Idiot Tax! That’s what they call the lottery- the tax you pay for being an idiot, because the odds are so heavily against you.
It depends, though, on what the lottery tickets mean to you. If you’re playing for fun and you feel that the cost of the ticket is worth the pleasure you get out of participating in the ritual of mass delusion, then it’s not particularly senseless- no different from spending money on Cable TV or some other superficial purchase. It’s like reading the horoscopes or going to the fortune teller’s. Enjoy yourself! But don’t count on it to change your life- the only way you can sustainably change your life for the better is through sustained application of better fundamentals.
I would describe retail therapy in a similar vein. It’s idiotic if you use it with the hope that it’ll resolve your problems, but it’s a rational personal choice if it’s something you enjoy doing for its own sake, without any pretentions. Of course, reality is often a lot more complex, and pretentions are inescapable. Smokers are able to love and hate smoking at the same time. We pay the idiot tax because we convince ourselves that it’s somehow worth it, or perhaps unavoidable.
Some purists would go so far as to describe any such practice as outright stupid, even if we tell ourselves it’s just for fun or pleasure. But who has the right to legislate what other people can or cannot do for fun? It makes some sense when one person’s decisions adversely affect other people- so things like smoking and gambling can be reasonably considered idiotic if you focus on the fact that it can hurt others.
Let’s recap- buying a lottery ticket is idiotic if you do it in the hope of getting a windfall. It’s especially stupid when you’re in dire straits financially- you’re better off saving the money instead. As you can tell, this is an incredibly subjective matter, and every one of us thinks differently about these things.
Figuring out how to manage other people’s lives is an incredibly difficult (and thankless!) business, and I’ll leave that to politicians and philosophers for now.
Idiot tax is still an interesting and potentially valuable concept if applied to managing oneself. For me, idiot tax is money that I shouldn’t have lost or spent, but ended up doing so out of negligence, ignorance, arrogance, incompetence, miscalculation and other personal failings.
The value in such an idea is that it “publicizes” mistakes and failures. You don’t have to talk about it on a public blog or post up statistics for everyone to see- but you can at least bring it to your own conscious attention. This is to help you avoid making such mistakes in the future. You turn your immediate loss into long-term gain. Losses become tuition fees, where the subject is “being awesome”.
List out all your idiot expenses- what you, on hindsight, regret. I once spent $100 gambling on a football match, thinking it was a sure-win. It was Germany against Serbia at the 2010 World Cup. Germany lost. I wouldn’t have minded losing a smaller amount, if I were playing for fun. But I was playing to win, and with more money than I could comfortably afford to lose. That was incredibly stupid of me. I had gotten greedy and overconfident, and risked what I shouldn’t have.
I learnt there and then that you should never risk more than you’re willing to lose. (Antonio from The Merchant of Venice comes to mind, as does the recent global financial crisis.) It’s a simple enough lesson, but I remind myself of it often. The emotions I felt when I realized that I just lost a quarter of my month’s pay in a matter of minutes are still clear and accessible in my mind. Since then, I have avoided taking risks I can’t afford.
I no longer play a game of poker without considering my buy-in to be completely forfeit. So if a game necessitates a $50 buy-in, I don’t even show up unless I’m completely willing to throw $100 out of the window for a night of fun. I know that I’m not skilled enough at poker to think of it as a serious money-making venture. Using money that I’m not particularly willing to lose to try and make money playing a game (that involves an element of chance) that I’m not particularly skilled at- that was an incredibly tense experience for me. I haven’t played cash games in quite a long time, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to enjoy it far more, and probably play much better too, because I won’t be crippled with the anxiety of loss-aversion. That’s one of the central paradoxes of life- to be good at something, you often have to let go of being obsessed about being good at it.
I will, on principle, never allow myself to get into debt or any other such uncomfortable circumstances again. Germany’s loss may have, on hindsight, allowed me to make the best use of $100 that I’ve ever made. As Vonnegut said (and I paraphrase)- the problem with life is that we’re not smart enough to know what’s the good stuff and what’s the bad stuff. I like to be a bit more assertive- wins are dangerous because we learn very little, and we get complacent, overestimating our own abilities. We tend to set ourselves up for imminent failure. (A Japanese proverb says: When at the point of victory, one should tighten one’s helmet.)
Conversely, failure is a great teacher- if you want to learn.
I often feel that the big ticket decisions are easier to make- it’s the small stuff that’s challenging. (“Everyone has the will to win- it’s the will to prepare to win that’s exceptional.”- Someone) Deciding to give up little indulgences to focus on something larger and more important. It’s the little things that always add up- both for good and bad, whether we’re talking about the forging or destruction of a relationship, building or eroding an empire.
