"We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people." -JFK
Saying Keeping Up With The Joneses' is bad is kind of like saying competing in the Olympics is bad. Sure it's probably not great to put your body through the strain of training for, and then running an Olympic race. Unless, of course, you want to be an Olympic champion, in which case this kind of strain is a requirement.
You probably don't hear people accusing Richard Thompson who won the 100 Meter Silver back in 2008 of ‘keeping up with Usain Bolt’. Of course he was. Thompson was there to keep up with Bolt --and maybe even win. More broadly, how could it be bad to be playing a game with other people that is actively stretching and thus improving you?
The difference between you now and you having achieved your goal is the knowledge/strength gained while in the process of achieving. This, however, is just a first order gain. Yes Richard Thompson was stronger for having competed in the 100 Meter but you know who else is stronger?
Usain Bolt.
Reflexivity of the Joneses
You are trying to keep up with Jones and Jones is trying to stay ahead of you. Which means you try harder to keep up, which means Jones tries harder to stay ahead.
This is a classic reflexive cycle where your efforts to keep up pushes Jones to improve, and their progress, in turn, pushes you to improve. This cycle continues, driving both of you to constantly adapt and become better.
This means the net gain to the system from competition is not only your gain, but also Jones's gain.
I started the post off with a quote by JFK during his famous "We Choose to Go to the Moon" speech because the space race is a great example of a keeping up with the Joneses situation.
When JFK gave the moon speech in 1962, the United States was in a race to get to the moon before the Soviet Union. At the time the Soviets were setting the pace. They put the first satellite (Sputnik) into orbit in 1957. The US had to keep up so they created NASA in 1958 as a response.
The Soviets responded by putting the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. So the US sent up Alan Shepard that same year. On and on the US and Soviets tried to outmaneuver each other improving each other.
But the US and Soviet engineers / scientists weren't the only ones to reap the benefits of improvement.
The byproduct of this contest was a stream of technological innovations that were used here on earth. One of the most important to me is the laptop which is a descendent of the “Shuttle Portable Onboard Computer” created by NASA. This single device has allowed me to provide for my family and live a live that I never knew possible.
So "keeping up with the Khrushchevs" turns out to not only get humanity to space but also create tools in the process that would be used for other things.
How interesting.
At this point you probably are thinking "Jimi surely this doesn't scale down to little ol’ me and my desire for a Dune buggy".
It does.
Impacts on society
Let’s say that you see your neighbor buy a Dune buggy and you think to yourself, "thats pretty cool, I want to get a dune buggy also". So you stretch yourself to find a way to buy one. Maybe you get a weekend job. Maybe you start a lawn mowing business on the side. Or maybe you go out and finance the buggy.
Some people may look at this and think "oh you are living outside of your means". Which is a true but myopic perspective.
It's helpful to remember that for every buyer in a transaction there is also a seller. So although the buggy purchase could be one of selfish hedonism lets look at the different ways you pat for the dune buggy.
Get a weekend job: So you go out and get a job at the flower shop down the street. Thank god because Rickey the owner has been trying to find someone reliable to work there for the last few months so that he can spend more time at home taking care of his sick mother in law. Turns out your dune buggy dream has helped Rickey.
Start a lawn mowing business: You go out and start mowing lawns. At first you do 1 a weekend but the word spreads because you do a good job and next thing you know you have 10 lawns you need to do a weekend. So what do you do? You hire someone to help you. Somehow your desire for a dune buggy is employing another person who is now able to feed their family.
Finance the buggy: Maybe you take the "lazy" route and finance the dune buggy. Good thing because Blake, who is the bank financing manager, was under quota this month and your purchase put them over the line. Now blake gets his bonus so he can take his kid to Disneyland and spend the bonus's entirety on a single churro.
Congrats! You've done the work and saved (or borrowed) for the buggy. When you buy it, you are employing the people that made it who all have people they are trying to care for. You are employing the mechanic who you hire to fix it when it breaks. Or if you fix it yourself, you are employing the designer at Craftsman who made your wrench set.
You see people do not exist in isolation. Every purchase is a sale. This means when you go off and create something valuable in your pursuit of the dune buggy, you improve yourself but you also send off ripple effects throughout society. The value you create is traded for the value that other people create.
This is a beautiful thing.
Where things get dangerous
I suppose that "keeping up with the Joneses" could be bad if you are doing it without the critical component outlined above: growth. You must realize that growth is HARD and can have costs.
If you are working on the weekend, that means you are spending less time with your family or doing the other things you enjoy. You, your kids (if you have them) and partner will feel the strain and stress from you not being around and/or the financial risk that you have taken on. You may not even have time to enjoy the thing you are going after for a while.
Another potential issue with keeping up with Jones, and probably the most risky one these days, is constant comparison. Realistically there isn't any way around this. You will feel the urge to compare yourself, and most dangerously your self worth to someone else if you play the Jones game.
You must fight this urge and separate your self worth the thing you are after.
Striving for a gold medal isn't about the gold in the medal. Its about reaching to be the best in the world and in the process becoming the best version of yourself. Make no mistake, the best version of yourself is what Mr Jones and, more broadly, society needs to improve.
If you are trying to get the gold in the medal then the "keeping up with the Joneses" strategy isn't for you. This strategy will dig you into a deeper and deeper hole of debt and despair.
But if you find yourself in this hole, you have two options: stop digging deeper or grow stronger so that you can climb out.
Remember the difference between you now and you having accomplished your goal is how you grew through the process of accomplishing it.
So if you see the Joneses' dune buggy and think that it would be cool to have one, and you are willing to grow to make it happen, then by all means get one.
We will all be better for it.
This post relates to question that I've been pondering recently. I'm not sure I can yet articulate the question clearly but it's something like. "Can using a measure of economic value created be an reasonable proxy for the measure of positive impact on the world? When is this the case and when is it not?"
I've long felt - and probably still do...? - that spending one's time and money to improve the lives of the least fortunate among us is one the most virtuous ways to spend a life. These efforts often product little measurable economic value, though. Non-profits don't, well, generate profit. They frequently exist to address a market failure, a place where traditional capitalistic forces are failed to attract resources. Surely, there is great impact to be had through great non-profits.
But what about those who spend their time and attention building profitable businesses, especially ones that generate large profits? Sadly, there is often even a stigma around those who gain wealth through these means. Yet, have they not produced something so value to the world that many, many people having willingly parted with their money in order to obtain the goods or service they produce? In a world where everyone is voting with their dollars, have they not received the most votes?
I will concede that there are flaws in the human psyche which sometimes cause humans to spend their money on things that aren't good for them, for example, in cases of addiction, or even in attempts gone to far to Keep up with the Joneses. But these represent a small portion of the total economic activity in the world, so we can put that aside for the moment.
Is there only virtue in addressing market failure? Or is that actually more of a special case that needs to be evaluated based on different criteria, when in fact virtue can be approximated by the creation of economic value? I'm actually not sure. And I think that considering the means of generating economic value must matter to some degree. Did the individual act with integrity? Did they minimize negative externalities?
Your stories describe virtue in the driving economic value, and I tend to think that is correct. I would interested in exploring this idea further to get a better sense for what other conditions make this more or less true. For example, whether or not is it combined with personal growth.
This post reminded me of the value of storytelling as a method of explaining a concept or making an argument. Most frequently I am guilty of making a point by describing the theory or the reasoning. But perhaps a simple story of mowing lawns or selling flowers might often do the job a bit more effectively.