Economic growth is a hell of a drug. But what do you do when the well's run dry?

The American economic system is built around the assumption of growth. Our unofficial motto regarding the economy is If it ain't growin', it must be dyin'! Policy makers will jump through any hoops necessary to protect and ensure growth. Focusing on economic growth has been the American way since its founding, especially so in the decades after World War II. It's served (at least some of) us well. But there's one big problem with this model: the era of assumed economic growth is coming to an end.

At the end of World War II, America made the best deal in the history of deals. We told the rest of the world we'd protect the seas and enable trade routes on one condition: the rest of the world had to participate in our economic system. This proposal created the ultimate win-win scenario. The rest of the world got protected access to otherwise unavailable markets, and America got more of that international cold, hard cash. And, for 80 years or so, the world order was relatively stable, at least in comparison to the majority of world history.

But all good things must come to an end, and so here we find ourselves in a post-COVID world, as America is withdrawing from the world and isolating. Why are we doing this? Put simply, the world has gotten old. Baby Boomers are retiring and we don't have enough young people to replace them. Old people don't produce and they don't consume at the same levels of young people. Old people instead sit in their retirement homes and clip coupons until it's time for Senior Hour at the local Country Kitchen Buffet and then they scoot back home for bingo.

Building an economy around old people is a recipe for disaster. So, America is saying 'Bye Felicia' from the rest of the world and working to GTFO. Maybe I wouldn't worry if I saw an alternate path. But growth is all we know. And we're like that guy in the VIP section of the nightclub rising his head from the table, his nostrils and upper lip crusted with white dust, as we cry What do you mean there's no more coke!?

We don't appear to have a Plan B because we still talk about the economy in terms of growth. If we had another model of economic success, we'd have started using it by now—ya know, for the vibes.

A post-growth world means less opportunity to go around. What does this mean for those already struggling? And what happens when people unfamiliar with struggling now have no other choice? If you want to keep societies from rebelling and calling for heads to roll, your best bet is to give them everything they need to prosper economically. But what do you do when that's no longer possible?

Every generation following the Baby Boomers has had to live in the shadow of Boomer expectations: get your diploma, get a job, bust your ass, prosper. The Boomer formula for success may have served a person well in 1965, but not so much in the 21st century. The game has changed and the goal posts are constantly moving with each financial crisis or recession, which brings me back to my main point: we must stop measuring success in terms of the old economy. The days of effectively 0% interest rates and assumed economic growth are over. Also, we failed to invest in critical infrastructure in the best of times because we were too busy chasing down that metaphorical economic cocaine; I doubt we'll start investing in infrastructure now when capital is more costly with less return.

So what follows? What do we replace the old economic model with? How do we define and measure success going forward?

I won't pretend to have the answer. I wish only we knew the powers that be were asking the same questions rather than focusing on chasing outdated metrics, which doesn't feel like a SMART goal to me.

Jake LaCaze tries to play it cool, but these are the kinds of thoughts that keep him up at night.

#business #economics

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21st-century living is complicated. But must it be?

When you look around you, it's easy to feel as if complexity is a requirement of the modern world. Most workplaces run via series after series of overcomplicated processes. To 'exist' today requires an ever-growing number of online profiles. Life seems impressive only so long as it's being continually pumped with more, more, MORE.

How did things get this way?

One problem seems to be who benefits from increased complexity. And most often, it's the corporate overlords trying to satisfy the need for constant growth. How can you expect corporations to benefit from simplicity? The adage 'Less is more' may be true in regard to your quality of life, but when is less ever more in terms of corporate bottom lines? For the corporation to get more, you need more. And what better way to get more than from an entity that must grow, grow, GROW?

To hell with simplifying processes by reducing unneeded steps. The real answer is MORE: More software, more automation, more problems to one day be fixed.

