On The Bottom Looking Up

In my short stay here, I realized that without a deep understanding of human psychology, without the acceptance that we are all crazy, irrational, impulsive, emotionally driven animals, all the raw intelligence and mathematical logic in the world is little help in the fraught, shifting interplay of two people negotiating
                            Chris Voss, Never Split The Difference, p. 8.

If that sounds like the stock market, two people, buyer and seller, negotiating without any intervention, government or otherwise, you're on to something. But it should also tell you much more about the data-driven crowd, especially those who in their slavery to data and in their ignorance of reality can cause you and yours serious, even irretrievable harm.

There's something else it should remind you of in case you have not figured it out by now, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States of America. And since we intend to cast a broad net, that includes central bankers the globe over. These are people who most likely never had to change a flat tire on a lonely country road during a down pour at two in the morning or scramble together enough money to take theirs kids to Disneyland all the while chewing on the gnawing thought they might not have enough money left over to buy them lunch.

What Voss is referring to in his book is his experience at Harvard and their world renown negotiating program. Until the robots succeed them, markets are comprised of people, crazy, irrational, emotionally-driven animals, not always but just persistently enough to fall outside the short comings of the data-dependent bureaucrats and party wonks. And you can take that to the bank if you can find one today still worth frequenting.

 A friend recently told me he went to see his family doctor about a month ago. Medicine today is computer and electronically medical record driven, otherwise known as EMR. He said after his young doctor walked into the room offering a brief hello, he sat down at the computer with his back to the patient, firing off a litany of questions but never once lifting his gaze from the computer screen. After a brief exam the doctor politically excused himself with a passing word an aid would shortly be in with his instructions. My friend, smile on his face, told me the whole experience changed forever his definition of a "quickie."

There's another quickie on the horizon, one most likely that will be a lot less enjoyable than even my friend's doctor visit. We'll have more on that as the summer blooms and fades.You can see, though it was obviously never intended to, just where the American people are on that pyramid.