Why does it suck to be around someone who is always complaining?
Because they are “centralizing” their problems to the group.
We all get annoyed by things. But when people broadcast what annoys them, they force everyone around them to share in their annoyance.
So then, not only do we feel annoyed by whatever naturally irks us, but we also are forced to feel annoyed by the other person’s complaints.
By sharing their complaint with others, they have increased the overall annoyance of the group.
Instead of being annoyed for five minutes by my own problems, I am annoyed for ten minutes. Five minutes by the complaints I keep in my head, and five minutes by their complaints they force into my ears.
Society is Super Annoying…
There are a lot of problems in the world. You can’t care about all of them.
And if you try, you will probably feel overwhelmed, depressed, and powerless.
Yet we rely on big centralized institutions like national media, national politics, and national monetary policy.
This produces the same result as our complaining acquaintances.
They force problems on all of us that really shouldn’t affect 320 million Americans from coast to coast.
I’m sorry so many people got shot in Chicago. Sounds like a good reason not to live in Chicago. But if you do live in Chicago, I understand why you are concerned with gun violence.
But I don’t live in Chicago. So keep your “solutions” the hell away from me in rural Florida.
It might sound like I am saying you shouldn’t care about national or global problems.
But what I am really saying is, you should care about what you care about.
You shouldn’t be forced to care about what other people care about.
Orphans, puppy-mills, polluted rivers, abusive priests, tsunamis, endangered animals, illiteracy, tropical diseases, crashing stocks, soaring housing costs, homeless people pooping on sidewalks…
Are you stressed yet?
All of these are great problems to tackle for the right people. But we don’t all need to occupy ourselves with all these problems.
By all means, tackle one of these issues, especially if it is happening in your backyard.
Educate anyone interested… but don’t bully or shame them if they don’t care about whatever you care about.
Everyone has to choose what to focus on. It’s not like I don’t care about the extreme poor in Africa. But I have other things to deal with closer to home. And I can’t possibly solve every world problem–I probably can’t even solve most town problems.
I have, by the way, donated to an orphanage in Africa.
But don’t you think it’s easier for me to track the benefits of my donations to the local charity that helps foster kids? Whose thrift store I have donated to and purchased from? Whose charity race I participated in?
I certainly hope the money I give to an African cause goes to the right place and is used effectively. But I can verify first hand that my donations are making a difference here in town.
In the end, this means problems get solved by the people who care about them the most, who are affected by them, who are closest to the issue. That’s more efficient.
It means people with the most skin in the game put together the solutions.
And more actually gets done this way!
By specializing in the causes that mean the most to us, we use our energy and expertise in the best way possible.
If we try to get all 320 million Americans on board, or all 7 billion humans involved, nothing happens, but everyone is upset.
Experts and Specialists
This happens to also be how the economy is naturally organized.
When I go to a restaurant, I pay money for food to be prepared and served to me.
I don’t have to find the capital to build a restaurant, hire the cooks and waiters, buy food in bulk, and pay the electric bill.
I just show up and pay.
Even the restaurant owner doesn’t have to grow the actual food for his restaurant. He doesn’t hire truckers to ship it. And he doesn’t have to build an electric plant and run wires to the restaurant either.
He pays for electricity and sources the food.
And he also doesn’t have to slice up tomatoes, take orders, or sweep the front entrance. He hires staff for those jobs.
The economy is split up into little segments. Everybody’s role is different.
This makes it efficient and doesn’t bog us down with details that don’t concern us.
Everyone does their own job better, by ignoring the jobs they don’t need to do.
The restaurant owner should not tell the cook how to chop the tomatoes, and the cook should not tell the owner how to spend his advertising dollars.
Yet we do this in much more extreme and important cases.
Politicians set the licensing requirements for hairdressers.
Politicians use our money to bomb countries most Americans can’t even place on a map!
The Federal Reserve sets interest rates!
This is the same reason why socialism has always been such a monumental failure. It operates under the myth that you can centralize control of something as complex as an economy.
It encourages you to get involved in matters that don’t affect you and force others to conform to your subjective whims.
This is why central planning fails.
320 million people should not be controlled by 435 legislators and 1 executive in Washington DC. They cannot possibly know enough about all our lives that they could make good decisions for us–even if they wanted to.