Techbro on the Clapham Omnibus

The Devil’s Advocate™ →Go uptown How to cheer up British commuters, yesterday. In which the curmudgeonly old sod puts the world to rights. Index — Click ᐅ to expand: The Devil’s Advocate Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

Say there are 35 reasonable people aboard a Clapham omnibus. Being key workers — nurses, police, teachers and so on — frontline and not middle management (okay; not a very likely contingency and Clapham these days, but let’s say) their incomes are fairly tightly distributed around a mean of £40,000.

You are a management consultant. Your task: to increasing average pay on that bus.

Simple: just ask a tech titan to hop on board. You might have to pay him a couple of million as a signing bonus — and, sure, that’s twice the total amount the others get paid — but even if you do, you raise the average wage — their average wage — to £60 million at a stroke.

This is, of course, preposterous: the “average” is hypothetical.You don’t get paid it; no one does: it is derived, partly from your wage: if it changes, that has no effect on your Changing the average doesn’t change any particular. So it is odd to see