# Opportunity Cost Blackmail

If you are utterly powerless, with no money, skills, status, or friends, survival already takes all your time and energy.

Yet I’m not in that situation — and you’re probably not either. Our circumstances surely vary, but we have at least some power — we can pump towards certain outcomes, to some extent. And with even a modicum of power comes constant [opportunity cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost).

Whatever we’re doing with our power, we could do other things. And opportunity cost measures the “value” of these other things, based on our preferences. So if you have ten dollars to donate, giving it to a particular homeless person means that you won’t be giving it to another one who stays in the next street, or to a NGO. Same if you’re using your ten dollars to buy a cake, or invite a friend to (cheap) dinner.

Now let’s factor in two additional facts:

*   We live in a [Dark World](https://mindingourway.com/see-the-dark-world/), where people die and suffer all the time, and the whole species and planet is at stake from multiple threats. **The kind of world where we need to gather massive amounts of power in various forms to be able to solve these issues.**
*   **Opportunity cost grows with power**. Because you can pump more outcomes more reliably, there are many more good things you could bring about by using that power differently. You’re throwing away many more potential goods when you make a decision.

This leads to a massive [psychological problem](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ddd3eBucFN3ZdbFzx/psychological-disorders-and-problems) that I’m learning to deal with, and which threatens anyone who [cares enough to tackle important problems](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/smBkyR2GkzMtrKuwK/the-first-filter): **opportunity cost blackmail**. Because each choice condemns so many good potential actions, pain and guilt hunt me at every choice, from the smallest to the largest. It’s not a massive panic or a tremendous horror, merely a constant trickle of suffering, an infusion of damage that seeps into your very core. Even when I reflectively believe I made the right call!

If it was merely pain, and nothing else got impacted, then although sad it wouldn’t be that much of an issue (at least for me, based on my personal preferences). But it’s far worse than that: opportunity cost blackmail castrates you, it makes you actively weaker and less able to contribute. You become indecisive, change your mind all the time, or take damage each time you make a sensible decision, just because there is this background pain of the opportunity cost you’re leaving on the table. You slow down, burn out, lose time to your guilt, while the problems become more pressing by the minute.

As James Clear puts it:

> A practical definition of opportunity cost: If you spend too much time working on good things, then you don’t have much time left to work on great things.
> 
> Understanding opportunity cost means eliminating good uses of time. And that's what makes it hard.

And let’s be painfully honest here: “good uses of time” includes literally saving people’s lives. If you have enough power, you can intervene on a lot of individual cases, and save people from almost certain death. And whatever else you’re doing, even if it is the right call based on your preferences (for example it leads to saving more people in the long run), means you’re not saving these people.

For example, every time you take a break, you let people die. You let many bad things happen and many problems pile up. Yet by resting adequately, you become able to tackle far bigger and harder problems. Both these things are true. Both are facts you need to grapple with if you want to become stronger and help save the world.

What’s the solution? To [detach the grim-o-meter](https://mindingourway.com/detach-the-grim-o-meter/). To still see the Dark World, and know the cost so you can make the best decision you can; yet not suffer for all the things you did not do in order to do what you thought was the best. I am working on reaching this level, but I still regularly suffer from opportunity cost blackmail.

That’s one of the [psychological problems](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ddd3eBucFN3ZdbFzx/psychological-disorders-and-problems) I need to tackle in this new year, so I can truly [optimize](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/smBkyR2GkzMtrKuwK/the-first-filter).