Jeff Bezos often says that there are two ways that a retail company can grow: either by striving to raise prices (like Microsoft) or by striving to lower prices (like Walmart). Both strategies can lead to successful companies. Amazon claims to be in the camp of lowering prices. By creating a simple dichotomy, Jeff has made a constructive illustration that makes sense and which illuminates information fairly well. I wonder how much the dichotomy itself is responsible for the quality of the information that gets transmitted. For example, would it be just as efficient to say that Amazon is striving to lower prices, like Walmart? Or does the quality of the information increase when compared to the other alternative, which is striving to raise prices? In other words, does opposition between ideas make both ideas clearer and stronger?
Another example that had a similar effect on me as I walked to work was in this dichotomy: there are two way so live your life, either you can strive to reach the state that expends the least amount of energy (life of luxury), or you can strive to reach the state that expends the maximum amount of your energy in the most efficient way (life of production). Those who strive to reach the state of least expended energy will often choose paths that supposedly lead to an easier life--a steady job, a happy family, lots of friends, etc. Those who strive to reach a state of maximum expended energy try to find more efficient ways of working in order to allow more things to get done--multiple jobs, jacks of all trades, work-a-holics, etc. After thinking about it, I don't think I've explicitly chosen a side. Day by day I sway from the two sides of this dichotomy and therefore hover in the middle. So it's not really a good example of a situation where you must choose sides, I suspect that most people are a blend of the two. But after articulated, I felt that the best use of this life would be in pursuit of the former--striving for best use of maximum energy. I mean, we have all this energy in life, and it's non-transferable to the next state, so why not use it? Isn't life just the expenditure of energy? Is there any reason to keep it, to hoard it, to siphon it away into possessions and professions and after-dinner chats? It is there to be spent, I think there's even a Jesus parable about it, something about having a certain number of gold coins and one guy buries it in his backyard and another guy invests it, and the guy that uses it and multiplies it is, according to the parable, the better man.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I suppose I should decide once and for all on the issue. Which is better? And, since it's a dichotomy, I think my brain will be able to preserve the ability to recall it (and understand it) on a more frequent basis, so that I can make sure to take actions to support the decision as often as possible. Because there is no other way to change really, other than finding good mechanisms for remembering the things that we've decided to change. It all comes back to memory, tricking our brains into doing things that for some reason we think are worth doing.
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