Inverting The 80:20 Rule
The Toothless Woman With Compounding Bad Luck
In The Beginning
In the beginning The Toothless Woman has teeth but little money. She’s behind on rent and struggling to get by, but she’s optimistic because she’s a maker not a taker, and she’s got a job interview!
We join The Toothless Woman while she is driving her old but reliable car in-route to wow her next employer. She’s in the turning lane, patiently waiting for the car ahead to advance through the intersection. It’s hot and humid but she’s transcending the discomfort and keeping her eye on the goddamn prize. The car in front proceeds, she’s now next in line when all of a sudden she’s hit from behind, she careens into oncoming traffic – boom! Another car smashes her head-on, whipped back and ricocheting forward, her head smashing forward into the steering wheel – out pop her teeth – both rows.
Disorientated, The Toothless Woman With Compounding Bad Luck struggles to make sense of her predicament. She’s been in a car accident and her car is spent. She’s also behind on rent and now toothless too! She remembers her mission – to wow her new employer, and realizes she needs this job more than before. Desperate to get to the interview she approaches people pleading for a ride. With her smashed teeth and bloody face, people avert their gaze – no one will help our hero. Because she’s a maker not a taker she gets to the job interview, apologising to the hiring manager and explaining her accident. The manager sighs, averting his gaze, he explains that he can’t hire her until she’s got teeth.
Overcome with grief and despair The Toothless Woman With Compounding Bad Luck assesses her situation and quantifies her predicament. Before the accident, she was $2,000 in debt: rent = $1,000 + $1,000 = living expenses. She rationalizes that without dental surgery to replace her teeth she’s unemployable and will fall further into debt. Now toothless she needs an incremental $2,000 for dental surgery. Her debt had compounded, growing exponentially to $4,000. She thinks Mom and Dad are toothless too… ‘Who can I ask for help?’
It Gets Worse
It gets worse for the tax paying-public and The Toothless Woman With Compounding Bad Luck because she has a kid. While the child was born out of wedlock it was not incompetence on the part of The Toothless Woman With Compounding Bad Luck, instead it was a factory direct defective condom – a hole in the prophylactic permitted a few ambitious sperm to penetrate and impregnate.
Before the car accident, when Mom still had teeth, she spent hours reading to the child, helping with her homework and pushing her along the path. Things are different, no more homework help because Mom is stressed with the inherent anxiety coupled with financial insecurity: no one will make eye contact let alone give her a job. How will she pay for food, clothing, and shelter? Further compounding Mom’s predicament is a genetic predisposition.
And for the tax paying-public, The Toothless Woman With Compounding Bad Luck leans on social services: frequent hospital trips; welfare subsidies, and child support. And as the child grows, chances are we the tax paying-public will shoulder costs to incarcerate a delinquent unable to pass the marshmallow test, addicted to drugs, and harbouring the darkness that accompanies slavery. Does she stab someone in the face?
Inverting The 80:20 Rule
Let us consider another example of compounding effects, a diametrically opposed example, someone with teeth, born into a billionaire family whose ancestors started accumulating property a hundred and fifty years ago. Over time, descendants of the billionaire family used their property holdings as collateral to purchase more properties, thereby compounding their wealth and unlocking a vast social network to grow even more wealth. When this lucky-ducky with impeccable pearly white teeth runs into bad luck they simply lean on their vast network of resources to bootstrap themselves out of their adversity.
In Conclusion
The Toothless Woman with Compounding Bad Luck parable is a metaphysical metaphor to showcase life is pure luck – patterns in networked information. Even bad shit compounds into more bad shit. Instead of money attracting more money, losses create feedback loops that grow exponentially. Information distribution ensures The Toothless Woman with Compounding Bad Luck is part of the 20% responsible for 80% of the detrimental welfare costs to society.
Is The Toothless Woman to blame for her shit luck?
She was motivated, a maker not a taker, she worked hard but the random chaos inherent in the universe kicked her in the goddamn teeth.
Is life determined?
The Toothless Woman didn’t choose her parents, nor her child chose her. Nor did they choose how much cash-money their parents had in the bank. They just popped out of randomness from a long string of cosmic events.
In life we can push things in directions and create feedback loops like friendships or learning, but determinism is baked into the cake.
Crime and virtue are results of random cause-and-effect chains which makes the concepts of punishment and reward truly questionable. No?
Poor bastards are victims of circumstance.
Next Essay: Reconciling Alexander The Grandpa’s Socialism with Darwinism
