Something basic about freedom

Before anything starts in this blog, this is an entry, which might not be seen as essential to you or the world of investments. I would like to take a closer look at basic freedom and where this leads us to. What does that mean?

Freedom

To assess this topic, let’s have a closer look at the real world. In this world everyone and everything has a certain level of freedom. Things that live can think and move by decision making. Thinkers, that means animals and most humans, know that thinking has no limits (not sure about the plants). The problem appears transforming thought or ideas into certain actions, which at best are beneficial to the origin and others. It takes something to act and live. It costs.

Cost of freedom

With cost I do not directly mean money. Time consuming activities have also a direct association to cost, cost of time*. Other forms of cost are e.g. cost of energy, raw material, electric power, water, oil, gas etc. These costs are usually measured in different ways and displayed in numbers. It costs to get these materials to the place of use in a certain format. But there is a also another form that has an association to cost. I call it “hidden limitation”.

*Specifically, time is not a cost, but actions taking time are measured in that way, so these actions “cost time”. Same for space.

Hidden limitation

When we have a target with certain cost base, e.g. a human filling a bucket with water from a tap or barrel and transport it somewhere. Liters may be a unit for the amount (cost) of water. Seconds and minutes display the “cost” of time. Would we directly think about any form of human invented believe that has an impact on that, too? Water and religion? To see this connection one must know that any religion has a rule to pray to god or a multiple of that. If the human person associated with filling the bucket with water stays away at church to pray, costs are increasing. During this time nobody would fill the bucket with anything. Is this a stupid example?

It does not have to be necessarily religious believe. It could be anything “hidden”, that makes the human staying away. Further, it is not limited to the form of staying away. It can be anything that prevents that bucket from being filled.

Ok, so there is the idea to use machinery instead? Right, a machine could do what humans can do and will not walk away. Instead, this machine can get broken. Then we would need repair or service intervalls with parts and so on… dimension over dimension must be foreseen to get that simple bucket filled. It is not limited to human or machinery interaction. That is called planning or engineering.

Planning / Engineering

Very importantly, these planning activities must be performed before anything starts. But even the best planning cannot prevent that bucket from being empty from time to time, hit by hidden limitations. In that case immediate reaction (management) is needed. Decisions need to be made. The less time the bucket is empty the better the planning and management. It all depends on a target that makes sense. Does this target make any sense? Filling a bucket with water? Who sets this target initially? The answer is that the user of the water would like to have a transport (service) of the filled bucket (product). At best the provider gets the empty bucket back.

Product / Service

It is very costly (see costs above), when things are set up without an initial idea of whats useful for anyone. How can one have an idea to fill a bucket? Maybe the idea is to transport this water to a garden, watering flowers. That sounds very useful to a user. If it doesn’t sound useful at first thought, it might be a failure from the beginning. One should then step away from setting up anything and think again. Thinking doesn’t cost as much.

No thought

At last, I need to mention that there are also many actions taken without any thought. That happens especially in the financial markets. This blog should help you to understand, what actually is going on.