The same week that the artist known as Beeple sold an NFT art piece for over $69M, I saw this question on Twitter: What does “rich” mean to you?
This was my answer:
After the news came out about the NFT auction, I doubled down on that point:
Turns out the guy who bought it runs the largest NFT fund in the world, but I think you get my point. Especially right now, it can seem like people are spending money just for the sake of spending money. For the rest of us who don’t own a digital art collection fund, we should be asking ourselves:
“How much is enough?”
If you had $69 million, would you be satisfied with that? Would it be enough?
Ben Hunt runs a great blog over at Epsilon Theory. I enjoy his writing and perspective, but one old post always stuck with me: the one about the differences between sheep vs. wolves.
But it’s not what you think. He has sheep on his farm so he knows them quite well. In this post (called “Sheep Logic”) he explains the difference between living in a flock of sheep where every individual is selfish and imitative, and living in a pack of wolves where everyone thinks for themself and looks out for one another. He has some interesting observations about sheep:
Sheep are evolved to have a specific type of intelligence which has the following hallmarks.
Enormous capacity for other-regarding behaviors. Sheep are unbelievably sensitive to what other sheep are doing and their emotional states. If another sheep is happy — i.e., it’s found a good source of food, which is the only thing that makes a sheep happy — then every other sheep in the flock is filled with jealousy (there’s really no other word for it) and will move in on that good thing. If another sheep is alarmed — which can be from almost anything, as bravery is not exactly a trait that tends to be naturally selected in a prey species — then every other sheep in the flock is immediately aware of what’s going on. Sometimes that means that they get alarmed, too. As often, though, it’s just an opportunity to keep going with your own grazing without worrying about the alarmed sheep bumping into your happy place.
Zero altruism and overwhelming selfishness. The most popular misconception about sheep is that they are obedient followers. It’s true that they’re not leaders. It’s true that they are incredibly sensitive to other sheep. But it’s also true that they are the most selfish mammal I’ve ever encountered. They don’t lead other sheep or form leadership structures like a pack because they don’t care about other sheep. Every sheep lives in a universe of One, which makes them just about the most non-obedient creature around.
The determination to pursue any behavior that meets Hallmark #1 and #2 to absurd ends, even unto death. My worst sheep suicide story? The first year we kept sheep, we thought it would make sense to set up a hay net in their pen, which keeps the hay off the ground and lets the sheep feed themselves by pulling hay through the very loose loops of the net. Turned out, though, that the loops were so loose that a determined sheep could put her entire head inside the net, and if one sheep could do that, then two sheep could do that. And given how the hay net was hung and how these sheep were sensing each other, they started to move clockwise in unison, each trying to get an advantage over the other, still with their heads stuck in the net. At which point the net starts to tighten. And tighten. And tighten. My daughter found them the next morning, having strangled each other to death, unable to stop gorging themselves or seeking an advantage from the behavior of others. The other sheep were crowded around, stepping around the dead bodies, pulling hay for themselves out of the net. That was a bad day.
Now THAT is selfishness on another level.
Or is it? Are we so different from the sheep? While all of us would like to be wolves, most of us are in fact jealous and selfish little sheep. As Ben says:
We think we are wolves, living by the logic of the pack.
In truth we are sheep, living by the logic of the flock.
“Would it be enough?” is a tough question for a sheep. Nothing is ever enough, because a sheep is always looking around for some other sheep who has more, who has what a sheep can’t have or doesn’t have yet. A sheep sees what someone else has and wants it for themself. Whether it’s some hay, an electric car, a house with three garage doors and pool, art, digital art, or whatever this is:
It’s not what the crowd believes. It’s what the crowd believes that the crowd believes.
Sheep don’t think about what they actually want or need, they think about what others think they want or need. It’s a vicious cycle for a sheep. Lifestyle creep sheep.
A sheep always want more, and therefore a sheep never knows when it’s enough.
One might even say they suffocate from greed.
Okay that was mean.
Brian Portnoy, author of Geometry of Wealth and all around smart dude, has talked a lot in his book and other podcasts and places about the concept of having “enough”:
Yet enough is hard. It is harder than more. More is a deeply wired evolutionary instinct for survival. Humans have not only survived but dominated all other species in part because of our aspirational nature. We survive not just by fending off dangers, but by seizing opportunity. Enough—deeply important and the wellspring of reflective happiness—can be uncomfortable because it feels like we’re shutting down an important part of ourselves. Which we are.
As a species, we were once stuck in the middle. Now we’re the kings and queens of the planet. And was it enough? Or are we talking about terraforming/colonizing Mars and mining the Moon and asteroids? Our great “aspirational nature,” the thing that makes us so great as a species, can also ruinous for our financial well being and put us more at risk.
He also talked about the concept in How I Invest My Money:
My thoughts around money life—not just investing, but earning, spending, saving, borrowing, giving, and so forth—have coalesced around the notion of “funded contentment.” True wealth, I believe, is the ability to underwrite a life that is meaningful to me. This is very different than being rich, or merely having more. Funded contentment is my mental model for thinking about the life I want to lead, and the lives of my wife and three kids.”
Sounds like something a wolf would say.
Ask yourself the same question: “How much is enough?”
What is the right number to walk away and be done playing the game of money?
Work hard. Play nice. And I hope you find your funded contentment.
Thanks for reading.
Love it 🔥
This "sheep is envious" effect describes Sadly, Porn (book by Edward Teach) well, and that all desires that can not realistically and materially meet is caused by spiritual impotence. Worse, is that this is what powers mob mentalities https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/the-logic-of-envy https://www.residentcontrarian.com/p/sadly-porn-review-iii
But here is the billion dollar question: (a) what is the barbell strategy of not being a sheep or a turkey (Taleb)? (b) Does it have anything to do with Cluelessness (Ribbonfarm/Dancoland) or Gentry (Yarvin/Chantrill) behavior within the middle class?