Kevin Vogelsang

Does Money follow Awesomeness?

I suppose I should give a rough definition to Awesomeness.  If I’m Awesome, this means I add enough value to qualify me as being awesome.   A person can be awesome in many ways–through their attitude, intellect, social skills, adventurous spirit, work ethic, etc.  These channels add up to a person’s general Awesomeness.

My hypothesis:  Awesomeness is unrelated to income.  I’d say income correlates most heavily with luck and how much one cares about having money.  To be rich, it probably does help to be awesome at something.  But, there’s a lot of ways to be awesome out there and not all of them will make you rich, so Awesomeness is unrelated to income*.  (If anything, I’d say Awesomeness has a negative correlation with caring about money.  Awesomeness only cares about being Awesome.)

So how do we compensate Awesomeness?  This is a serious problem, as the agents involved in any situation will respond to the incentives provided.  And we definitely want to incite Awesomeness.  How could anyone be opposed to that?

Well, what does every person care about and appreciate?

Recognition.**

This doesn’t mean that people are walking around trying to get recognized, but when recognition is received, people do appreciate it, even if they feel sheepish for receiving it.

So is Awesomeness being compensated?  Are Awesome people getting recognized?

Some are.  Most aren’t I’m guessing.  And if we want Awesomeness, this is something we should work to solve.

First step: go out and recognize Awesomeness whenever you can.

-Kevin
11.11.2009

*An analogous situation applies to companies.  Awesome companies fail all the time.  This is why venture capitalists will sometimes talk about “value captured.”  For instance, you might have an awesome product that a lot of people use and maybe love, but you might not necessarily be able to turn that into dollars.  YouTube is Awesome, but they’re ruining it by littering it with ads and trying to turn that Awesomeness into dollars.  Wikipedia is definitely Awesome, and it’s a non-profit–I don’t think a for-profit model would work at all for them.

I’m not saying making money is a bad thing.  I’m just saying money does not necessarily come with Awesomeness.

**To further my point, I’d say Money is often used as a substitute/proxy for Recognition (“I’m not doing anything Awesome, but I’m making money” or “I’ve made a lot of money, so I’m Awesome”).  Undoubtedly, Money is used for personal validation and recognition.  What good is having a lot of cool stuff if no one cares?