I have been thinking about society, especially as of 2024 with the presidential election on the horizon, such as the constant backdrop of negativity and pessimism on social media juxtaposed with the otherwise strong US economy and stock market (the so-called ‘vibe shift’ or ‘vibes theory’). It’s something that I had not been able to put my finger on, until now. Martin Luther King, Jr. is quoted, to paraphrase, that “society moves in an ark towards justice,” but I think it’s more like “an ark towards optimality.”
We’re in an era in which everything and society is increasingly optimized, even if at the present moment it does not make sense or seems suboptimal. Everyone fills a role and is optimized for that role. Taylor Swift is the optimal pop star. Dune 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine are the optimal remakes. America’s athletes are optimized in terms of skill and training, taking home record gold in the 2024 Olympics. Jerome Powell is the optimal fed chairman. Mark Zuckerberg, Jensen Huang, and Tim Cook are optimal tech CEOs.
MacKenzie Scott and Elon Musk are opposite sides of the woke vs. anti-woke coin and are institutions unto themselves, as avatars of the values they represent. They are optimized in the sense they fill their roles perfectly, as if typecast. Or Terrance Tao, the only mathematician to have a Masterclass course, as America’s sole mathematician public intellectual. That such a role exists, he is by any objective measure the most qualified to fill it.
Moreover, we keep seeing a trend in which ‘the system’ lurches or hobbles to a destination or outcome that, against all odds or alternatives, is the optimal one. And this is in contrast to social media, where it seems like American society is always on the precipice of its self-destruction, yet it comes up roses anyway.
Thus, the system is adaptable as it evolves to a new, more optimal state. For example, if DEI becomes bad enough that it hurts corporate profits or otherwise affects the economy or society in some material way, the system will self-correct or adjust for there to be less DEI. We’re already seeing many companies reversing Covid-era DEI initiatives. Same for colleges requiring the SATs after experimenting with ‘test optional’.
Or America’s covid response, which despite the mask flip-flopping by the CDC and the whole Cuomo nursing home fiasco, was optimal in the sense of being better compared to other countries, which tended to have much more onerous or long-standing lockdowns, notably China, Germany, and Canada. Same for the Covid stimulus programs and aggressive interest rate cuts–which catapulted the US out of what would have otherwise been a crisis comparable to 2008–to one biggest and most abrupt post-Covid recoveries of any country, defying even the most most optimistic of forecasts.
Jerome Powell’s rate hikes in 2022-2023 were initially feared would push the US economy into recession, but in hindsight was the optimal thing to do. Against all odds, the worst inflation in almost a half century was suddenly brought to heel. In fact, inflation has subsided so much that rate cuts are planned for 2024. Despite the meme or cultural refrain of how “incompetent people are always being promoted in Government,” in retrospect maybe there was no one better qualified than him.
ELon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, despite occupying opposite ideological polarities, have been criticized by both sides, yet Tesla and Meta stock have been among the strongest performers over the past decade. Such controversies notwithstanding, they have done a good job where it matters most, that is maximizing shareholder value and maintaining market dominance. It was widely feared or predicted that Tim Cook would never fill Mr. Jobs’ shoes when he took the reins on August 24, 2011; Apple stock is up an astonishing 20x since.
One would be hard-pressed to choose more optimal candidates than Harris and Trump for their respective parties. Initially, Biden’s centrist-liberalism was initially seen as necessary for winning invaluable swing state voters who may be ambivalent about wokeness but also dislike Trump. Trump is wildly popular among the ‘base’ and does particularly well in swing states, his flaws notwithstanding. But following a poor debate performance, Biden was soon replaced by the even more optimal Kamala Harris, reversing a significant polling decline versus Trump.
Longer-term, compared to the political blowouts of the ’70s-’90s, the trend is towards closer elections, as political spending increases and both sides play the political game better by choosing more optimal candidates and optimal positions.