My most recurrent form of idiot tax tends to be paid in the form of cab fares. Specifically, cabs that I shouldn’t have had to take, but ended up taking because I was unnecessarily late for an appointment. This has probably happened about a hundred times over the years- which makes it far costlier for me than Germany’s loss to Serbia. It’s far harder to correct as a habit, because it seems so minor, so marginal. A few minutes more never seems to hurt- until it’s too late. There are no strong, powerful emotions to restrain me from doing it again. The frustration and disappointment is fleeting- which is why it’s necessary to reflect, and better still, to track one’s expenses.
If you keep track of the amount of idiot tax you pay over the months (how much, and on what), then certain patterns will begin to emerge that reveal a truth that our instinctive self-deception can’t cover up. The numbers don’t lie! If you’re a person who believes that the lottery (or smoking) is a form of idiocy, then it’s only fair that you develop certain standards for yourself and stick to them. Chances are, you’re paying some form of idiot tax yourself. You’re only qualified to judge if you idiot-proof yourself first, right?
Idiot tax isn’t just about money. It applies to all sorts of capital and resources, especially time. How long do we expect to live, and how much of that incredibly limited time do we fritter away mindlessly on the internet, in poor moods, dealing with people who don’t care about us, doing things we don’t want to do, suffering from bad health? Bad decisions can mean hours, days or even years of misery- and that’s an incredibly high cost. Is it worth paying? And if you’ve paid it already, or are in the midst of paying it, what are you going to make of it?
Idiot tax is about cataloguing mistakes so that we can learn from them.
Many of them are manifestations of systems failure- which need to be dealt with
at a deeper level than what might seem immediately obvious. The best way for me to stop paying idiot tax to cabbies, I believe, is not to count on discipline and focus to stop being late (discipline is so unreliable!), but for me to develop a positive emotional attachment to being punctual. I spend a lot of idiot tax staying up late nights- which I have begun to rectify by focusing on how awesome it feels to be well rested, awake, clear and cognizant. Emotions can be exploited for good.
Everything that works well in our world evolved and adapted to its circumstances over time, through selection and variation. Trial and error. The problem with us is that we tend to overlook our errors. All we have to do is to pay attention to them, reflect on them, and figure out how to prevent them from happening altogether. And that’s when the magic happens.
Idiot Tax: How much do you pay?
Idiot Tax! That’s what they call the lottery- the tax you pay for being an idiot, because the odds are so heavily against you.
It depends, though, on what the lottery tickets mean to you. If you’re playing for fun and you feel that the cost of the ticket is worth the pleasure you get out of participating in the ritual of mass delusion, then it’s not particularly senseless- no different from spending money on Cable TV or some other superficial purchase. It’s like reading the horoscopes or going to the fortune teller’s. Enjoy yourself! But don’t count on it to change your life- the only way you can sustainably change your life for the better is through sustained application of better fundamentals.
I would describe retail therapy in a similar vein. It’s idiotic if you use it with the hope that it’ll resolve your problems, but it’s a rational personal choice if it’s something you enjoy doing for its own sake, without any pretentions. Of course, reality is often a lot more complex, and pretentions are inescapable. Smokers are able to love and hate smoking at the same time. We pay the idiot tax because we convince ourselves that it’s somehow worth it, or perhaps unavoidable.
Some purists would go so far as to describe any such practice as outright stupid, even if we tell ourselves it’s just for fun or pleasure. But who has the right to legislate what other people can or cannot do for fun? It makes some sense when one person’s decisions adversely affect other people- so things like smoking and gambling can be reasonably considered idiotic if you focus on the fact that it can hurt others.
Let’s recap- buying a lottery ticket is idiotic if you do it in the hope of getting a windfall. It’s especially stupid when you’re in dire straits financially- you’re better off saving the money instead. As you can tell, this is an incredibly subjective matter, and every one of us thinks differently about these things.
Figuring out how to manage other people’s lives is an incredibly difficult (and thankless!) business, and I’ll leave that to politicians and philosophers for now.
Idiot tax is still an interesting and potentially valuable concept if applied to managing oneself. For me, idiot tax is money that I shouldn’t have lost or spent, but ended up doing so out of negligence, ignorance, arrogance, incompetence, miscalculation and other personal failings.
The value in such an idea is that it “publicizes” mistakes and failures. You don’t have to talk about it on a public blog or post up statistics for everyone to see- but you can at least bring it to your own conscious attention. This is to help you avoid making such mistakes in the future. You turn your immediate loss into long-term gain. Losses become tuition fees, where the subject is “being awesome”.
