Keep your eye on the ball

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“Show me the money.”

—Jerry Maguire

If you want a career in in professional services — to make handsome fortune from an ergonomic chair, with beanbags, a soft play area, free taxis home after nine and the benign protection of a human resources, just keep your eye on the ball.

The ball

What is the word for a “shibboleth” that is an ancient principle for good reason? Things that tap deep roots in the cultural layer; that speaks to fundamental biological needs in a way that can’t be derived away. This is the “ball”.

The “ball” is not the upshot of the employee survey, the mentoring program, pay parity, ESG credentials, workplace satisfaction, community teamworks — these things will come and go, and their administration will doubtless vouchsafe some lucky chancers a decent living — but the basic business of sensibly deploying capital in pursuit of sustainable return.

The things without which, you know, nothing.

Activities that fulfil needs that have not changed since the Industrial Revolution — since the Agricultural Revolution. Since the invention of the wheel.

The collection, allocation and application of scarce resources.

One ancient proxy for all of these activities.

This time is not different.

The information economy

Much of the modern professional services economy in second-order, and this order, proxies. Health and safety inspectorate may have been automated and, ceteris paribus, human resources will, insh’Allah, have been whacked in the meantime, but if what you do (aside from all that) is to look after is the prudent allocation of real capital to real risk —and if you are good at it — then nothing the information revolution can throw at you will hurt.

For the most part the information revolution is a revolution of delivery.

Amazon can deliver products to you more effectively and efficiently than a high street retailer. eBay puts you in touch with public sellers of goods in a way that classified advertisements and auction houses could never do.

Digital businesses may be different, but only by degree. In some sense, traditional media may be threatened by network economies: gathering and allocating content more efficiently and could a traditional media organisation, but at some point quality control and authentication by real experts with real experience of real data does make a difference.

Quality ultimately prevails.

Capital must be allocated. The business of allocating hundreds of millions of dollars in the hopeful expectation of profit is not fundamentally altered by the [[information revolutio]. The allocation of land to resources, the manufacturing of physical goods, the manufacture, purchase, sale and conveyance of commodities is barely changed by the metaverse. People must eat. People need shelter. The resources of the planet are scarce and growing scarcer. These are fundamental truths which millenarian thinking cannot falsify.

The things that can change are delivery, administration, law, regulation, audit, monitoring and control. Regulatory change. Netting compliance. These are transient. They are second-order properties. Adeptness at them is a vulnerability.

These are pastimes for bureaucratic passengers. If you devote your life to Jesus from your shelf life full stop find activities which involve genuine risk of physical or monetary loss, and specialise in them. Become expert.

Will the world end if you don't comply with regulation? No.