Phil Garland

Car Sharing For The Win!

As I was leaving the office I noticed my rear bike tire catching on the top of the break pad. After inspecting for a couple of minutes I realized I had a broken spoke. Unable to ride home, and knowing a 30-minute walk while towing a one-wheeled bike wouldn’t be fun, I looked for a Zipcar.

Salvation was near! 6-blocks of walking to Delia, my Zipcar one-way for $8. A Honda Fit (with plenty of room for my road bike) quickly took me from downtown to a spot a couple blocks from my apartment, where I parked it, checked it in with a tap of my membership card and walked home.

Car sharing is an important part of my urban lifestyle. Most of the time I walk/bike but everyone once in a while it comes in handy to get out of tight jams, take a day trip into the mountains, grocery shop, or to remember what it’s like to drive a car.  Without innovation, and technology, my trip home could’ve been a long, tiresome trek. Instead it was an opportunity to remember the fortunes of being alive today.

Outsourcing Stoplight Decision-Making

Sitting in a left turn lane, a few cars back from getting my chance to turn, I looked to my left to see a guy craning his neck trying to gauge when he could make a right on red. I laughed. Why in the world was this guy putting so much effort into making a turn? Yes, turning his neck probably wasn’t that much work, but to me, it was too much work. All he had to do was look at the cars turning left onto his street.

The driver a few cars in front of me had a straight angle at the road ahead, she had a brain on her shoulders, and a reason (multiple reasons?)  not to make a dumb decision. As soon as she made the left, it was safe for him to make the right. The neck-craning driver could’ve saved 10-seconds of neck spasms by looking directly at the lady in front.

I outsource my biking decisions in a similar manner. I use pedestrians to help me gauge when to hesitate, when to slow down, and when to come to a full stop. If I happen to be approaching a normally non-busy intersection I look for pedestrians. If someone is walking across the street to my right or left then I know they have thought through their actions and decided it was safe to cross. In Denver it could be a stumbling homeless person so I have to be a little more careful, but you get the idea.

What I’m explaining is Rational Choice Theory: an economic principle that states that individuals always make prudent and logical decisions. These decisions provide people with the greatest benefit or satisfaction — given the choices available — and are also in their highest self-interest. It’s also explained well in Isaac Morehouse’s short audio clip (which I apparently played a role in inspiring).

Towards a Rational Community

Understanding people’s incentive to act both (a) in their own self-interest and (b) by what creates the greatest benefit is what has driven me to a passion for small businesses. The coffeehouse owner, street vendor, brewery master, app-developer etc. are all rational thinkers making prudent and logical decisions to best cater to the community.

With technological innovation it can be hard to think about the community around us. But we are surrounded by rational thinkers, everywhere. Everyone is trying to create a great life for themselves and to create the greatest benefit to the community. Helping out the community, one neighbor at a time, is how we’re going to develop a great society. And rational choice should be a lens that helps us build that community.

My college career was spent studying economics, I continue to read economics, yet today was the first time I realized economics is another lens to living a moral life. The idea of “living free” is not something new. The founding fathers constantly practiced ideas to living a free life. Adam Smith, in the 1700’s, wrote a book called “Moral Sentiments”. Becoming free is about independence. And independence is being in control of your actions and taking responsibility for those actions.

This weekend I finished Isaac Morehouse/Mitchell Earl’s book “Don’t Do Stuff You Hate” which is, among other things, an economic lesson in morality. Discovering the things you hate, being fully aware of that knowledge, and then acting upon the self-discovered knowledge is a major part of living free. Without detaching yourself from stuff you hate you won’t truly be able to live the life you want.

I also listened to Russ Roberts on EconTalk chatting with Ryan Holiday about his book “Ego is the Enemy“. Another fascinating case of using economics to keep your morals (ego) in check. The idea of not celebrating successes, or lamenting failures, is another step in living free.

Last, I’ve started reading “Self Control or State Control“. I am only a couple chapters in but it again has the same message: take control of your life, be responsible for your actions, lead to a free-er life.

I am in no way an expert in living free. Sometimes I get caught up in the rat-race and forget who I am and my principles. I will continue my attempts in living free even when faced with challenges of life.

A couple of years ago I decided to rid myself of Facebook friends who I either no longer communicated with on a regular basis (one off friend requests, high school friends I know longer spoke to, other random acquaintances, etc) or who posted obnoxious politically-heavy posts. I decided to do it on a whim, hoping to get myself off social media. I even deleted my account from time-to-time to get myself off, but found there is too much value in being connected with some people.

Since widdling my “friends” from around 380 down to a count of 60 I have slowly been building my connections back. I checked today and have 97.

My new connections have to fit one of three criteria:
1. I am genuinely friends and care about their day-to-day life.
2. They are thinkers/movers and I’d be missing out by not following them and hearing their thoughts/seeing their posts.
3. The person has had, can or will have an impact on my life.

