From Die with Zero to Die with Purpose
We are very good at measuring things.
We measure income, assets, investment returns and opportunity costs. We measure GDP and GDP per capita.
In the age of AI, we may become even better at calculating. That is not necessarily a bad thing. For younger generations especially, housing costs, careers, family responsibilities and uncertainty about the future make opportunity cost very real.
I have long appreciated the idea behind Die with Zero:
Don’t spend your whole life accumulating. Use your resources while you still have the time, health and ability to create a life worth remembering.
Bill Perkins calls this a Memory Dividend.
A journey taken when we are young, an adventure, or time spent with someone we love doesn’t pay us only once. Every time we remember it, the experience can pay another dividend.
Over the past few years, however, I have found myself asking another question:
What if there is also a Ripple Dividend?
Some things don’t disappear when they leave our hands.
Money. An opportunity. An introduction. Our time. A room. Trust. Even the simple words:
“Please use me.”
They enter someone else’s life. And sometimes, through that person, they travel again.
We may never know where the ripple ends.
Perhaps that is part of its beauty.
From Memory Dividend to Ripple Dividend
Die with Zero asks:
Did I use my resources to live fully?
I would like to add another question:
When I leave, beyond my memories, what will I leave behind?
These ideas don’t compete.
We don’t have to live less in order to give more.
And generosity doesn’t need to mean sacrifice.
Making another person happy can make us happy. Making the world a little better can make our own lives more meaningful.
Perhaps these aren’t opposing interests at all.
That is why my thinking has gradually moved from Die with Zero toward Die with Purpose.
Not as a rejection of the first idea.
Just one more question:
Beyond living fully, what did I put back into the world?
What if, alongside GDP, we talked about Generosity Per Capita?
We use GDP to measure how much economic value a society produces, and GDP per capita to look at economic output per person.
But is the richness of a society captured only by how much it produces, earns and consumes?
I began wondering:
Could we also talk about Generosity Per Capita—GPC?
By GPC, I do not mean Giving Per Capita.
It isn’t simply a country’s annual charitable donations divided by its population. Nor is the purpose to create another international ranking of who gives the most.
The question that interests me is larger:
How generous is our society, person by person?
Are people willing to share money, time, knowledge, connections, spaces and opportunities?
Are those with something useful to offer willing to say:
“Please use me”?
Are we willing to put some of what we have back into circulation?
GPC, then, isn’t only about donations.
It is an attempt to think about a society’s culture of generosity.
I don’t yet want to pretend that we have the perfect formula for measuring it.
That deserves deeper research.
Money may be one component. Time, volunteering, social trust, knowledge sharing and other expressions of generosity may eventually belong in the picture as well.
Before we build the formula, however, I think the question itself is worth asking:
Alongside wanting a higher GDP, would we also like to live in a society with a higher GPC?
GPC is not a goodness score
This matters enormously to me.
If GPC ever becomes a leaderboard of who is more generous, I think we will have lost the point.
I don’t want generosity to become another form of status.
And I certainly don’t want it to become another source of moral pressure.
So I would like to put down one principle at the very beginning:
Your GPC is not a score of how good you are.
It is a question about how intentionally you live.
At the societal level, I would put it this way:
GPC isn’t a score of how good we are.
It invites us to ask what kind of society we choose to become—and how each of us chooses to live within it.
Not because we should.
Because we choose to.
From social culture to personal practice
If GPC is about the generosity culture of a society, what about the individual?
Here I would like to keep things very simple.
At least initially, let’s measure money.
Time, knowledge, introductions, presence and saying “Please use me” are all forms of generosity. Sometimes they may be worth far more than money.
But once we try to assign a monetary value to every hour, introduction and act of generosity, the idea quickly becomes complicated.
So:
Not everything generous can be measured.
But measuring one simple thing can remind us to give more intentionally.
That leads to two personal measures that are easy to understand.
Generosity Ratio: How much of what came in did I give?
The formula is simple:
Generosity Ratio = Annual monetary giving ÷ Annual income × 100%
If someone earns NT$1,000,000 this year and gives NT$30,000:
Generosity Ratio = 3%
There is no need to calculate how much cash is sitting in the bank or debate what counts as a liquid asset.
Just ask two questions:
How much came in this year?
How much did I give?
That is the Generosity Ratio.
It measures an individual’s annual practice.
Even a 25-year-old who has barely begun accumulating assets can start today.
And there is no “correct” Generosity Ratio.
One percent, three percent, five percent or any other number does not make someone a better person.
It simply makes visible a question:
Has generosity begun to have an intentional place in the design of my life?
Ripple Ratio: How much of what I have accumulated have I committed to the future?
As we move through life, the question gradually changes.
We accumulate cash, investments, property, business ownership and other assets.
Eventually I find myself asking:
Of everything I have accumulated, how much is ultimately meant only for me—and how much have I intentionally committed to something larger than myself?
So:
Ripple Ratio = Assets committed to future purpose ÷ Total personal assets × 100%
Ripple Ratio isn’t about how much I donated this year.
It asks how much of the wealth I have accumulated has been intentionally committed to creating ripples into the future.
It is a question of legacy.
The whole framework now becomes quite simple:
GPC looks at the generosity culture of a society.
Generosity Ratio looks at an individual’s annual practice.
Ripple Ratio looks at an individual’s long-term legacy.
Or:
GPC is the culture.
Generosity Ratio is the practice.
Ripple Ratio is the legacy.
We can begin at every stage of life
One thing I particularly like about this framework is that it doesn’t belong only to wealthy people.
At 25, perhaps you have almost no accumulated assets.
That’s fine.
You can begin with your Generosity Ratio.
At 45, income may have grown, but so may family responsibilities. You can ask whether generosity has become a regular part of your annual life.
By 65 or 75, after accumulating some assets, the Ripple Ratio may become a more meaningful question:
Where do I ultimately want these resources to go?
Everyone’s answer can be different.
The answer should also be allowed to change at different stages of life.
We are part of something larger than ourselves
I am 77 years old.
At this age, I see more clearly that the most interesting question at the end of life may not be “How much do I still own?” but:
How much can I still set in motion?
I don’t want to tell younger people how they should spend their money.
Nor do I want to tell anyone how much they should give.
I simply want to offer an invitation.
The next time we calculate investment returns, opportunity costs or asset allocation, perhaps we can also ask:
What is our GPC?
What is my Generosity Ratio?
What is my Ripple Ratio?
The answers do not need to be shared.
And they certainly do not need to be compared with anyone else’s.
If, one day, more and more people in Taiwan begin asking these questions, perhaps we will gradually develop another way to think about abundance.
Not only:
How much did I earn?
How much did I accumulate?
How much did I experience?
But also:
How much did I give?
How much did I put back into circulation?
And how far might what I leave behind travel?
That is why my thinking has moved from Die with Zero toward Die with Purpose.
Not to live less.
But to make giving part of the experience of being alive.
Live fully. Give intentionally. Die with purpose.
Live well. Give consciously. Leave with purpose.
We are all part of something larger than ourselves.
And every ripple can begin with one person.
Still waters run deep; good deeds travel far.