theFIREstarter

My last post was rather stupidly called why you should never ask “what if everyone did this?”

Of course it is silly to think I meant it literally.

I mean, there are not many instances where you should actually never consider doing something. A few that spring to mind are:

• Murdering someone
• Stealing
• Putting the empty milk bottle back in the fridge

But asking yourself a simple question? Shouldn’t really do any harm so crack away at it if you really want.

The previous post was only applicable to asking that question in a certain situation and so the word “never” was a bit of a poor choice and bordered on the “clickbaity” side of blog post titles (apologies if anyone got offended by that 🙂 )

One of the times that you should definitely ask this question is to guide your moral compass:

If everyone did this, would the world be a better place or worse?

For example if you are wondering if riding your bike to work is a good idea or not, ask the question.

The obvious (to me and you) answer is that the world would be a much better place if everyone rode their bike to work. There would be less congestion, less pollution, a much healthier population with less money spent on healthcare and therefore more money to go around elsewhere, and I’d hazard a guess that everyone would be a much fucking better mood as well than they are today – me included as you can probably tell! 😉

Done by Forty totally got this when he mentioned this on my last post:

I like your take on this question, FIREStarter. I think there’s often some value in questioning whether your actions, if universally adopted (like, driving a car 50 miles a day, or creating X pounds of trash a year) would have on the world. It’s often helpful to think about if your actions are acceptable as the “average”.

Just a short one for you today so that’s your lot, something else small to think about hopefully if you haven’t done so already.

What small things do you do that would make the world a better place if everyone did it?

FI LONDON meeting alert: Just a quick aside to say that I’ll be attending a meeting on the 6th October in London with some other FIRE minded folk. If you want to go just go onto Facebook, search for and join the private group Financial Independence London if you aren’t already a member, and if you are, just say your going and turn up I guess. If you aren’t on Facebook shoot me an email or comment below and I’ll let you know the details.

Hopefully see some of you there!