Adam’s Peace

Would anyone be shocked if I said that the famously touted Law of Abundance actually has some foundation in science?

For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Law of Abundance is an old New-Age idea that says, when you act like money means nothing, that you get money easily. At least, that’s the most common interpretation of the Law of Abundance.

Now, the Law of Abundance has a few large problems. Its main problem is that it gets over simplified far too much. If you simply start giving your money away to everybody you meet on the street, you will very quickly end up broke, with very little in return to show for it, except a few happy memories. (Yes, memories are important. If you can’t afford to make new memories in the future, though, then what is the point of happy memories now?)

The second problem with the Law of Abundance is that the people who believe they need it more are actually those who would be most harmed by its first problem.

Dependence, Independence, and Interdependence.

In his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (aff), Steven R. Covey talks about three stages of dependence. If you think of the “ideal” American life, you start out as a child, completely dependent on your family. When you leave the house, you become independent, hopefully able to take care of yourself well enough to continue surviving, if not flourish. Finally, you get married, and your spouse depends on you, just as you depend on your spouse, entering a stage of interdependence.

To many people, this first stage of dependence seems ideal… You don’t have to lift a finger, yet all of your needs are taken care of. Well, what happens if such a network were strictly enforced? If everybody were paid the same wages, no matter their rank or ability… Yes, I’m talking about Socialism, which would be a perfect form of government, if only there were perfect people to live in that government. Unfortunately, humans being the opportunistic creatures that we are, if a large number of people figured out that they could work half as hard, and still get the same pay, then only their own morals would prevent them from short-changing their neighbors. (As time goes on, and it becomes more and more acceptable to work less, the system will eventually collapse.)

What, then, of independence? Surely it has to be a good system, because so many people strive to be independent, right?

Well, it certainly is a good system. For an example, look at the subsistence farmers of Oklahoma in the 1920’s. They worked the ground themselves, most didn’t have a penny of debt, and the vast majority were able to produce so much that they could sell their excess food far and wide. Truly, Oklahoma’s farms in the 1920’s were a shining example of independence at its best.

Unfortunately, Oklahoma’s farms in the 1930’s were a tragic example of independence in the worst of times. The drought that came to be known as the Dust Bowl sent many families into ruin, destroyed most of the farms, and shattered nearly everybody’s dreams for independence in the region.

The problem with independence is that there is no backup plan. Without the ability to change back to a state of dependence easily, external environmental changes can wreak havoc on your own successes. A more modern example of an environmental change that destroys an independent person’s dreams is being fired… Without a support system in place (or a lot of cash in savings), being fired can very quickly put a person out on the streets.

So if the other two plans are so terrible, then how is interdependence any different?

Interdependence

Well actually, being independent or even dependent isn’t that terrible. Everybody goes through each of these stages at different points of their lives. If we’re lucky, part of the American Dream is complete dependence on our children, so that we can repay them for the diapers we’ve changed for them… by making them change our diapers.

Let me start out this section by reminding everybody that no system is perfect. Change always comes, and the ways that these changes manifest often change as well. Today’s information revolution is bringing more and more change at an even greater pace than seen before, and the best systems seem to have found a good balance between having redundancy and being efficient… That is, if one part of the system fails, other parts can take its place, but when all parts are working normally, there is very little duplication of work.

One example of a well balanced system is the Supermarket. In it, each person specializes in one area of the store, such as running a register, collecting carts, baking, or stocking the shelves. If a person calls in sick, though, people from other departments can easily move over and keep the department running for short periods of time.

Taking a step out, each of these stores are able to get employees from other stores in case of suddenly finding that their staff can’t handle the workload, such as when a nearby competitor closes, or in the case of a grand opening where neighborhood interest is very high and the store hasn’t properly hired a full staff yet.

At another step outward, we find the stores buying from the suppliers, and the manufacturers selling to the stores, as well as buying raw materials. If one specific company goes out of business, there are plenty of other ones available to keep this large system running smoothly. One step further out and we find that the global economy is a network of these interdependent relationships, built up of an unimaginable number of relationships that individuals have with different businesses and hobbyists. Each individual within this network (and I’m including companies as individuals here) would be completely incapable of matching their current value, if they had to do everything themselves.

Imagine for a moment that you run a candy manufacturing business. Common wisdom says that you need to get suppliers for your raw materials, and you need stores to buy your candy from you, so that the end consumer can buy them as well. Well, why do you need all of this? Can’t you just hire your own farmers who will tend and nurture the sugar cane? Can’t you make a sugar refinery, and aren’t there trucks available for sale so that you can ship the raw materials yourself?

How about the stores? Can’t you just build a storefront in a prime location, ensuring that your candy doesn’t appear on the same shelves as your competitors?

Well, you could do all of that, and many businesses strive for this. What happens if there is a drought, though, and you can’t water your sugar cane? What happens if your storefront fails a health inspection? Also, while you’re working on growing your production from the bottom to the top, what happens to the core of your business? Is your business still one of making candy, or has it become a business of managing a closed supply chain?

Since many of my audience are bloggers, let me ask about your own sites. Do you recognize the interdependence that you are already engaging in?

The first sign of interdependence that I see common to all bloggers is their relationship with their website hosting providers. Everybody has a choice to either buy hosting that is managed by another company, or to set up servers for themselves. Many people are either unable or unwilling to host their sites in their garages, so we create a relationship where we become the hosting company’s clients. Without people willing to pay for website hosting, the hosting companies would go out of business very quickly… and without hosting companies, the vast majority of sites out there today simply would not exist, so we have created an interdependent relationship.

Personally, I have tried to host a site out of my garage, and I’ll say from experience that it certainly wasn’t easy. With tools like Apache, PHP, and MySQL being freely available, and with generous support for these products provided by countless volunteers, learning how to set up a website on my home computer was simple enough… but managing the physical connection between my computer and the rest of the world was well beyond my patience. By buying hosting, I was able to leave the headaches of managing the server behind, and I’m now able to concentrate more on the site itself.

Interdependence is the Law of Abundance

So, I promised to explain in objective terms how the Law of Abundance works. Here it is, in a nutshell.

The basics of the Law of Abundance say that when you give out money, more money comes to you. Interdependence says that when you set up the right relationships, you build efficiency and flexibility. Looking at what money really is (once you get past the idea that those coins and paper are money… they’re only symbols for money), you find that the value that you give to other people is what helps you to build a relationship. Value can be anything, from information posted on a website, to the exchange of coins and paper, or food, or shelter and land, or anything that a person might want or need.

So, when we give people money, such as when we’re experimenting with the Law of Abundance, we’re simply exchanging value… and that value builds a relationship. If we’re lucky, then that relationship will give us some value in return, such as insight into designing a site that performs well in search engines, and we enter into an interdependent relationship.

The Law of Abundance is simply saying that it is alright to take the first move to make friends with someone. The more friends that we have, the more likely we are to gain some benefits that will help us all.

Final Words

I’ve heard a lot of people say that the money has to come from somewhere, and they don’t feel right taking it. Well, that’s only partially true… An often misunderstood fact about economics is that the amount of value (just another word for money) in the world is limited only by how many people are creating value. The amount of currency (those coins and paper we call money) is limited, but the more value that we create, the more valuable the currency becomes… and the more that we trade our currency around, the more it shows that we’re providing value. So, don’t be afraid to accept cash from someone… just be sure to create as much value as you feel is justified, then give that cash to someone else.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 8:12 pm and is filed under Relationships, Blogging, Personal Finances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.