Scrooge Was Right
He was the hero from the beginning.
His natural and supernatural detractors were cloying, sanctimonious twats. They wanted to distract him with the past and potential future while he wanted to balance the ledger in the present which is the only time that matters. They wanted to relax on the holidays while he worked. But they never leave it at that: they (then, now, and always) want to then switch up the results of their sloth and his effort… and somehow make themselves virtuous by their generosity with his money.
While others sought the credit for themselves and tried to guilt trip him into feeling badly, Scrooge was all business. He employed factory workers, he — anonymously — gave food to the poor, and supported work houses. And he paid his own way, making him a burden on no one. Do you want the world to be a better place or do you just want to be seen as a good guy? Scrooge was fixated on the business of solving problems, not preening for approval.
Here are a few little moves that Scrooge would approve of this week. Like Scrooge, they are focused on getting potential rewards without commensurate risk. They are about actual value — including value for others. They aren’t about human sacrifice which is usually the rhetoric of self-sacrifice wrapped around the reality of sacrificing others. Scroogey shrewdness demands no human sacrifice, only a bit of work.
Take your loved ones on the trip of a lifetime. Fly anywhere you want. Get 60k Chase (JPM) points with their best card, the Sapphire Reserve. Already have one? Even better! They’re giving away a million miles to ten card members here. My average savings on upgrades to first class with their points has been about 2.1 cents or $21,000 if you’re picked as one of the ten winners. No downside.
Thank your driver. Between now and the end of the year, you can tip your Amazon (AMZN) and Whole Foods drivers $5 per delivery for free here. It helps them and costs you nothing.
Gift giving is mostly deadweight loss. Gift giving between people with joint accounts is all deadweight loss. It is a perverse and sadistic game in which I guess what you want and you guess what I want and any frictional cost impoverishes us both. It is so obviously invented and encouraged by the people with something to sell that it is amazing that customers are so easily manipulated. Sometimes people overspend, which has real economic consequences for those who wake up to January with painful credit card debt. Other times they don’t overspend, cluttering up the recipients’ homes with worthless tchotchkes.
The best solution is to give charity cards so that recipients feel acknowledged but money goes to where it is needed. Even better: sign up for this distro list and several times in the past few days philanthropist Ray Dalio has sent out $50 charity cards for free. It cost Dalio a million dollars to give away 20k of them. I got one and donated it to my favorite charity, Watsi which funds healthcare for patients around the world. Kids get needed surgeries and I’m none the poorer for it.
Being nice is… nice. But it isn’t the only virtue. It isn’t close to the highest virtue. It is a fixation among people focused on what other people think of them. For those like Scrooge who have work to do, we often have other matters on our mind. We’re not trying to not be nice; we’re working. Someone has to. And the ghosts can bugger off or come back with a Wall Street Journal from the future.
