The Restricted Actions Section

Shane Parrish on Capital Allocators:

“Even during the pandemic, there are tons of public health guidelines out there where people are telling you what to think, how to think. You need to filter that and digest it. You can’t just rely on it. They came out and said that masks don’t matter and then said masks do matter—well there was no downside to wearing a mask. You might look like an idiot in the short-term but there’s no downside to it.”

Shane Parrish

One theme in Shane’s great conversation with Ted Seides was how much the cost of looking dumb restricts possible actions. About his podcast Shane said he’s just an idiot with a microphone.

But restricted compared to what? An idiot how?

Restrictions differ by scale and is much like the old political joke: I’m a libertarian at the national level but to my dog I’m a Marxist.

This idea surfaced in Bill Brewster’s podcast with Dan McMurtrie.

“I was somewhat bold enough to call out a transaction that some people have been burned on. But when I started to get inbounds from real mutual funds and managers and as I listened to why people weren’t buying I was like ‘Oh, I’m gonna fucking win on this because I don’t have the constraints.”

Dan is super good in the interview and together they address the four levels of constraints.

• Macro culture (society). For instance, it’s taboo to talk about sex, or at least the dating market.
• Micro culture (office). In another Seides podcast, he spoke with Ben Reiter about culture.
• Position (job). Certain institutions have mandates about size, moral, or industry situations. ESG is a literal example.
• Psychology (self). In the podcast Dan and Bill joke about investors who say “See’s Candy is my fav WEB investment”. That’s a psychology restriction.

So what? Why do constraints matter? Because they limit what a person can do. Dan again:

“I never want to compete against Stan Druckenmiller in timing the market. I never want to compete against David Einhorn in valuing a company. I never want to compete against Dan Loeb in writing an aggressive letter to a board. Where I might compete is where the environmental factors means that fighter is not able to perform at their best.”

It’s not more options that are better, but different options. Having good ideas (‘Go’) that also look good (‘Show’) is twice as difficult as just having a good idea. Or, can you look a bit like an idiot?