#04 The Economy Needs You to Be Just Okay

A few years ago, a friend at a mid-sized firm described his job to me in one sentence: "I approve the thing that doesn't need approval, so the person above me feels like there's a process." That was it. That was the whole role. 

I laughed. Then, I stopped laughing. Then laughed sheepishly remembering the time I’d done it. Before I knew it, I was home, staring at my trusty wall, deep in through. 

“Wait a minute, this is everywhere! This happens all the time and it’s absolutely everywhere.”

A real chunk of the economy runs on people not being great at their jobs. 

Extra roles nobody needs. 

Approval chains with three people where one (or even none) would do. 

Processes that limp along when they could sprint.

That's not a moral failing. It's closer to a feature. Mediocrity, spread out across enough desks, means more paychecks. Paychecks keep people spending. Spending keeps the machine humming along. It just sort of settled into place, the way sediment does.

Now run this thought experiment with me. 

Everyone wakes up tomorrow suddenly excellent. Every process gets trimmed to its lean, elegant, headcount-slashing best. Sounds great in a LinkedIn post (I know, the irony. But stay with me.). In practice, a lot of "good enough" jobs vanish overnight. Income drops. Spending drops and even the sharp, competent people who caused none of this start feeling the draft, because their customers, clients, and neighbors just lost their paychecks too.

The system is not putting up with the excess fat. It's something the system is betting on. Not because inefficiency runs things well, but because it keeps enough people getting a paycheck and spending it that the whole loop stays alive. 

Geniuses Invent the Future. The Rest of Us Keep the Lights On.

I say this with real affection for both categories, because I'd argue I’m no genius by any stretch of imagination. The geniuses build the breakthrough. But breakthroughs don't buy groceries or pay rent. The rest of us do that. Every unglamorous, replaceable, "why does this role even exist" job is subsidizing the economy's ability to keep moving while the geniuses do their thing.

We tend to worship the outliers and resent the buffer. But the buffer isn't a bug we forgot to patch… It's actually load-bearing.

Which brings me to AI, because everything eventually does. AI isn't inventing this problem. It's just the newest, fastest tool for shaving down a buffer that's existed in some form forever, like machines, and outsourcing. And now, through AI models that don't need lunch breaks or sleep at night. The buffer was always going to shrink eventually. 

AI accelerated this whole ordeal. But we’re yet to find a place to place the displaced jobs. 

About a decade ago, when the garment factories increasingly got automated with machines, ride hailing, e-commerce and quick commerce apps came in to absorb the displaced labour. We are yet to find an answer in this regard for AI displaced jobs.

So, the next time you catch yourself irritated by a slow colleague, a redundant approval, a role that seems to exist for no reason, think a bit more about the bigger picture. 

Efficiency is a wonderful goal. Just don't be shocked when chasing it all the way down reveals that some of what we called waste was actually the plumbing.

Until next time.