The people who want to sell you more are quick to peddle their tech du jour: generative AI. Regardless of what the prophets of AI will tell you, generative AI doesn't save time; it instead shifts where you spend your time, if you care about accurate work. Large language models (LLMs) often hallucinate, so you must double-check all their work, which negates any efficiency gains you're hoping for. Sure, humans are fallible and capable of bullshit just like LLMs, but humans are not fallible and capable of bullshit at the same scale as LLMs and generative AI.

So many of the people pushing generative AI just want to get paid to play with tech for a living. And for them to do that, you need to complicate your life with this half-baked technology that doesn't fix real problems.

Why unplug and focus on relationships that matter and provide value? Instead, choose MORE 'friends', MORE 'connections'. The more complexity you can handle, the more capable a human being you are. The more PRODUCTIVE you are. But how capable, how productive, do you need to be? When is enough enough?

Simplicity makes life more manageable. Simplicity is sustainable. But simplicity is hard. It's hard to see how you can simplify when complexity is all you know. And it's hard when complexity is all your peers know. Are you sure you can do that? they might ask. What makes you think you know better?

But we all know this complexity is distracting and exhausting. And, it's bullshit.

We feel it in our aching bones, in our tired eyes, in our foggy brains. We're caught in a hamster wheel we can't find the courage to jump off.

This complexity isn't serving us. There's so much pressure to add more to our lives, but we often get nothing out of it, other than more problems, more headaches, more distractions.

Jake LaCaze is getting old and has less time for bullshit these days.

#tech #business

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Why is business so hard?

I mean, why do so many businesses struggle with basic tasks? Why do companies of smart and accomplished people seem to get bogged down on the way to success?

Here's the simplest answer I can come up with: Employees have to wade through oceans of BS. (I don't claim to be an edgelord on this blog, so I try to keep things PG-rated here. But to be clear, yes, in this case, BS stands for bullshit.)

To me, it's clear as day. I've worked at quite a few companies over the years, ranging from publicly-traded companies to family offices and a few other stops in between. When I look back at my career as a whole, I'm amazed at how often the same themes pop up again and again. Terrible leadership, unclear communication, poorly-defined processes that no amount of new and shiny technology can fix.

Among the masses of Yes Men, often parroting 'That's the way it's always been', it's hard not to feel alone. Or like you don't see reality clearly. You feel like Will Ferrell's character in Zoolander: 'I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!' In the end, maybe you start taking crazy pills just to cope.

Misery loves company, or so they say. And that's why I'm glad to have recently discovered the blog of Nikhil Suresh. Nikhil pulls no punches. Gives no fucks, as the kids say. (I've already broken the PG rating once on this post. And I'll do it again later, because quotations, so I might as well go big, right?)

To get an idea of Nikhil's subject matter, look no further than the blog posts below, which must surely be part of his greatest hits:

• I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again
• Most Tech Jobs Are A Joke And I'm Not Laughing
• PowerBI Is A Human Rights Violation
• Strategy Doesn't Matter If You Blunder Every Move
• I Will Fucking Haymaker You If You Mention Agile Again
• Your Organization Probably Doesn't Want To Improve Things

Nikhil takes something I know in my soul to be true and gives example after example of confirmation. So much of what we deal with on a daily basis is useless. The struggle leads to little productivity. You rush to meet your boss's crazy deadlines, but no one does anything with your hard work. Your report sits there unread. Your boss is an idiot who has no idea of the daily struggles required by your job, but he has an MBA and he looks great in a suit. Or, he's the owner's son. (Nepotism is a horrible business strategy that fails most of the company, yet it's far more common than you'd expect.)

Once, in a phone interview, someone asked me where I'd like to work: at a large company or a small company. I can't remember what I responded, but here's my honest opinion: Pick your poison. Each situation has its good and its bad, its pluses and its minuses. At a large company, you likely have to navigate waves of bureaucracy to get anything done. At a small company, the owner might fire you because he often gets a bit frisky on Tuesdays.

