Midrange Jumpers for the Middle Class
When every decision is an expected-value calculation, the middle dies.
This chart made me sad. It’s the inexorable result of moneyball. When every decision is maximally maximized, when every choice is an expected-value calculation.
It’s also the inevitable result of globalism.
Both moneyball and globalism are dominant-strategy-maximizing approaches to competitive domains. They solely understand players and citizens as productivity inputs, and all behaviors done based on their expected values. Humans are variables placed into a machine that scores points and generates trinkets, nothing more.
The guiding light is just one more point on the scoreboard, and one more point of gross margin. There is no higher-order value.
When a nation is seen only through the lens of an expected-value projection, and a society as a series of GDP factors: clustering occurs, power laws amplify, variance declines...
You curiously find yourself with no midrange jumpers, and no middle class.
Spreadsheet Brain
Excessive optimization in anything eventually turns the human spirit, sports, and supply chains, gray. Unrelenting pursuit of 1% better margins or 1% greater chance of success in *insert competitive domain* is how the McKinsey consultant sees the world. It’s how the pedigree-touting economist understands every decision.
These are people trained to think unnaturally, inculcated to believe what the Excel sheet spits out is absolute truth. On questions of human existence, competition, and flourishing, there is a “right” answer; and that answer is what the data analysis says is right. The most noble pursuit to attain is that which maximizes the expected value.
The Spreadsheet Brain vision of the world is cultivated in schools that exalt undermining the parochial, viewing their neighbors with disdain if they’re encumbering operating cashflows. Because, hear me out, if it helps gross margins, it MUST be what's best for everyone. Because it makes the trinkets cheaper. Because we are trinket maximalists. Harvard Business Review is scripture, Keynes is canon.
Why create your trinkets domestically when China has an underclass that exists on 1,400 calories a day and will do it for a fraction of the cost? The answer to this is obvious, if you assume society sees life through the same lens as your textbook: a spreadsheet existence. If the model says your middle class is best served by delegating their industries and jobs to a political adversary, then that’s just what the Bain and Co. gentleman does. Read a book!
The middle class has no desire for eudaimonism: fulfillment from a life that imbues purpose. This must be so, because the Excel sheet doesn’t know how to quantify those things and if I can’t calculate it then it doesn’t matter (eudai-what? dude stop making up words and get in on this sale). My MBA says more is more.
Lose Variance, Lose Color
When globocorp’s bottom line is the unwavering guiding light, when the expected value of each basketball possession is the only consideration, actions eventually converge on the same expected-value-led strategies. Tedium. Mankind needs variance, otherwise he'll break things until the volatility and color he secretly relishes returns.
If you go too long without a life of purpose, without eudaimonism, something inside you begins to chafe. Grayness seeps in. Hedonism leads to a shadow-puppet existence, yielding a shell of your former self that only understands pleasure of the senses, not purpose of the soul.
Life needs color, which is to say that which you can’t always predict. You know what maximizes predictability? Expected-value thinking. Moneyball. Globalism. You can push that colorful beachball underwater and transmute it for a bit, but eventually the volatility tax must be paid.
An expected-value existence is corrosive to the middle. Empirically. Demonstrably. The spreadsheet mind cannot comprehend this, but the NBA shot chart and the factory worker can.
Religion, Pretending to be Economics
Just as the priest only knows “Christ is King”, the Trinket Maximalist only knows “open trade open borders good”. It's religious thinking, masquerading as post-hoc, economic-presenting rationale. Because you cannot possibly conceive that the highest-order value for a nation isn’t the cheapest trinkets possible. Unfathomable.
When the entirety of your beliefs and motivations can be distilled down to “what gives the best margins?”, you implicitly worship the material. Because explicitly, the material is all you value when you think this way. You project this value onto others, often unwittingly, when you treat global trade as Christ 2.0.
This is the religion of consumption, hedonism. No salutary purpose, eudaimonism. If it doesn’t facilitate profligate intake, I’m going to have to kindly ask that you go to college.
What’s more, this fetishization of trade being “open” and “free” only manifests positively if it’s reciprocated. Comparitive advantage exists only in the exchange of goods, not their production. The purpose of exports is more imports, balance, and yet a massive asymmetry in the Balance of Payments persists… If trade is incongruous, as it is now, someone is exporting more than just trinkets, they’re exporting their lack domestic demand. Other nations do not reciprocate our openness, that means their will is being imposed upon us. Always remember to reevaluate your priors if your counterparty is wealthy, competent, and keeps running the same play against you… maybe it’s you who’s missing something, not them.
If a couple more basis points of gross margin is the North Star, and one more point on the scoreboard is all the strategy knows, you're left with no midrange jumpers, and no middle class. Everything converges on the same dominant strategies, because “dominance” is conceptualized in only one domain: the realm of the financially measurable. Producing a current account deficit, and spiritual bankruptcy.
Midrange Variance
Remember Rip Hamilton? Kobe? They lived in the midrange. Jordan did everything, everywhere, all at once. Now you know what you do in the modern NBA? You either get a sniper to shoot a foot behind the 3-point line, or you throw it to the post.
Listen, we ran the numbers, and the Monte Carlo analysis says what it says: no more 15-footers or you’re benched. No more domestic manufacturing, or you’re out of business. Diversity? Lol yeah, not that kind. Have you seen the NBA’s ratings lately? You get what you fucking deserve.
Who cares about all the action in between the 1st quarter and the final buzzer. The sport whose very reason for existence is to entertain and excite. The event we gather in big stadiums for and have our identities tied to. Meh, you see, all that matters is just one. more. point. than the other guys.
Who cares about a population’s sense of identity and esteem. A blue-collar existence of dignity and self-sufficiency. The men who derive their purpose, value, and autonomy from their ability to provide. It’s fine if we rob them of their agency, because the doodads are that much cheaper for it.
You don’t need a sense of independence, you need a smartphone that folds! A hedonistic worldview like this dominates everything else you believe.
Boy you’re really laying it on thick for those flyover-state peons! All we want is just one. more. point. of gross margin bro. Chill. You clearly don’t read Harvard Business Review.
"What's the expected value of each possession? What’s the cheapest way possible to build that product?"…
This kind of thinking produces grayness. Variance degrades. Fragility seeps into your supply chains when the human condition is reduced to a measurement. You disembowel the middle. No midrange jumpers. No middle class.
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This essay is continued in Touching Soul, Touching Senses: The Art You Deserve
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"Remember Rip Hamilton? Kobe? They lived in the midrange. Jordan did everything, everywhere, all at once. Now you know what you do in the modern NBA? You either get a sniper to shoot a foot behind the 3-point line, or you throw it to the post."
It's even worse. The post game also went the way of the midrange jumper. The entire game is 80% played beyond the 3 point line now. Those shots in the paint? The product of guards being pick-and-rolled from the 3 point line and into the paint to collapse defenses. Nobody posts up anymore.
A brutally true analysis. I've been thinking about some of this in terms of how board gaming and other "fun" activities have turned into spreadsheets. But how the "middle" gets removed is a unique take.
https://waverings.substack.com/p/optimizing-the-trains-to-auschwitz