Chips

Sometimes I wonder about people my age who cannot quite seem to adjust to the world as an adult. I do not claim to be more mature or worldly than others, but this conclusion is occasionally inescapable to me.

As a child, the world is always gving far more to you than it receives from you. Everything is an entitlement. A child assumes that it is entitled to food, love, care, shelter, toys, television time, a warm bed and so on. When it does not receive any of these things, it wonders why it is being denied, and complains about its maltreatment. The unfairness of the world is evident when one is placed in comparison with others, who invariably have more of something than oneself. Of course, one's own advantages over others is always a blind spot.

A little later, the child starts to think that maybe the world needs something in exchange. Parents are doled out signs of affection, friends are given symbols of affirmation and respect, authority figures are shown token fear and admiration. The mechanics are fascinating, and the game is far more intricate than might be imagined. A child is perfectly capable of playing on the emotions of any adult. For example, a child is aware that the fiercest teacher is human, and thus vulnerable to assaults upon the heartstrings, so to speak. An apple, a card, the occasional inadvertent, completely intentional slip of the tongue revealing affection like to a family member; these are all tools used to garner affection and favour from a stern authoritarian. Setting aside the various games played thusly by children, and indeed all humans and animals, for that matter, let us proceed to my point for today.

As we move forward in life, many people fail to see that the world is not about an exchange. Dealing with others is not about whether we can receive something in return for something else. Certainly to some extent it is, but only as a subset of the larger method in which much of the world operates. Think about it. The way we assess the potential profit of any exchange is whether what we receive is worth more than what we give out. The question is considering the other side in the equation. The other side is similarly attempting to sous out the cost-benefit situation for itself. The crucial element here is that each side has little regard for the other's profit, only it's own. Life is not a zero-sum gain, where if one side profits, the other side necessarily loses. Of course this may sometimes be the case, but assuming an entirely voluntary transaction, this is not likely, as the losing side would simply back out. The concept is that so long as each side is able to obtain something it desires, the transaction can be successful. The situation need not be a profit maximising one for either side, nor for the entire system as a whole, but simply one that all parties can live with. In fact, there need not be an actual exchange for the transaction to be successful. A deal need not involve exchange of anything, but simply an arrangement where both sides gain something.

A marvellous example is outsourcing, the hot new thing, well, ok, of the last 30 years or so. The firm finds that it is troublesome to maintain a particular area of operations, so it finds an external contractor. The firm knows that it could retain this area of operations and simply run it efficiently, thus saving money. This is obvious, as the contractor also needs to be making significant profit from this project, so the cost is certainly below the price charged by the contractor to whoever is paying. However, the firm saves the energy and time needed to maintain an area of operations, and the contractor gains a profitable project. Both sides gain, and the losses, while existing, are considered irrelevant relative to the benefits.

The idea is that not everybody is out to make maximum profit on everything. The world does not owe you anything, but neither do you owe it anything. Any exchange made can of course be engineered to be to your own maximum benefit, but it is hardly necessary to consider everybody else to be profit-maximising rationalists. In fact, if anything, the slightest benefit, with insignificant costs, is usually enough to attain agreement, especially if little effort is involved. There is no need to constantly try to work out an equation for every transaction, simply consider what you can live with, what the other parties are likely to be able to live with, and it will all work out. The crucial point is to remember that the world is not doing you a favour when you do something, nor are you doing them a favour, but it is also not a cold-blooded rational exchange. Don't bother with what the other party thinks you are getting out of the exchange, but on what the other party thinks it is getting, then work with that, retaining a personal minimum level beyond which you will simply walk away from the table. There is no need to go searching for bargaining chips, just look at what is available to you and keep it as an option.