Premium: Perspective on KZN’s latest tragedy – it’s all about High Time Preference

In 1972, Stanford professor Walter Mischel conduced an experiment with four year olds and marshmallows. It is often referenced to explain the human condition. The couple dozen children were told if they refrained from eating the marshmallow for 15 minutes, they'd be rewarded with a second one. Years later Mischel checked how the kids had done. Those able to delay gratification were living successful lives; those who immediately ate the marshmallows, not so.

In his superb book The Bitcoin Standard, economics professor Saifedean Ammous writes how the Mischel experiment is a cornerstone of his teaching. The marshmallow experiment, he avers, shows that people are divided into two groups – those he describes as having High Time Preference consume immediately with little concern about tomorrow. Others, blessed with Low Time Preference, delay instant gratification for future benefit.

Economics rewards those with Low Time Preference. Life, too, as the results of Mischel's experiment and many others like it confirm. Although now accepted science, this is nothing new for us of course. For centuries the devout have sacrificed today for a better hereafter. But what most Sapiens happily practice in spiritual matters is by no means universally applied in secular society.

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