To piggyback off Nikhil's writing, I think so much of so many jobs are bullshit because so much of so many companies' operations are bullshit. Even the most successful people don't have all the answers. They're trying to figure it out as they go. But too many 'leaders' don't have the ability to figure it out, because they lack humility and curiosity and the ability to research anything they don't already have the answer for.

I find business is at its best when it's as simple as it can be. For so many companies and industries, the temptation seems to be to lean into complexity. The more complex it is, the more valid it is, right?

I urge you instead to start on the other end of the pendulum. Start from the viewpoint of simplicity. Make processes as straight-forward as you can and add complexity only when absolutely necessary. (To make sure only the absolutely necessary complexity is added, I recommend defaulting to the mindset that no complexity can be added; then you can begrudgingly allow it when the case has been made again and again, at which point you realize that maybe the extra steps truly are needed.)

I'm going to share with you a secret for making sense of complex situations: Ask questions. The asinine answers will show that no one has thought this out. No one capable of critical thought was included on the mapping of this proess.

Why is it this way? I blame the industrialist mindset.

Under the industrialist mindset, your boss seeks the best way you can make the most widgets possible. Often, the answer is for you to work harder. Or for longer hours. Or more consistently.

'Why are you talking to your co-worker when you could making me another widget!?'

That mentality might work for industrialist industries. But many of us aren't widget makers. I'm not. Neither is Nikhil or his peers.

In my own career, much of my hardest work has come from interpreting and enacting legal agreements. What does this document actually say? What was its intent? Did it cover this situation?

Sometimes you find yourself in a situation no one else in your company has ever seen before. Congratulations, you're in what they call 'uncharted territory'! This is a golden opportunity. You just don't know if it's an opportunity to make a name for yourself, or an opportunity to find a new way for things to blow up in your company's face!

In these situations, simply working harder won't fix much of anything. I can bang my head against my desk and try to make sense of it all again and again. But somtimes I need to step away and let the words bounce around my head before they start to make sense.

For most of us knowledge workers, these are the kinds of issues we regularly deal with. These are the issues that use most of our energy and take up most of our time. So it'd be nice if we could focus more time on these issues; or it'd be nice if other, lesser important tasks didn't get in the way.

So why are these lesser important issues so complicated? Well, dear reader, how else are your bosses going to know you're working hard?

When you're making widgets, I can count how many times you pull that lever. And I can see that more pulls of the lever mean more widgets.

What's the equivalent in knowledge work? The Company pays you eight hours a day. How else can the Company ensure it's getting its eight hours worth out of you? Or, look at it another way: By keeping things complex, I know you're giving me at least eight hours a day.

By now this is all sounding familiar to fans of Cal Newport.

You'd think that someone in charge of such operation would be focused on higher-level metrics: Revenue, profit, etc. But it's easier to focus on whether you're in the office, obviously doing something for a certain amount of time every day.

We also can't discount the herd mentality. Everyone's doing AI? What's our AI strategy!? No one's on it!? Well, transfer the crypto team over. They don't have much going on these days.

As you get older and experience more of life, you realize common sense ain't so common.

With every new antitrust lawsuit against Google, it looks more and more like we're falling out of love with tech. I hope that also means that we're falling out of the habit of thinking something new is great just on the basis of its age and novelty.

On a personal level, I feel as if most of us could benefit from a classical liberal education. On a business level, I think we could benefit from leaders who focus on simplifying business and who have great bullshit detectors. The perfect mix might be finding such a person who's also a great bullshit artist so that maybe he or she will have a chance of actually changing some minds and making a difference.

In other words, I don't think it's something new that's going to unlock unrealized gains and skyrocket your business. What if the answer instead lies in old school values that have been available this whole time?

Jake LaCaze thinks we make things way harder than they need to be.

#business

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If there's one thing I've come to value after the last 16 years full-time in the workforce, it's simplicity.

'Simplicity' is not the same as 'easy'. Something simple may still be hard. (Some of the hardest truths may be the simplest.)

