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If your ambition doesn’t grow with your wealth, the wealth makes you stupid by enabling you to delay decisions longer under uncertainty. I’ve done most of my on-time risky trigger pulling when money was tight, delayed it too long when it wasn’t
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For the first time in my life I have just a few thousand in savings and I have been considering investing it in some micro loan situation for this very reason. There's a sweet spot of financial wiggle room that enables the acuity you describe; either wise can be dulling.
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Can’t be radical on all fronts. Retirement investment infrastructure is one of the few things that’s decent if you know how to use it. Roth/regular IRA, put it all in S&P = basic vote of confidence in the nation.
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In a way index funds incorporate that thinking indirectly. If enough people are shifting behaviors index will go gradually greener. If not, targeted green investing might hurt you without helping the cause.
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I’d rather invest in index funds and write about climate change and support ideas like Bill McKibben campaign than invest in a “green” fund most likely designed to sucker idealists with high management fees. Green the economy rather than invest in green segment of it.
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I tend to think people like you should help yourself a heck of a lot more before moving on to other people. If you don’t secure your own needs more robustly, your direct work for the planet is at risk. Activists seem to neglect their own needs too much.
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Yeah, but that's also a pretty well-known tendency within activist circles. I appreciate your counsel a lot. And also, it's tough calculus. I'm interested in multicapital wealth to have a matrix of resilience. Reconciling that with the present conditions is certainly complicated.
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I’d really hate to see you burn out trying to do too much for others. Almost happened to a vegan activist friend of mine (one you’d actually like I think... he’s strictly focused on factory farming cruelty). His free ebook on it:
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