You hear that phrase a lot when it comes to new ideas: “it seemed like the thing to do.” If other people agree—as people did with the high five—it becomes A Thing. There’s no steering committee that gives the green light. There’s no stamp of approval. There’s not a grand design. It just happens. The truth is there is little order. The status quo pe

But Bentoism also believes that our definitions of “rational” and “self-interest” are too narrow. We think rational value means financial value. And self-interest is all about satisfying our immediate desires. But neither perspective comes close to the full spectrum of what’s valuable or rational. Today’s thinking goes: It’s rational to behave in y

THE END OF RAISES Three years after Milton Friedman’s New York Times essay put financial maximization into the bloodstream, a strange thing happened. People stopped getting raises.

Once I started seeing the world this way, I couldn’t unsee it.

The truth is that everything is made up. The same way Kickstarter was made up. Some people think of something and try to bring it into existence. If other people start believing in this new idea, it becomes real.

Financial maximization says that in any decision, the rational choice is the one that makes the most money. This is the underlying “why” behind many of our choices. The right-hand turn of modern life.

Prisoner’s Dilemma and Stag Hunt are two rational but fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. One is competitive: Earth is a planet of people plotting in interrogation rooms against one another. The other is cooperative: if we hunt together we’ll get more food.

“PLA to be world-class force by 2050,” read the front page of China Daily.1 Beneath the headline was a picture of President Xi Jinping and a row of People’s Liberation Army soldiers. The year leapt out: 2050. Distant, but not too distant. Thirty-three years away from that moment. I’ll probably still be alive then. A thought hit me. While China was

Is it a Wall Street world or a Community world? A Prisoner’s Dilemma world or a Stag Hunt world? Part of it comes down to just what we call it. That’s how powerful hidden defaults can be.