Simplicity means you've removed as much fluff and as many layers of complexity as possible. It's taking a ten-step process and realizing you can get rid of four of those steps without losing anything of substance. It's starting your email with the action item or key takeaway instead of burying it somewhere in the middle of Page 2. It's reducing the number of handoffs between departments, thereby reducing opportunities for someone to drop the ball and leave the rest of the team hanging.

Simplicity is the secret ingredient for businesses looking to be more efficient. So why isn't simplicity adopted more broadly?

Because simplicity is the enemy of those who would rather brag about how hard they work over how much they get done.

But, Jake, who fits that profile?

Far more people than I'd like to admit. Search your feelings; you know it to be true.

Why would anyone want to work and live that way?

The same reason we often resist change in other areas of our lives: If we remove this struggle, what will we replace it with? Chances are another struggle awaits.

Or maybe we're scared of the resulting additional responsibilities. If you're free of grunt work, then you're free to do bigger work and make more important decisions. Do you really want that?

Simplicity isn't sexy. Saying you do this one thing in one market isn't as sexy as saying you do a hundred things in a hundred markets and you're open to taking on more. It's far sexier to automate complex processes than ask how many of the processes are needed in the first place.

Writing a 700-page book seems more impressive than saying you whittled all the crucial bits into only 100 pages (or less!). The work put into 700 pages is obvious. You can see the work. You can feel it. You can hold it in your hand. You can't say the same of the 100-page book, because all the work went into what wasn't included: what you can't see, what you can't feel, what you can't hold in your hand. But that 100-page book fits more neatly in your bag and doesn't weigh you down!

Steven Pinker has made the point that the world feels like a terrible place even when crime is at all-time lows, because no one gets credit for crimes that haven't been committed. A similar point applies to simplicity: It's harder to get credit for confusion and unnecessary work you've prevented.

Simplicity requires hard work. It requires focus, vision, and consistent messaging.

Simplicity requires bravery. You'll face resistance when you have the audacity to suggest there may be a simpler way. You may hear those dreaded words 'That's the way it's always been', or their cousins 'That's just the way it is'.

Who decided this is how it must be? Who made the conscious decision this is was good as it gets? Who has chosen to thwart progress that might benefit the whole team or department or company? Raise your hand now and take credit. Funny, I don't see any hands in the air . . .

That's because the company has grown to the point that people can hide behind the entity itself. The company is now the Company with a capital C, with a mind and wisdom all its own. It's like the Market, with its invisible hands and whatnot.

Simplicity is like that shot in the butt the doctor prescribed to the toddler who's deathly afraid of needles (yours truly, once upon a time). The medicine is right here. Yeah, it's gonna sting for a bit. But in the long run, you'll be better for it. Now, bend over and show your cheeks and don't you dare fart.

Jake LaCaze works really hard to keep things really simple.

#business

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My son is in his final year of reg-league baseball. This fall season is his next-to-last season, with his last being in the spring. It’s a bittersweet time.

The bitter part of that equation is obvious—what if he never plays baseball again? What if this is all she wrote? What if the fat lady isn't just singing, but she's absolutely belting at the top of her lungs? This is a real possibility, because, for him, baseball is more about hanging out with his friends. If he gets on base or comes home, that’s just a bonus.

The sweet part is that he lucked out and got to play with his favorite (and the best) coach he’s had yet, a man we’ll call Coach C.

Coach C is the man who led my son and his friends to a league title a few seasons ago.

On paper, Coach C doesn’t look like a championship-winning coach. As far as I know, he’s just a guy. He’s kind of puny. Maybe he played baseball in high school, but other than that, he’s just a father who volunteers his time to encouraging young boys to do their best and have fun while doing it. And he gets the best out of the kids, fulfilling every parent’s dream.

My son’s also played for a guy you’d expect to win a league championship. This other coach grew up playing baseball. He made it all the way to the minor leagues. Impressive resume, right? But his results weren’t.

