Dante gave hoarders their own special place in Hell. The fourth circle in fact.
Their punishment was to clash eternally with their opposite – squanderers. Which was of course also the ideal punishment for squanderers.
For Dante, both hoarders and squanderers deserved to be in Hell, because they violated the purpose of Fortune, either by stopping the circulation of wealth, or by letting it simply run through their fingers.
He’d grasped that wealth needs to circulate widely in order to be useful. That by creating artificial scarcity we shrink the world to meaningless contest, instead of enjoying the benefits while we can, before handing them on to the next generation, in better shape than we found them.
Money isn’t the only thing that gets hoarded of course.
In a small business, it’s easy to hoard responsibility too. And all too easy to feel that as the boss, you’re constantly crashing into a team that’s motivated to squander it.
The only way to avoid this is to share responsibility.
Distribute it around your business in such a way that nobody can hoard it, and nobody can waste it.
Channel it into a system that nourishes everyone as they in turn nourish your customers and your business.
Do this, and you turn your business from a mini-Hell to a mini-Paradise, where everyone flourishes.
Discipline makes Daring possible.