I’m a Libre. I Hate Dependencies.

All misery comes from not being a libre; from dependencies. Both, in private life and in business.

The word “Free” comes for the French: “Libre”, which in turn is a Latin term.

Libre has a different meaning and a different connotation to the translated Free. For example, libre software is free to use and free of restrictions, but not for free. Libre represents the idea of liberty, not the idea of price. It’s sad that we conflate them.

Libre it is. And no dependency, a libre, is what we want.

A Misery

If I am dependent on an income, other people, specific technology, specific provider, or specific company, I would never, ever be truly free. I will never be libre.

The only way to be deeply free, owning one’s destiny, is to break all dependencies.

Applied it is:

On a personal level, you may be able to have 0 dependancies. But you’ll never be happy. You can’t have optionality. Choice of partners as a continuous endeavor? Do you want my wife to see this?In a business context, you should strive to have 0 dependancies (employees, tech, customers) You need optionality.On a country level, you must have 0 dependancies. You’re as strong as a country as your optionality.

A Liberty

If we are saying that being libre means having no dependancies, then we are saying that optionality means being libre. Optionality plays a key role in breaking all dependencies, and therefore, being libre. I should be free to choose (ala Milton Friedman.)

What to do about this if I’m …?I’m an Individual Contributor, IC? Keeping my skillset as wide as possible, with depth in some topics I have real interest (a T-Shape employee) in can help me survive regardless of the market conditions.I’m a manager? Make sure that the team is not reliant on any 1 single person. No dependency on a specific tech, archaic unsupported tech, ultra-rare skillset, etc. Hire fullstackers, no DevOps, FE or BE unless you have a bigger team and you can afford it. Strive for redundancy in skillset and in people whenever you can afford it. You need optionality. Same idea as fault-tolerance, risk-mitigation, resiliency (recover from disruptions while maintaining functionality), redundancy (e.g. RAID storage systems), graceful degradation (e.g. cashing and old-vs-new data retrieval), modular (in components, and in RESTful API design.) Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system: try and mix different people together to make sure things are stable if people switch teams, if people leave, if you pivot, etc.I’m a company/startup? Hire people for agility (fill in different roles), revenue shouldn’t be 80/20 (no single 1 customer can ruin the company if they decide to breakup), variety in product offerings (optionality), no dependency on a single VP/director. Mind the tail.

Salam, peace.

Recommended Followups

Following are resources I learned a lot from on being a libre:

Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas TalebThe Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas TalebThe Open Society and its Enemies, PopperThe Law, BastiatOn Liberty, J. S. MillsSafe Haven, SpitznagelA Human Action, Von MisesAny book from F. A. Hayek