This more qualified coach was hard on the boys, to the point that after one game, his assistant coach had a verbal tiff with him and told him to back off—They’re just kids.

Rec-league baseball isn’t the only time I’ve seen this contrast in candidates.

I once worked at a company that had a unique job position open up. The position was a hybrid position: The company wanted someone to perform one job while mentoring others performing a different job. This place I worked at was very cliquish, and a person who was liked by one group probably wasn’t liked by another group. But everyone I talked to agreed on who was the best internal candidate for the job. It seemed like a no-brainer that he’d get the job. He was good at the primary job and had previously excelled at the other job he'd be mentoring in. And why wouldn’t you hire someone who can unify the people working under his or her leadership?

But the job went to an external candidate, someone with some impressive employers on his resume. Only a few months later, that internal candidate quit for obvious reasons. Morale went into the crapper. The external candidate isn’t exactly inspiring others to do their best work either.

Humans are complex creatures, and so relationships are complex as well. You never know how people will mesh. Cohesion is crucial for high-functioning teams. So sometimes the best fit is the one that the team will listen to. The one they’ll gladly follow into battle.

Sometimes the proper magnetism is the best qualification a candidate can have. And anyone with such qualities is likely someone who can learn the rest of the job. But that kind of influence—that’s hard to teach.

Jake LaCaze is tired of those LinkedIn posts about hiring unqualified candidates, but he must admit when there's some truth to rehashed content.

#business

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These days, people are worried about AI taking their jobs. And who can blame them, with all the stories circulating about AI's great accomplishments. (P.S. If you're looking for a counterweight to the hype, read Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis. And subscribe to Gary Marcus's Substack while you're at it.)

It's only natural that workers would worry about their jobs and livelihoods, when employers have a history of eliminating workers wherever they can. But employees are not the only ones who should be worried. Employers may find themselves wondering what they'll do when AI can't replace enough workers.

The Baby Boomers, the largest generation of all time, are retiring. Generation X and Millennials are already entrenched in the workforce while Generation Z/The Zoomers are entering the workforce. So we can basically say Gen Z is tasked with replacing the Boomers.

So what's the big deal?

As Peter Zeihan is constantly reminding us, Gen Z is tiny in comparison to the Boombers. Gen Z simply doesn't have enough bodies to replace the exiting Boomers. On top of that, Gen Z is highly educated and great with technology. Very few in Gen Z want—or have the skill—to replace the blue collar Boomers leaving the workforce. In the coming years, we can likely expect a shortage of workers in fields like plumbing, carpentry, and truck driving.

Workers would be foolish not to exploit their leverage into better wages, benefits, and conditions for themselves. Despite what the prophets of AI may claim, AI is not ready to replace these missing workers.

In America (and much of the West), we've built our economy around cheap labor. This strategy made sense when we had the population to support it. And if there wasn't someone here willing to do the job, you could bet there was someone on just the other side of the border eager to take on the task. But what does our world look like when you can't count on imported labor when other populations are experiencing a similar decline, but at a faster rate?

The anti-immigration crowd really won't have a leg to stand on. As David Frum has pointed out, the question isn't whether we should allow immigration. The question is, How much? The follow-up question is, What kind of immigration should be allowed?

If, for whatever reason we're worried about not having enough workers in the future, it sure would be nice if AI could help out a bit.

I'll take this chance to echo a point I've made on other platforms: I'm not concerned that AI is ready to replace humans; I'm concerned that it isn't ready but people will try to make it happen anyway. Some will try to make it happen because they're excited by the hype. Some will make it happen because they don't want to pay workers. And at some point, some will make it happen because they're having trouble finding anyone with the proper skills to hire.

It would actually help if AI were as capable as its prophets insist. AI could help fill the labor gap and save a lot of people a lot of pain. So maybe we've been looking at this AI issue all wrong.

If only AI really were up for the tasks as has been promised, maybe then we'd be in for less headache in the years ahead.

#ai #tech #business

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