People seem to be having a harder and harder time keeping their heads financially above water in today’s society. Why is there so much opportunity and so many maxed-out credit cards?

Evolution and natural selection have often been associated with a fight for resources. As your average “Joe the Plumber” (sorry, I couldn’t resist) tries to make ends meet, he is fighting the competition for his slice of the pie. Animals do this and it is called natural selection - the ones who get their slice of the pie get to pass on their genes. In life, it is called competition. But it is ultimately the same fight for resources, and since it is the same process, it leads to the same thing: evolution. Animals and ecologies evolve (biological evolution) and life for humans evolves (cultural evolution).

And just what is the result of all this development over thousands and thousands of years? What has been the result of cultural evolution? Coincidentally, some very cool things. Democratization, technology, freedom, integration, and decentralization are some of the big ones - and they’re really all related. But democratization especially is causing the problems in your wallet.

The fruits of Cultural Evolution
As technology increases and spreads and the ability of the average person grows. Democratization means that power is spread more evenly over a society. This implies increased competition. The more equal people become the more people are able to “fight” for resources. Increased competition often means less profits, since companies with similar resources are forced to lower prices to make themselves more attractive to potential clients. “Can’t they just create more features and functionality to their products and services?” Yes, but the point of democratization is that their competition has greater means to do the same. The famous “moat around the castle”, ie “barrier to entry” which every business strives to create to fend off competition is getting harder and harder to maintain. This is not just for businesses, this is for individuals as well. Individuals have also entered into a situation where there is less of a gap between rich and poor*. This means that there are more people around to buy the same things. We compete as consumers. This is easy enough to see in the housing markets. Prices continue to go up with only brief periods of price decline. More people have similar amounts of money and want to spend this money on houses. Supply and demand ensures that house prices thereby increase (not now, obviously, as the bubble has popped). The same is happening on the other end of things in the job market. Thee are more and more people who are able to do similar jobs. Employers care less about specific skills and expect more and more to train new employees on the job. Since differentiation between employees is lower, in general, relative to 20 years ago, the salaries are pushed down -> increased competition. So we have increased competition for the goods we want to buy and higher competition for the salaries we want to pay for them. No wonder you can’t make ends meet! Add to this whole mix the individual’s desire for a bigger and better lifestyle than his neighbor (yes, competition for lifestyle) and you have people with less money to throw around throwing around more money.

Money and energy
To be fair, it is harder to effectively manage one’s finances these days. There are many who would say that money is really just a form of energy (I’m one of them, but won’t go into the details here). But as we progress we get better at dissipating energy - that’s what evolution ultimately is looking to do. Getting better at dissipating energy means there is more energy, ie more money - more coming in and more going out. It can be a bit frenzied at times. It was much easier to manage your finances when you made $200 a month and only had 4 things to spend money on in that time. Can you see that as a low-energy situation comparable to a small pool of bacteria-filled sludge some 3 billion years ago? Now you could compare us to an earth teaming with complex and varied life forms some 100,000 years ago. See the difference in energy levels? The difference  between your personal finances and life on earth is who is managing it - you are managing your finances, whereas life on earth is managed by the Laws of the Universe. They have a great track record, tons of experience, and is not at all swayed by emotion.

So, what to do?

1. Work on autopilot
Acknowledge that all your conscious will power ain’t worth a damn. Sometimes you need to operate on an unconscious, unemotional, habitual level. This means putting systems in place which rule you - not the other way around. Here are some prime examples.
- automatic savings - arrange it with your bank to have money put aside every month. You can start out small, really small if necessary, just to work your way up. It’s about the forming the habit initially, not about how much you’re actualy making. Better to take a year or two to build up a good habit that will last the rest of your life.
- health habits - don’t just join a gym, join a club - where you are expected to show up and participate. This can be a work-out group or a healthy cooking group, or yoga lessons, meditation classes, etc.
- education - school is no longer a place you need to go to from 8AM to 3PM. There are tons of classes available online and, if you really want the classroom experience, you can even attend classes at a nearby college. Don’t need to get any degrees, just some new fuel for the motor in your head.

Example of being a slave to the system: personally, I’m too lazy to work out on my own initiative. Luckily I can admit this to myself. What I need is a group or scheduled activity where I am coerced into working out regularly. And guess what - I work out regularly. Don’t always want to, but almost always do. The system rules me. And as a result, I am 34 and thin.

2. Get creative
Innovation is the key to overcoming the “shortage”. As economist Paul Zane Pilzer expresses, “there is no shortage [of resources]”. He means that technology itself helps create new resources through innovative ways of using current resources. Individuals who try to compensate for an increase in competition by working harder are doomed to failure. It’s the equivalent of depleting existing resources. You want to innovate - create new and better ways of accomplishing more than you were before, and ultimately more than your competition.

3. Have faith
As we know, it is our belief system which determines our reality in this life. Believe that nothing you can do will help, and you will behave accordingly, the world will treat you accordingly and indeed, you will make this belief a reality. Conversely, believe that somehow nature takes care of those who follow its wishes and you will easily align yourself with natural, evolutionary principles, feel the power of the current, act positively in your daily experience and indeed you shall prosper and enjoy the process. It’s called a “leap of faith” because you go from one place to another in an instant. It may mean unloading lots of baggage, and that can be scary and time consuming. But the leap is quick and painless. Again, is the universe really caring for you? It doesn’t matter. As long as you believe it, with every bone in your body, then you will have the same power in you.

* I know, I know, everyone thinks that this gap is increasing. While it’s true that the richest one percent increases their wealth more than the rest of us, the remaining 99% (or 90% or whatever) have never had less of a variance in their net-worths than in any time in history.

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