nature boy is a cfo

your ongoing dealings have to be recursively modeled if you want them to self-balance indefinitely. (nb: you might not want that.) recursion has a vanishing point - if the balance is coming from there, and the function adjusts around it, you're golden.

by contrast, linear modeling of relationship will keep biting you here, on this side of the horizon, and eventually you'll see that the bites have a pattern, and at some point something will click

but maybe we can get ahead of it by documenting this

oxygen masks on a plane are an event, in a crisis scenario

salaries aren't like oxygen masks on a plane, in the "first I do mine, then I do yours" way. there's no "mine is accomplished and achieved and now I can help you" with salaries.

it's like ... wifi signal? wifi in a house that keeps getting bigger? you and me are in the center of the house, always getting the best signal, and everyone else is expanding the house in their own individual directions?

crucially, we gotta be transparent about what the supply looks like. if we can't light up a new wing of the house and you know that and you build it anyway, the conversation gets to stay very simple

linear modeling gets us employees refinancing their mortgages while their executives wonder about third homes, without anybody ever making a choice that feels locally wrong

recursive modeling gets us a continuous flow of improvement for everybody, at nobody's expense, because obviously we're gonna keep upgrading the wifi

what do you want?

(I don't even like this next point, but I think Reagan just didn't know enough math.)

[pause]

bodies understand recursion. bodies are recursion, and thus our "feeling" toolkit comes preloaded for this kind of reasoning. the village well model works when everybody can see and touch everybody else.

bodies-wielding-language is different. the negotiation of bodies-wielding-language is different. I don't think we've really had a "thinking" toolkit for recursive finance.

(ahhh, interesting. I'm noticing that my writing process is developing a parallel to my music process. I don't know where the song is going, but it never ends on a passionate swell. the song always puts me back down afterwards. I'm starting to see that in my writing, too.)