List out all your idiot expenses- what you, on hindsight, regret. I once spent $100 gambling on a football match, thinking it was a sure-win. It was Germany against Serbia at the 2010 World Cup. Germany lost. I wouldn’t have minded losing a smaller amount, if I were playing for fun. But I was playing to win, and with more money than I could comfortably afford to lose. That was incredibly stupid of me. I had gotten greedy and overconfident, and risked what I shouldn’t have.
I learnt there and then that you should never risk more than you’re willing to lose. (Antonio from The Merchant of Venice comes to mind, as does the recent global financial crisis.) It’s a simple enough lesson, but I remind myself of it often. The emotions I felt when I realized that I just lost a quarter of my month’s pay in a matter of minutes are still clear and accessible in my mind. Since then, I have avoided taking risks I can’t afford.
I no longer play a game of poker without considering my buy-in to be completely forfeit. So if a game necessitates a $50 buy-in, I don’t even show up unless I’m completely willing to throw $100 out of the window for a night of fun. I know that I’m not skilled enough at poker to think of it as a serious money-making venture. Using money that I’m not particularly willing to lose to try and make money playing a game (that involves an element of chance) that I’m not particularly skilled at- that was an incredibly tense experience for me. I haven’t played cash games in quite a long time, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to enjoy it far more, and probably play much better too, because I won’t be crippled with the anxiety of loss-aversion. That’s one of the central paradoxes of life- to be good at something, you often have to let go of being obsessed about being good at it.
I will, on principle, never allow myself to get into debt or any other such uncomfortable circumstances again. Germany’s loss may have, on hindsight, allowed me to make the best use of $100 that I’ve ever made. As Vonnegut said (and I paraphrase)- the problem with life is that we’re not smart enough to know what’s the good stuff and what’s the bad stuff. I like to be a bit more assertive- wins are dangerous because we learn very little, and we get complacent, overestimating our own abilities. We tend to set ourselves up for imminent failure. (A Japanese proverb says: When at the point of victory, one should tighten one’s helmet.)
Conversely, failure is a great teacher- if you want to learn.
I often feel that the big ticket decisions are easier to make- it’s the small stuff that’s challenging. (“Everyone has the will to win- it’s the will to prepare to win that’s exceptional.”- Someone) Deciding to give up little indulgences to focus on something larger and more important. It’s the little things that always add up- both for good and bad, whether we’re talking about the forging or destruction of a relationship, building or eroding an empire.
My most recurrent form of idiot tax tends to be paid in the form of cab fares. Specifically, cabs that I shouldn’t have had to take, but ended up taking because I was unnecessarily late for an appointment. This has probably happened about a hundred times over the years- which makes it far costlier for me than Germany’s loss to Serbia. It’s far harder to correct as a habit, because it seems so minor, so marginal. A few minutes more never seems to hurt- until it’s too late. There are no strong, powerful emotions to restrain me from doing it again. The frustration and disappointment is fleeting- which is why it’s necessary to reflect, and better still, to track one’s expenses.
If you keep track of the amount of idiot tax you pay over the months (how much, and on what), then certain patterns will begin to emerge that reveal a truth that our instinctive self-deception can’t cover up. The numbers don’t lie! If you’re a person who believes that the lottery (or smoking) is a form of idiocy, then it’s only fair that you develop certain standards for yourself and stick to them. Chances are, you’re paying some form of idiot tax yourself. You’re only qualified to judge if you idiot-proof yourself first, right?
Idiot tax isn’t just about money. It applies to all sorts of capital and resources, especially time. How long do we expect to live, and how much of that incredibly limited time do we fritter away mindlessly on the internet, in poor moods, dealing with people who don’t care about us, doing things we don’t want to do, suffering from bad health? Bad decisions can mean hours, days or even years of misery- and that’s an incredibly high cost. Is it worth paying? And if you’ve paid it already, or are in the midst of paying it, what are you going to make of it?
Idiot tax is about cataloguing mistakes so that we can learn from them.
Many of them are manifestations of systems failure- which need to be dealt with
at a deeper level than what might seem immediately obvious. The best way for me to stop paying idiot tax to cabbies, I believe, is not to count on discipline and focus to stop being late (discipline is so unreliable!), but for me to develop a positive emotional attachment to being punctual. I spend a lot of idiot tax staying up late nights- which I have begun to rectify by focusing on how awesome it feels to be well rested, awake, clear and cognizant. Emotions can be exploited for good.
Everything that works well in our world evolved and adapted to its circumstances over time, through selection and variation. Trial and error. The problem with us is that we tend to overlook our errors. All we have to do is to pay attention to them, reflect on them, and figure out how to prevent them from happening altogether. And that’s when the magic happens.