The Economics of Honesty
How you can learn to be more honest with yourself and others
I. I Can’t vs. I Won’t
Every day we tell people, “I can’t.” But if we’re being honest, this is a bit of a lie.
As Dr. Peter Attia reflected on, it’s easy for us to default to saying “I can’t do ___ ,” when in reality we can do a lot of things, but we choose not to.
He mentioned how he was invited to an event, but it would lead to him not seeing his kids and being away for a full weekend.
So he responded: “Sorry, I can’t make it.”
But then he thought, “I can make it but I just don’t want to do it — be honest.”
So he rewrites his message: “Sorry, this looks great and maybe another time I’d like to come, but right now I’m not willing to make the sacrifice.”
II. The Economics of Honesty
In economics, demand is defined by someone who is willing and able to buy a product.
When someone wants something but can’t buy it, they can’t afford it. And when they don’t want to buy it but they could, they spend their money elsewhere.
Here’s a thought experiment: would you buy $250 Gucci underwear? Sure they’re expensive, but they’re luxuriously comfortable.
Many people have $250, but decide that they’d rather spend that money elsewhere.
They can afford it, but choose other things. It’s not that they can’t buy it—it’s that they won’t.
When we tell someone that we can’t do something, what we’re effectively saying is that we can’t afford it. This implies that we don’t have the time.
This is wrong: we absolutely do have the time. We just have different priorities at the moment.
This is what economists call opportunity cost: it’s everything you miss out on when making decisions.
Many people won’t buy the Gucci underwear because they’d rather do something else with their money. It’s all about weighing costs and benefits:
“Every decision for something is a decision against something else.”
- Dark, a Netflix Original Series
Yet, why is it so damn hard to say no to someone? Why is it so easy to say no to those underwear and yes to coffee with that person we’d rather avoid?
Probably out of courtesy and being polite. In the short run, we think it’s more important to be polite than honest, even though we usually regret saying yes in the first place.
If you’ve ever watched Seinfeld, Jerry is known for being the nice guy who reluctantly agrees to favors. It’s a strange paradox, though: he’s polite and nice, yet we can feel (and see) his regret for having agreed to them.
His friend George captures the essence of this paradox:
“Why is nice bad? What kind of sick society are we living in where nice is bad?”
This is what I call the Nice is Bad Paradox.
A common social convention is the white lie. As Sam Harris wrote in Lying, these are “lies we tell for the purpose of sparing others discomfort.”
In the moment, we’re faced with a decision. Should I be honest now and a little uncomfortable? Or do I lie and give into short-term comfort?
While the common rationale for telling white lies is being polite, the deeper reason is that they’re easier.
Just like nutrition, it’s much easier to eat the cookie than execute a no-go. All humans have limited willpower, and many suck at impulse control.
But if you always eat dessert, you’re probably not a healthy person. It follows that if you tell white lies and give into the short term desire for comfort, your relationships may also suffer in the long run.
Now you might be thinking, what if I just tell someone, “I’m busy” and leave it at that?
That could work. But we should be cautious with this word:
“Busy is a decision. We do the things we want to do, period. If we say we are too busy, it is just shorthand for the thing being "not important enough" or "not a priority." Busy is not a badge. You don’t find the time to make things, you make the time to do things."
- Writer Debbie Millman
Busyness is a proxy for your priorities. While telling someone you’re not busy is not necessarily a lie, they probably will ask you: “what are you up to then?”
This is the point where you make an excuse or some white lie. The alternative: explain your priorities and how this person currently doesn't fit into them.
While it might seem weird to replace “I can’t” with “I’m not willing to, because…” it’s the short-term discomfort of honesty that helps us spend our time more wisely and make better decisions.
Many outcomes in life — including who we are — are a large collection of small decisions.
Getting an A in class is more about deciding to study daily. Being healthy is about making the decisions to exercise often and eat better.
However, every decision has one thing in common: saying no to something else.
We’ve already established that saying no is difficult. But there’s one very underappreciated element to making decisions: time.
III. Time is Priceless
In the opportunity cost equation, many of us significantly underestimate how valuable our time is:
“Time is our only currency. It’s the only thing that matters. In our civilization, we seek for wealth first, but find any really rich person that is old or sick, and they’ll trade it all for more time.” - Ric Elias
Time is priceless. Warren Buffet’s net worth is over one-hundred billion dollars, and yet there’s no question that he’d give all of it away to have more time and better health.
We could then say that giving the reluctant “yes” is like buying an entire Gucci wardrobe. A lack of interpersonal honesty is ridiculously expensive.
As Dr. Attia advised, the more accurately we can speak about our choices, the more honest we’re being with ourselves.
Although I’m young and will default to saying yes to many things, it’s wise to keep this idea of tradeoffs in mind.
The goal is to say “no” more often, in order to say “yes” to the most important things in life.
Happy Honesty,
Baxter
Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash