Monthly Archives: June 2015

Self-discipline as a substitute for cash

Self-discipline can often substitute for cash.

  • Go to bed early => buy less coffee the next day.
  • Watch what I eat => cook at home instead of eating out.
  • Get rid of things I rarely use => eliminate need for storage unit or bigger house.

There are few situations in which more self-discipline results in more expense.

Do what’s possible, not what isn’t

As digital storage capacity grows huge, governments find they cannot maintain secrecy.

You can fit years of critical secret information on an SD card the size of a postage stamp.  As a result, leaks are asymmetric.  Attacks are vastly cheaper than defenses, and no defense is perfect.  This is inherent to the technological landscape, and there is no way to alter that landscape.

The obvious response is to have fewer secrets.

This is generalizable.  We build our goals and interests, and we even innovate, around an existing landscape of requirements and constraints.  Those constraints change over time, but are fixed in the short run.  To travel, you paddle downstream, not upstream.