Babies are a lot cuter

I am definitely on a roll here.  But I think it is important to make you understand that to take accountability for your own life is the first step towards success.  On this blog, I am scolding a lot about politicians; not that I think only politicians are inherently bad.  Many start out with quit lofty goals but when you get used to ever greater power, you unavoidably get corrupted. 

There is a place for the state. Despite all its evils including the right of committing violence, sentencing and sending to death as well as imprisonment of its citizens. Any society needs a certain amount of regulations and jointly-owned infrastructure. We cannot do everything by ourselves.  But in the end, all of us are there to look out first for ourselves. We are looking out first for Number-One, then our family and finally our community and planet. But in doing so, we give others the power to make decisions for us. If our brain goes, that may not be such a bad thing; but in general, it is our live and our responsibility. 

You may hire a financial planner to help you invest, but it is your pennies and the financial planner will only advise in return for a benefit for him or her. After all the financial planner has her own financial and personal interests.  The term ‘Fiduciary duty’ is flawed.  Already from our point of self-preservation, fiduciary duty – the duty to act in someone else’s instead of our own interest is inherently wrong.  Sometimes, we sacrifice ourselves for our children – but that is extremely rare and, depending on what a child will do with its life sacrificing your life may not be the best thing to do after all. We are all specks of unique dust in the universe and we better think very carefully about what we do with our own, very special, speck. 

We are often intuitive in our thinking; impulsive and we act often automatically based on past experiences and evolutionary instinct. Often this saves our hide; but most real decisions in life we better think and reason out carefully or at least do some due diligence on our impulses. We tend to be lazy and as such it is so easy to let others make decisions for us. After all, we learned that our parents know best! Ask yourself if that is truly so. And if our parents do not always know best then what about random people elected in government?  It is imperative that we keep control of our own lives. There were times in our history that people fought to death for our personal freedoms and we shouldn’t throw away so nonchalantly the rights others felt worth to die for.

It is not only that we should distrust any government in our lives. The same is true for the people we invest in. After all, there is no way that those people, who likely do not even know us, will sacrifice their interests above ours. CEOs, Chairmen of boards, investment advisors, I would even say priests of whatever nomination, are not there to put your interests ahead of theirs. A CEO’s interest is not to make you as much money as possible. He/she is out for himself! Many reached their position through sharp elbows or a single-mindedness that exceeds that of their competitors. So just like with politicians, I would say, don’t trust senior managers or investment advisors.

Yes, they will do well for you if that helps them. Sometimes our interests are aligned but often they are not. You cannot blame others for taking advantage of you. In some ways, I would say good for them because you are too lazy to defend your own interests or of those close around you. And there are times that you are forced to depend on others. That is fine and typically the closer those others are to you the better. That is not to say that some more distant from you do not have more skills to accomplish your goals for you than those close up. Everything is a judgment call, and everything has a cost. Make sure you know that no matter what, the buck stops with you and the lazier you get the less control you have over your life. In the end you may have given all your decision power away what is then the difference between you and a helpless baby? I know, babies are a lot cuter! 😊

So Godfried, what is in this for you? Writing this blog, I mean.  Maybe it is vanity. Alternatively, did you know who learns most from the teacher?  Because the teacher has to think and formulate the topics of his or her teaching, the teacher often learns most.

By the way, I love to sit in my living room, playing Spanish Flamenco in the background, drinking coffee on a quite morning while dreaming, scheming and writing.