The True Cost of Principles

Yesterday morning, over coffee, I was reading the latest Benedict Evans newsletter. In the section "Principles cost money," Ben quoted from advertising legend Bill Bernbach:

The ad industry guru Bill Bernbach said “it’s not a principle until it costs you money”. I left Twitter two years ago. It probably cost me money.

I followed to Ben's newsletter from this post of his on Threads:

Tim Cook has spent a decade or two talking about principles and ‘fundamental human rights rights’ and putting rainbow flags and ‘allyship’ on Apple surfaces, and then he goes to watch a movie at the White House, and says nothing.

“It’s only a principle if it costs you money”

This struck me profoundly and deeply. I've been feeling the collision of my principles and my own relationship to tech, to politics, to culture for at least the last year.

I think seriously about returning to Linux, to get out of the Apple ecosystem, but I go back to my Mac after a month. It's hard. Well no, not hard. Inconvenient. I miss the apps I love. I miss the ease with which my digital life carries with me across devices, anchored and mobile, all at once.

I think about leaving social media entirely – to be clear, I'm not that active now – but then FOMO takes over. sigh. That FOMO. It's a force, invisible and centrifugal, like that black hole at the center of our galaxy. You don't realize it's there, but you're trapped in orbit around it.

Then, there are all the other things I mentally charge toward and then back flip away from.

I should retire from tech, build a business for myself. No, I can still make a 10 year run somewhere.

Writing, that's all I've ever wanted to do. No, I've been a developer so long, that's what I really am.

Stop using gen AI, it's sleazy. But this comic I made with the help of AI, it's kind of cool!

Today, I realized. It's the cost that keeps me trapped in this spin of indecision. It's the cost, the loss, that I want to avoid. Maybe not money, but it's something. Loss of pride, that fear of looking silly or dumb. Loss of respect, of getting found out for the true lack of depth of understanding and commitment I carry with me. Failure, that true loss, the true cost you might pay for trying to be more than you are.

In our modern world, money is the surest test of success. It's the thing Benedict Evans knows most well. He is primarily devoted to investments and business, and so, it's the framework that makes things make sense to him. But loss of any sort, it's the thing we all most want to avoid. Loss is the real cost, and if your principles don't carry with them the risk of true, fundamental loss, they must not be principles at all.