Recently, I had to replace the motorcycle tires, as they were well past their tread life. These off-road Duro tires are made in Taiwan; in fact, they are commonly used on the lesser-known Russian Ural motorcycles. These tires are known to be puncture-resistant — more significantly, they look pretty good on a Triumph. My side mirrors are from CRG, handlebars from British Customs, and engine/crash guard from SW-MOTECH. All this illustrates freedom of choice.

Making choices for customizing motorcycles is not so different from general life decisions. We select vendors and parts that are ideal for our purposes and aesthetic preferences. Just as we pick our grocery stores, restaurants, or investment plans. We build life and systems around us based on our preferences; those who make better decisions build better systems. That freedom deserves a bit of appreciation.

Last week I was watching this TV series called “The Man in the High Castle”. It details an alternate reality in which the Axis powers won the war. And the US is split in half between the Reich and Imperial Japan. The series also introduces the concept of a multiverse — a set of parallel realities with different outcomes. In some universes, the Axis powers rule; in others, it’s the Allied forces. In the story, Nazis in one universe realize this and decide to build a machine to travel to alternate realities, obviously to conquer them! More than scary, it felt foolhardy.

Even if by some random stroke of luck, Hitler had won the war in a universe, it’s highly unlikely they could hold a candle to the Allied forces from a parallel universe. So, one of the most likely outcomes of such an invasion would be going head-to-head with a more efficient alternate universe — not because of morality or divine verdicts, but simply because of basic science and their ability to make productive choices.

German Reich is forced to make decisions based on criteria that do not prioritize efficiency, while Americans make decisions to build productive systems. While Reich must live within the constraints of their ideology, Americans have incentives to make choices that deliver results. Nazis artificially limit their resource pool, while Americans allow winners to emerge from anywhere. Such systems can produce exceptional results simply because they are not structurally constrained. Over time, it allows the best ideas to emerge and inefficient practices to be discarded; this selection process eventually benefits the group. So, one way to evaluate legislation is by its impact on broadening available options; that may indicate whether it’s closer to the Reich or to Americana.

One of the scenes in the series also involves the Reich attempting to copy tech from the alternate universes. Even here, there is a loss of context, stemming from the structure of the available options within the system. The utility of ideas is embedded in the systems where they emerge and operate. Their maximum utilization, maintenance, and evolution demand a complementary ecosystem. When taken into a new context without the presence of dependent assumptions, the power of these same ideas will diminish. Examples of dependent assumptions include the human capital – the inventor, maintainer, engineer who handles the tech; the material capital which supports safe usage and execution; the laws, institutions, and systemic processes which enable all this. Basically, ideas applied out of context fail because of the basic principles of science. Essentially, the Reich stealing hydrogen bombs will likely nuke themselves, because they are artificially restricted from making safe, rational decisions.

Another conceivable possibility is that the Reich successfully adapted borrowed ideas into their own context. Assuming the ideas remain as effective in this new environment, they have at best achieved short-term parity with the Americans. But such a transient unearned parity will soon be lost without the original process that enabled its creation – the ability to make open-ended choices. Those decisions determine not just system capabilities and outcomes, but even their evolutionary trajectory.

Freedom of choice enables uniquely creative contextual adaptations to emerge. This happens within all layers of the system. Building motorcycles is a localized instance within a broader social and technological framework. These on-demand adaptations involve a process of reasoning, implicit and explicit assumptions, and the broader context in which they are executed. Successful creation, execution, and maintenance require a favorable environment. We can safely say — an idea, its manifestation, and the surrounding environment evolve together in lockstep. So, someone borrowing an idea from one context into another will usually learn the hard way. It’s not karma — it’s simply the reality of system constraints. There is also a historical context for these individual freedoms, the impartial strand of jurisprudence that thrived in England.

Republished at ridersmodel.com