If a “friend” no longer fits one of those three categories, I delete them. Sometimes it’s pre-mature and I do regret it, but I’ve consistently found very few people even notice you’re no longer friends, and if they do notice and say something to me, then I know they care enough that we should be friends.

There is a lot to be said about social media and the value you can get from it, especially through promoting your product or brand, but the current way I have it set up is an awesome blend of the people I truly care about and thought leaders I need to hear. Logging into Facebook no longer brings me anxiety or FOMO (fear of missing out) by comparing myself to others but a refreshing look into the lives of people I have a connection with.

If we’re friends on Facebook you fit into one of those three categories and have an impact on my life in some form or another.

The shift from career man, 50 years as “loyal” employee to one company, is upon us. In the past few months FEE.org has had posts on Your Career is an Enterprise and You Are a Tech Startup. The idea is YOU are in control of your future. The key is being a value creator for your community.

I am currently on that path. Today I wrote an email to an accounting company that uses Xero exclusively looking to create value for them– for free. It only takes an hour of my time but can have a huge impact on them in cost savings.

This is only the beginning. For too long I got sucked into the employee mentality. Spending all my time doing the job, creating value for my employer, and then kicking off my shoes after a long day’s work. Now I’m paying for it and need to play catch-up.

I am a value creator. I think outside the box. My daily reading includes blockchain progress and bitcoin payments. Today I purchased coffee with a bitcoin debit card. It’s time to put my learning, and my abilities to create value, into myself, into You, Inc.

We’ll see where the journey takes me, but I assume it’ll leave me happier than my employee mindset.

I’ve migrated my blog posts from modernheretics.com to philipggross.com.

I am going to try and blog post daily from here on out.

Life has been a bit of a struggle lately. Lots of work, lots of life, things changing quickly all around.

When I started my journey to a more refined, happier me, I had an open mind and a tackle-the-world mentality. Through the thick of things I lost my way, and so too my open mindedness. But, I am emerging from the struggle of daily life and getting back to what makes me happy.

Today I went for a run, did pushups, ate good meals, left the traditional office setting to work from a coffeeshop and wrote this blog post. These are all things that make me come alive. Without these things, I become stuck in daily life. It’s tough, but I have to constantly remind myself to step back and do things that drive my excellence.

Here’s to getting back at it. Back to blogging. Back to personal/professional development. Back to happyness (yes, it’s misspelled). Back to being the person I want to be.

For the most part I believe education, in the general sense of grade school, high school, college and beyond, is overrated and not worth the investment. However, I don’t believe I would have that opinion without myself going through the steps and attending George Mason University for college.

At the time of my decision I had no idea where I was going. No idea how to communicate with the ideas in my head. I was in need of a tool to translate the thoughts in my head into actualities. That tool ended up being Austrian Economics. It took what I had been thinking and created concrete examples of how to apply my thought process.

I was following the sheep. I was told by everyone (friends, family, guidance counselors, society, etc) that the next stop after high school is college, and that’s what I did. My only requirement was to get out of New England because that’s where I was born and raised and felt I needed a change. My parents then gave me a budget and I went to find schools. I ended up applying, and getting accepted, to three: University of Louisville, Temple University, and George Mason University. None of these were decisions based on some vision. They were schools within the budget, that I knew a bit about because of sports, and were in cities outside of New England.

Choosing Economics as a major was also happenstance. I had taken a couple basic courses in Economics in high school, which looking back on it, were nothing close to the Austrian education I received, but to me it seemed interesting and it sounded more fun than a business major like finance, accounting or marketing.

My first class of micro-economics, with Dr. Thomas Rustici, was the on switch. My brain started firing on all cylinders. The dots, nodes, in my brain were connecting at lightning speed. Comparative advantage, principle-agent, supply and demand, water-diamond paradox, broken glass fallacy, opportunity cost and so-on and so-forth took over my mind. These are the lessons that taught me how to think and something I use now on a daily basis in work, life and everything I do. It gave me the lens to see the world.

There are possible paths I could’ve taken to lead me to where I am today but I have no regrets accumulating student loans in the pursuit of shaping my mind.  I could’ve tried to be a self-taught Austrian Economic thinker. I could’ve found books by Menger, Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Coase, Kirzner on my own, but probably not in the timely manner that I did stumbling into college. Although I’d encourage others to have an open-mind about next steps in education, I myself am indebted to the education I received. George Mason economics was the light I needed yet didn’t know was there.

Stop living in your bubble. There are smart people out there that you need to cross paths with in order to expand yourself. Reach out. Try cold calling or cold emailing someone you have an interest in. Explain why you’re sending an email. It’s not hard. What is there to lose? They don’t respond to your email?

If you are educated in the subject or know a bit about the person, they probably won’t just blow you off. They will probably reply with an awesome response. Even if it doesn’t expand your knowledge, it still gives you some confidence in doing it again. Once it becomes comfortable it won’t matter who you’re reaching out to. It could be an acquaintance or the CEO of Apple.

Realize the only downside of not reaching out is hurting you. There really isn’t a downside. But the upsides could be tremendous. Go for it!