Imperfect

just barter actions

In You Can Just Buy Things, Ben shared a mental algorithm you can use for it, reminiscent of the OODA loop:

  1. Notice you have a problem.
  2. Figure out what about it is a problem.
  3. Search for a product or service to solve the problem.
  4. Try it out and return it if it doesn’t solve the problem.

Like Ben does in his post, Cris walks through that algorithm in And matching black seat cushions. First, he noticed not only the problem, but also what about it was a problem:

My two closest friends here in Latvia are a couple with three children.

They live in a rather small apartment and used to have a small dinner table in their living room. Every time I visit them, which is often, we kind of struggle to eat together because the table is really only meant for two people, not seven.

Then, he searched for a solution:

Then I randomly decided last month to check if IKEA had any foldable tables and... they did!

You might have even asked yourself the same question he did upon finding that solution:

How did this never occur to me before?

Finally, he tried it out and solved the problem:

Thankfully, the account that my wife drop 10% of our income into every month (for the purpose of helping out people in need), happened to be nicely stacked, so I waited a few days for a good opportunity, went to IKEA, and splurged close to 250 EUR on that exact table, plus four of the foldable chairs and matching black seat cushions.

I then drove it all over to their apartment and just dropped it off without any warning. They were shocked and over the moon.

The table is perfect for their apartment. They mostly leave it half-open during the day, and it doesn’t take up any more space than the old table did that way.

Today my friends sent me a picture of their table completely opened up and set for some guests that they invited. It made me so happy. They then invited us to come see them next month for a meal. Can’t wait to try out that table.

However, problems aren't always solved that easily. Let's brainstorm solutions for these bottlenecks that Ben encounters while using his algorithm:

Allow me to add yet another meme under the "you can just do things" umbrella:

You can just barter things.

Could acting upon that realization sidestep Ben's bottlenecks altogether?

Notice problems better by inhabiting zones that prime it. Check out this viral Twitter conversation, where Celia and Dave's hyper-specificity and online cohabitation landed them a moonshot exchange:

Celia: My daughter asked, “Do you ever have any regrets, Mom?” And while I know she was asking this question on a philosophical level, my mind immediately went to this puffin sweater I saw in Iceland. It’s been 3 years since I saw it in a shop there, & I still regret not buying it.

Dave: My regret is that I bought this exact sweater for my wife two years ago. She has worn it zero times. I’m in NYC. Cover shipping and it’s yours.

Celia: What!!? Are you serious!!? 😱😱😱

Dave: I would never joke about a puffin sweater

Celia: People are amazing! Just 10 days ago, I shared a thought about one of my regrets in life. Of course, not buying a sweater sounds like a minor regret, but SO MANY could relate! And then @dwiskus made my wish a reality. This sweater made it from NYC to Berlin in record time! 🐧

Dave's tweet further cements his exchange of the puffin sweater with Celia as a gift:

Not buy. It’s free. I’m in this for the story.

Rob's You Don’t Feel The Limits of Your Action Space describes underestimating acquiring new skills or tools not part of your default repertoire. Have a sneak peek:

If everyone in the world had one hand, and you found a way to add a second one, a lot of people would ask you: “Why, though? What would you even use that for?”.

I carry a little swiss army knife in my pocket at all times, and I usually also have one in my backpack, because if I lose that knife it kind of feels like I’m missing a part of me - maybe not a whole hand, but at least a finger. And sometimes people ask me “Why? What do you even use that for?”.

Once something is part of your default action space, you use it all the time, and you find a thousand uses that you’d never have thought of before you had it. And yet it can be difficult to explain why it’s so useful.

Expanding your action space creates unprecedented options not only for noticing problems, but also for bartering and buying to fix them.

As for examples that I haven't quoted:

Coincidentally, I view Margarita's Magician game in Magician, Warrior, King, Lover Training Games as a practical exercise for increasing your action space:

_go to a bar, or a library, or a café — any place with many people. notice your space. What would be a fun object to spontaneously appear? How would it affect the space and the people in it, if it suddenly appeared? Now how about another object? Now another? Imagine yourself pulling out the object, instead of the object spontaneously appearing. How would the others in the room react to you? To the object? Try this with at least 8 different objects. Then, stand up from your seat in a way you normally wouldn’t. Try this 8 different times. To exit the exercise, go outside and spin around to reset yourself in your environment. Feel free to make the noise that comes naturally to you

In turn, Prasatt's What can the one-armed, half-brained, miniature you do? complements Rob and Margarita's additive thought experiments by exploring a hypothetical reduction of your action space:

Austin Kleon has this to say on sustaining a creative practice even when it's hard:

Around the holidays, I often have to rely on the advice I give creative people who have new babies: “Find the one-armed, half-brained, miniature version of what you do.” Put another way: What is the bare minimum amount of creative work you can do in any one day and still feel like a whole person?

For me, it's 1 post a day and a few pages of reading at least! What's does your one-arned, half-brained, miniature version look like?

Like Ben said, comparative advantage is important. No matter the exchange medium, "the potential of applying the world’s most advanced supply chains and markets to our problems" should be realized. In Games as Training, David Friedman explains why in the context of instructions for his as of yet unrealized game idea, Hansa:

One reason I wanted Hansa was to promote the idea of mutual advantage over conquest, market over hierarchy. The other was to let players discover the principle of comparative advantage. In deciding what cities to try to pull into your league you not only want cities that are good at producing things your cities are bad at, you also want cities that are bad at producing things your cities are good at.

In Inkhaven Spotlight #24, Georgia alludes to a relevant historical example of those ideas in action via William's A Brief History of Venice, Part One:

William Friedman explains how Medieval Venice accomplished the improbable: building a massive preindustrial empire by being good at trading:

Behold a small example of how Hansa rhymes with Venice:

Selling salt to the Empire would start the Venetians on their path to prosperity. There’s only so much salt anyone wants to eat; past that, you want to trade your surplus - in the Venetians’ case, trade it for food. With Rome falling and the mercantile economy of the Mediterranean falling undone there were all sorts of trade opportunities going spare, and the Venetians were eager to take advantage of them.

For a more universally relatable frame of reference, replace "cities" with "people". Produce what others are bad at, consume what others are good at. Posting itself is an example of barter that often occurs with little to no money required. You write posts read by others. Others write posts read by you. Yet, everyone can reciprocate more than the sum of their parts:

Let me conclude with Rob's final questions, which coincidentally align with Pirate's Bear Blog Carnival November: What's In My Inventory?:

This makes me wonder, what other things could I carry, or what other skills could I have, that would be much more useful than I realise? What do I not know I’m missing?

Yes, "you can just buy things" like "you can just barter things". But as Rob hints at with "what other skills could I have", you can outdo both:

You can just barter actions.