Tenth law of worker entropy

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Of any agent, the point at which her immediate concern — making enough of an intervention to convey an air of the indispensable — is eclipsed by someone else's. Especially if that someone else is also an agent in the service of the same principal, and especially where that principal by dint of the corporate nature of its personality or its great remove from the details of the matter at hand is in no position to assert its own view of what is in it best interests.

This amounts to a kind of honour amongst thieves.

As we have remarked elsewhere, much of the financial services industry consists in agents of one stripe or another extracting a livelihood from the transit between them of a parcel — typically, millions of little parcels — owned by someone else.

Each parcel’s owner, a principal, has for one reason or another little capacity to observe or intervene in this game, but participates in it all the same because of perceived historical tendency of the parcels to rise in value over time at a greater rate than the general rate of agent-inflicted atrophy. Not always — as unit holders in Fairfield Sentry would no doubt a test — but nonetheless generally. As a rule, over the the whole run of western civilisation, the tide has risen and lifted all boats upon it, even though each one has sprung they a little leak.

So, the care horizon, and honour among thieves. The JC's tenth law of worker entropy which we will call the rule of collective agency: I will allow you your pedantry as long as you grant me mine. It is bad form to impinge on another agents reasonable aspirations to extract rent. Modern management has evolved to suit, with the separate agents separated and siloed into to areas of sole competence such that one officious agent has no standing over the the domain of another.

A lawyer cannot, even if he wants to, overrule a credit officers in assistance on on cross default in a overnight financing agreement. He may even get in trouble for trying.