Principle 7

Some people are impulsive and yield to temptations.  They seek immediate pleasure and gratification, often to the detriment of their future goals.  Indeed, a variety of mental health problems, from substance abuse to narcissism, can be ascribed to this instant gratification.

In contrast, other people are willing to sacrifice their pleasure now to benefit their future life. Specifically, these individuals are more likely to accrue resources—such as useful knowledge, valued skills, trusted relationships, and sufficient cash—to thrive in the future. To benefit the future, these individuals are inclined to recognize their limitations and embrace feedback, manifesting as humility.  Indeed, whenever individuals are willing to sacrifice their pleasure now to benefit their future later, a raft of social problems, including corruption, obesity, and harassment, tend to subside.  So

• to transform society, we somehow need to encourage people to sacrifice their pleasure now to benefit their future life,
• fortunately, governments and other organisations can introduce a range of policies and practices to achieve this goal.   

Indeed, many initiatives, implemented across many regions, were designed to reward people who sacrifice a modest level of pleasure to benefit the future.  To illustrate,

• many communities have introduced time banks, in which individuals who help members of their community now earn a reward—typically the right to engage someone to reciprocate this assistance,
• some public services, such as a subway ticket machine in Moscow, accept exercise as payment—an activity that may be unpleasant now but helpful to the future,
• in some cities, including San Francisco, if people discard only items that can be recycled, rather than items that cannot be recycled, the fees they pay to receive these services diminishes,
• some schools or communities encourage children to complete more chores—an activity that tends to predict the future happiness of these children later, as demonstrated by the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital that spans 85 years.

Rather than only reward individuals, governments and other bodies could reward organisations that sacrifice immediate pleasure to benefit the future.  To illustrate

• councils could readily ascertain which developers tend to enhance the satisfaction of their communities—by examining the relationship between the market share of developers in a computer and increases in house prices in this region—and then only engage developers that enhance this satisfaction,
• governments could offer better subsidies to medical clinics that arrange longer appointment—because these longer appointment generally correspond to more holistic assessment, greater compassion, and improved outcomes.

Rather than reward, governments may need to consider regulations that oblige these sacrifices to benefit the future. For instance

• governments may need to prohibit gambling advertisements and enforce pre-commitments, in which users must specify the maximum loss they are willing to incur—a strategy that is unlikely to decrease the revenue to TV stations or sporting clubs, because the prohibitions to tobacco did not significantly diminish this revenue,
• taxes and levies derived from natural resources should be managed in a wealth fund and distributed conservatively over time—consistent with the approach that Norway, but not Venezuela, has applied.