EP06: Why you should never be an asshole

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The obvious answer is karma.

Karma is like an imaginary bank that keeps track of your good and bad deeds.

Every good deed counts as a positive karma point.
Every bad deed subtracts from your karma balance.

If your karmic balance is positive, you will be rewarded in the future.
If the balance is negative, you will be punished.

So simple!

But wait, if this is true, why are there so many assholitos in the world?

Because karma is like God, Santa Claus, or the meaning of life. Millions believe it exists but no one can prove so, at least following the scientific method.

But what if karma could be proven to exist scientifically?
What would the universal karmic formula look like?

Here is one possible karmic formula I just pulled out of my imagination’s arse.

k = vp

Where:

k = karma – Total accumulated karma by a person at a given point in time (measured in kredits)
v = value – as in value added/subtracted to a person’s life (Ranges from -1 to +1).
p = people – Number of people affected by the value provided (Ranges from 0 to 7 billion).

The goal in life is to make k as large as possible,

How do you that?

Simple. Provide as much value as possible to as many people as possible.

The karmic game starts when you are born. If everything goes alright you’ll have about 30,000 days to rack up karma points.

The maximum value for v is 1. That would be creating or saving a human life.
The minimum would be -1. That would be killing directly or indirectly a person.

Use your imagination to assign fractional values to any deed between -1 and 1.

Here are some examples:

• Having a kid earns you 0.5 kredits because you are only responsible for half of the genetic code.
• Being a bad parent costs you anywhere from -0.1 to -1 kredits depending on how much you screw up your kid.
• Buying lunch to a homeless person earns you 0.1 kredits.
• Being a troll on YouTube costs you 0.05 kredits for every stupid comment you write.
• If you create a product that improves 1 million people lives by 10% then you earn 0.1 x 1,000,000 = 100,000 kredits.

In general, any deed will earn or cost you kredits depending on the context.
If you lie to save a life or several lives then you gain kredits. If you kill Hitler and save 20 million innocent people you earn 20 million kredits.

In a capitalist country there is a mechanism by which you can exchange kredits for dollars.
This mechanism allows you to capture monetary value in exchange of the value your product or service provides to people.

So if you create a product that improves 1 million people lives by 10% and you get each person to pay you $1 per unit sold, you just managed to earn $10 per kredit.

This means your wealth can be proportional to the value your provide to society.

And, although not always so, you’ll find out that most wealthy people have provided a lot of value to society.

Think of someone like Elon Musk. According to the karmic formula, does he deserve to be a billionaire?

Let’s say, through his companies (Tesla, SpaceX) Elon can improve every human life by 1% over the next 20 years. That would be a karmic value of .01 x 7 x 10⁹ or 70 million kredits. Even if that 1% was worth only $1, Elon could capture $7 billion of value at the karmic stock exchange by selling his kredits at $100 a piece.

Conclusion, it pays (literally) to not be an asshole.

So don’t be one.

But you’ll say. Miguel, aren’t there lots of wealthy assholes in this world?

Yes. True. But when was the last time you saw a truly happy asshole?

Turns out it’s very hard to live a fulfilling life with a low karmic score.

That’s karma!

Peace, love and karmic cookies,

Miguel

P.S.: This week’s winner of an official Grumo t-shirt is… Patricio Bustamante! (please reply to this email with your shirt size and address)

P.2: Do you want to win a FREE Grumo t-shirt? every week I’ll be giving away an official limited edition Grumo t-shirt to one of my readers courtesy of ShirtBattle. To enter the contest just click HERE.

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