#172 Yancey Strickler on Why It's Time to Re-Evaluate the Economy | Impact Theory

There is no doubt that economic growth is positive, and that financial security is wonderful. But collectively, we seem to have given in to the notion that monetary gain is the primarily societal value. This transition to prioritizing profit over everything else is recent, and it may be leading us to an existential crisis. On this episode of Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu, Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Stickler argues that capitalism is good but incomplete, and that we need to expand our definition of self-interest. He shares the story of Kickstarter’s founding and explains why they became a public benefit corporation, describes his philosophy of Bentoism, and details the path to self-coherence.

SHOW NOTES:

Yancey tells the story of how he became an entrepreneur [1:23]
Yancey explains that they never wanted to sell Kickstarter [5:48]
Yancey describes the reasoning behind a public benefit corporation [9:08]
What happens when values become central instead of being a passive guardrail [11:51]
Being obsessed with financial growth leads to an existential crisis [13:30]
Financial value is important, but it’s better to optimize for other values [16:52]
Tom and Yancey discuss how recent the prioritization of financial optimization is [19:31]
Stakeholder capitalism means you make decisions based on everyone involved [23:16]
Yancey describes his intellectual path to bentoism [28:29]
What does it mean to be “self-coherent?” [35:51]
Yancey’s grid of “now me,” “now us”, “future me”, and “future us” is his life user interface [41:41]
How do you deal with internal conflicts in Bentoism? [43:27]
Yancey wants to expand our definition of self-interest [48:03]
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QUOTES:

“The fascinating opportunity that we have now is that the ability to define new values, to distribute goods, to make decisions, has never been greater.” [15:46]

“In 1970 the percentage of college freshmen who said that being well-off financially was essential or very important was just 28%. That year the number one life goal was to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. The most recent year the study came out, 2017, the biggest life goal among college freshmen was to be rich.” [27:16]

“How do you get in a flow state on a Tuesday at like 3 o’clock when you don’t like anything you have to do?” [35:33]

FOLLOW:

WEBSITE: ystrickler.com
BENTOISM: bentoism.org
INSTAGRAM: https://bit.ly/3fXSUZ0
TWITTER: https://bit.ly/2ThOVwI