, every phone call, every problem, and every emergency. Instead, we start saying Yes to the possibility of our chosen projects. The path to finding meaning again is embracing of less inefficiencies and, yes, profits. Enough can simply be enough to go do the next thing. 

What did our ancestors die for if we can’t live the life of happiness they always dreamed of?

If life is perceived as difficult before we achieve modernity, why wouldn’t they want us to be happy then?

Just because people have suffered, it doesn’t mean you can’t be happy.

However, if you are not drowning, it is your duty to be a lifeguard.

The next step forward is to embrace inconvenience, change, and the fear of the unknown. While this is all uncomfortable, it isn’t any more uncomfortable than the current situation we are currently in. At least with this path forward, we are actually moving in a direction instead of being stuck, which makes things different. It is challenging to recognize when it is time to have a revolution until it shows up. While it would have been better to face this challenge yesterday, today is the next best time. For tomorrow is no guarantee—really for all of us.

The U.S. Department of Human and Health Services recognizes burnout as a workplace condition. So, why, then, do we call it burnout? Why not call it something like “Exploitation Exhaustion?” The language around this is important. In Europe, paternity leave or medical care is recognized as a fundamental human right. It is expected. Unlike in the U.S., those things are viewed as a benefit or a privilege. The cultural approach to fixing burnout is embedded into our industrial mindset, framing it as an individual’s problem. So, they tell us to take 15 minutes out of our day to be mindful or go on a walk and meditate. We try to carve out time for “self-care” to cope with the system we have set up. When people inevitably fail, it’s the individual’s fault for not hacking it, not the environment that has been created. Corporatism then pushes us to go to therapy. While therapy can be helpful, it isn’t the panacea to this culture we have built. It all pushes us to cope, not to be free. Plus, not everyone can afford therapy, and wait times are long. The wellness or self-care industry has increased its market value to approximately $1.5 trillion worldwide. That says a lot about the world we have built. What needs to be addressed is what no one is talking about. The collective problem of burnout—the decisions that policymakers, lawmakers, and corporations have made for over a century that led us here. 

There are 331 million people that live in the United States today. Out of those, there are roughly 23 million millionaires. About 6% of the total population in the U.S. There are about 750 billionaires in the U.S. today. The total wealth of U.S. billionaires grew from $240 billion in 1990 (adjusted for inflation) to over four trillion which is more than the combined wealth of the bottom half of U.S. households. 

Adam Smith famously wrote about the invisible hand—the unseen forces of self-interest that impact the free market. If yesterday, the economy was ruled with a hand, it is now with an iron fist. An unforgiving one at that.

In 1914, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line and said, he would double the pay of factory workers from $2.50 to $5.00 per hour and you can work 8 hours per day instead of 9. Kicking off the race of making products for the masses—average stuff for average people. In this new social contract, the working class bought in. Give the factory a hard day’s work and in return, you can have your pocket full of cash. Eventually, this evolved to extra forms of security like healthcare, dental, and retirement. The American Dream was now realized.

Before the Ford Assembly Line, cars were handmade. It initially took 12 working hours to produce one car. Ford was able to reduce that time to a mere 93 minutes. So instead of having 100 people building 1 car, you have thousands of factory workers working on one specific part over and over again on many cars. The goal was to break down large tasks into smaller ones. While repetitive, you can then move even faster and cheaper with fewer defects. Now you no longer needed each worker to master every part of the assembly line, you just needed one person to master one part of the process. By reducing the amount of skill each job that each laborer had to do, you can now replace them with someone cheaper. By applying this process all across the factory, The Ford Assembly Line revolutionized production making average stuff for average people.