Trapped in the Invisible Time Cage

What does control from above look like? Sometimes it is a firm hand on a leash (as we experienced during the COVID era). But most of the time, it’s a soft prison you don’t even recognize.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison. —often attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Worse yet, those soft prisons are often created by the prisoners themselves. High-time-preference behavior—an excessive focus on the present at the expense of the future—is one example of this.

Nonstop outrage, chronic health issues, sky-high consumer debt, and paycheck-to-paycheck dependence distract you from life’s important issues and can make you more reliant on “the system.” More concretely, it strips you of bargaining power and puts you at the mercy of powerful institutions.

Once someone can’t see beyond the next notification or paycheck, they’ve effectively chained themselves. In this scenario, tyrants don’t need barbed wire or secret police. The more your thinking is confined to days and weeks, the easier it is for others to steer you with short-term rewards and threats.

Today Versus Tomorrow

Time preference is an economic concept made famous by Austrian Economists (the economists who argue against state intervention) Eugen Böhm-Bawerk, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. Viewed from another angle, the same basic idea appears under labels such as future discounting, present bias, or short-termism.

The exact terminology isn’t important here. The gist is this: Time preference provides a simple lens for understanding a great deal of human behavior. It represents how much people value the present over the future—or, in economic parlance, how much they discount the future.

Everyone has a positive time preference, meaning you prioritize today over tomorrow. Otherwise, no one would ever buy anything and would invest one hundred percent of their resources instead. Soon, they would starve to death.

It is normal to discount the future in favor of an improved present. […] Future discounting is a normal human function. —Bret Weinstein

The important distinction is this: Is your time preference high or low? High time preference signifies that the now matters much more than the later. This attitude shows up in behaviors such as drinking to excess every week, going into debt to buy an expensive car, or eating fast food regularly—in other words, sacrificing long-term physical or financial health in favor of short-term enjoyment.

A low time preference means you value your future highly. You spend your weekends being productive or with family and loved ones, opt for the cheaper car, and work out regularly. If someone with low time preferences does buy the more expensive car, it is usually after a longer period of hard work and delayed gratification.

Slipping into a high-time-preference behavior once won’t destroy your life, just as one low-time-preference choice won’t save it. But if you make it a habit to favor one over the other, that pattern will show up in your life.

On a larger scale, civilizations are built on low time preference. If you want to create something bigger than yourself, you have to save, plan for the long term, and take responsibility. As the Greek proverb goes, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

Families—the building blocks of any civilization’s future—are also low-time-preference institutions. The degree of prudence varies among parents, of course, but child-rearing is, by its very nature, future-oriented.

Systems of Convenience

Today, indulging in high-time-preference behavior is easy. Some would even argue that the system is set up to encourage such behavior. However, there is no need to imagine an evil force that controls everything in the modern world. Instead, misaligned incentives make people dependent on institutions, and those leading these institutions profit from this tendency and capitalize on it.

In the last century, people started outsourcing responsibility for their own behavior. Over the years, this has only accelerated. We can see it more clearly than ever today.

The US personal savings rate (consumption spending subtracted from income) has dropped to 5 percent, half of what it was 50 years ago. People are spending more and saving less. With so little saved, they demand government intervention when a crisis hits. Anyone paying attention could see this in the COVID stimulus checks.

When you want to spend money you don’t have, you take on debt. Although the household debt-to-GDP ratio has fallen since the 2008 crisis, absolute numbers continue to climb higher.

Individuals are addicted to debt. The share of households with a negative net worth has risen to over ten percent. It has become customary to buy things one cannot afford. Why wait and save when you can jump into debt and worry about the consequences later?

Bailouts and stimulus checks are just one way the government perpetuates this pattern. Fifty-year mortgages, for instance, would keep people in debt even longer. Assuming common conditions, switching from a 30-year to a 50-year loan only slightly lowers the monthly payment while doubling the total interest paid. In addition, it would push house prices even higher.

The situation is no better in the business world. Founders start companies purely to make them look good enough to attract capital and then get bought out by a competitor. Many CEOs’ time horizons don’t stretch far beyond the next quarter’s results. Almost half of publicly traded firms now operate at a loss, up from under 10 percent in the 1960s.

At least part of the blame for this situation lies with the artificially low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve. “Too big to fail” is another harmful incentive, and regulations that block new competitors from entering the market don’t help either.

A high time preference makes you dependent on the state. If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, you’ll look to the government for help when something goes wrong. Without any retirement savings, you’ll need government support. Even a minor economic downturn becomes a crisis.

If you spend all day caught up in social media outrage, you have no time to see the big picture and ask tough questions. The average individual spends 2h 21min on social media each day and even more time thinking about it. Well-paid psychology and marketing experts design these algorithms to keep you hooked. They reward reaction, not reflection. People’s attention spans are in free fall.

Today’s “healthcare” systems are more about sickcare. Modern medicine is outstanding at curing acute issues but mediocre at tackling chronic problems. Addressing illness at the root takes longer and doesn’t produce repeat customers.

Ozempic is a prime example of this. The global adult obesity rate has nearly tripled since 1990, reaching 16 percent in 2022. In the U.S., it’s at 43 percent. If you’re overweight, you have two options: Either take the hard road of changing your lifestyle or rely on expensive healthcare and hope for government subsidies. I’m not implying the natural way is easy, but it is more sustainable and independent of large institutions.

When people do find a few minutes to think about this situation, they default to a typical assumption: The state will take care of this.

Will it, though? Politicians have little incentive to think beyond the next election. They figure the next administration can deal with it—whatever it is—and if they remain in power, they’ll simply find an excuse.

The US pension system is an excellent example. In less than a decade, it won’t be able to pay out all scheduled benefits. Other countries aren’t faring much better. Yet, even though this has been foreseeable for years, nothing is being done. Everyone is leaving it to some future politician to handle.

Reclaim Your Freedom

There’s obvious tyranny: uniforms, censorship, surveillance, fear. Then there’s subtle tyranny: credit card debt, prescription medication, social media feeds, safety nets—easy to enter, hard to escape.

Give away your agency, and you lose the power to make decisions. If your housing, healthcare, and physical well-being depend on the state, big corporations, or opaque algorithms, you’ll hesitate to rock the boat. Instead, you will internalize the idea that someone else will handle things, and thus trade away your autonomy for stability.

In the short run, this trade-off is convenient. In the long run, it strips away your agency until you’re nothing more than a cog in the machine.

To live as a free individual, you have to create your own buffers. Pay off your debts. Spend less and save for an emergency fund. Invest for your future and retirement. Eat real food and work out to increase your health span. Start reading books to lengthen your attention span.

You don’t have to be perfect. It’s the overall trajectory that matters more than any individual choice. Will this be easy? No. Will it be worth it? Heck yeah.

Humans are distinct from animals in an important respect: We do not have to act on every impulse. We can delay gratification and work toward long-term goals. By preparing for the long run, you not only increase your personal freedom but also set a positive example for those around you. Your neighbors might even start going to the gym with you.

When enough individuals deliberately lower their time preference, politics becomes less crucial as a source of security, and everyone can live more peacefully. You and I don’t control macro trends, but we can set a good example and be a positive influence. Choose the hard way now to live a free life later.