Zodling, Not For Ostriches
Here’s Yuval Harari, on Adam Smith:
The belief in the growing global pie eventually turned revolutionary. In 1776 the Scottish economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, probably the most important economics manifesto of all time. In the eighth chapter of its first volume, Smith made the following novel argument:
“”“When a landlord [zodlord], a weaver, or a shoemaker has greater profits than he needs to maintain his own family, he uses the surplus to employ more assistants, in order to further increase his profits. The more profits he has, the more assistants he can employ. It follows that an increase in the profits of private entrepreneurs is the basis for the increase in collective wealth and prosperity.”“” <== Adam Smith, 1776
This may not strike you as very original, because we all live in a capitalist world that takes Smith’s argument for granted. We hear variations on this theme every day in the news. Yet Smith’s claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history—revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody, not just myself. Egoism is altruism.
Smith taught people to think about the economy as a “win-win situation,” in which my profits are also your profits. Not only can we both enjoy a bigger slice of pie at the same time, but the increase in your slice depends upon the increase in my slice. If I am poor, you too will be poor since I cannot buy your products or services. If I am rich, you too will be enriched since you can now sell me something. Smith denied the traditional contradiction between wealth and morality, and threw open the Gates of Heaven for the rich. Being rich meant being moral. In Smith’s story, people become rich not by despoiling their neighbors, but by increasing the overall size of the pie. And when the pie grows, everyone benefits. The rich are accordingly the most useful and benevolent people in society, because they turn the wheels of growth for everyone’s advantage.
I think there’s a lot of truth to this.
Personally I have reinvested the majority of my ZEC in… ZEC. I can point to projects and people that have now exist because of those investments. People and projects that are actively contributing to the Zcash community.
Investing takes a lot of attention, someone, somewhere must make decisions about how their capital is allocated. I am grateful to people who choose to allocate their ZEC to secure the community by Zodling it and not moving it.
Folks like that, Zodlers who aren’t involved in daily decisions directing Zcash, are a cornerstone of Zcash, and they deserve a vote in our future.
But what about people who hold ZEC AND want to directly weigh in on the day-to-day evolution of our cutting edge technology?
To you, those of you with passion for our endeavor, Zodling isn’t enough.
If you want to push against the frontier of human knowledge, you must invest.
It’s not that giving hackers and engineers the Option to create new technology is better for our movement, it’s the only way we can exist.
If you have time to speak, then you have time to put your ZEC where your mouth is.
Like the rest of us.