Embracing externalities
This confrontation with limitation also reveals the truth that freedom, sometimes, is to be found not in achieving greater sovereignty over your own schedule but in allowing yourself to be constrained by the rhythms of community—participating in forms of social life where you don’t get to decide exactly what you do or when you do it.
Oliver Burkeman • Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
them. Today, when businesses make products or consumers buy things, they don’t bear any extra cost for the carbon involved, even though that carbon imposes a very real cost on society. This is what economists call an externality: an expense that’s borne by society rather than the person or business who’s responsible for
Bill Gates • How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
People will have more agency and control over their lives, knowing that there are countless ways for them to create durable value and monetize that value in whatever way suits their goals and lifestyle.
Tiago Forte • Building a Second Brain: The 10-Year Vision
It took me a while to fully realize the value of something my company achieved years ago, and continues to savor today. It’s one of our greatest quiet advantages, full stop.
It’s not something you hear much about in business circles. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone spend much time on the topic, or even bring it up in convers... See more
People must have “everyday freedom,” by which I mean the individual authority, at every level of society and every level of responsibility, to act as they feel appropriate, constrained only by the boundaries of law and by norms set by the employer or other institution.
Philip K. Howard • Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society
Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and you’re accountable on your output, as opposed to your input—that’s the dream. [10]