HALF TIME THOUGHTS, EPISODE 22: BIGGER, BETTER OR BAD

Living in Texas, it’s easy to fall for the state’s unofficial tag line “Everything’s Bigger in Texas”.

Texas is, after all, a huge place. It accounts for 7% of the total land area of the United States, almost three times the size of the U.K. and 10% larger than France.

Living here, you’re surrounded by an abundance of enormous things that lend credence to the statement. Expansive ranches, vast ribbons of concrete highway, big box stores, the ubiquitous pickup trucks, and – last but not least – the people.

What gets lost (or should I say dwarfed?) is the difference between sheer size and useful scale.

Many things can be made bigger.?Not everything scales up efficiently or effectively.

Big Bad Wolves

Big wolves aren’t necessarily bad.?There would be nothing particularly scary about a big friendly wolf (“Hi Little Red Riding Hood, want to grab a coffee?”) or, for that matter, a little bad wolf (“All the better to nip your ankles with! Squeak!”).

Big isn’t synonymous with bad.?Big and bad is a combination of which to be wary.

In Texas, as in many other parts of the world, making things bigger has long been a sought-after route to economies of scale – mass production to lower unit cost – and to meet the growing demands of an ever-larger human population.

But in some cases, making things bigger hasn’t made them better.

And in some of those cases, it has made them bad.

In return for staggering reductions in the cost of production, mass manufacturing in sweat shops exploits human labor – often existing in desperately precarious situations.?

Mass production also sucks in vast quantities of raw materials and spits out vast quantities of waste (in all its forms) and other emissions.

Increasing the size of Houston’s highways has allowed more vehicles, and thus more people, to move around the city.?However, it has also contributed to deteriorating air quality and an increased propensity for flooding as heavy rains run off the concrete surfaces into undersized drains, creeks, and bayous.

Larger stores turn over more inventory, increasing the retailer’s buying power and bringing lower prices to the consumer.?However, they must be built in wide-open spaces (including the need for vast parking lots for the oversized automobiles we’ll discuss in a moment) away from traditional centers of population.?This covers even more land in concrete and requires customers to drive further to shop.

The most popular vehicle purchased in Texas is the Ford F-150.?According to one report, Texans buy almost one-sixth of all pickup trucks sold in the United States.?

Once again, just because it’s big (typically around 20 feet long, 8 feet wide, weighing about 2? tons, and powered by a 5-liter, 400 HP engine), doesn’t mean it’s bad.?A lot of farmers, construction workers, and other service providers depend on these vehicles to haul goods and carry out their day-to-day tasks.

It gets bad when the owner is an urban professional driving a truck for show, often in stop-and-go traffic, burning fuel at 15 mpg or less.

It gets bad when the roads are bring torn up by 20-inch wheels clad in all-terrain tires.

It gets annoyingly bad when, like it’s close cousin, the full-size SUV, the vehicle takes up twice the area of a compact parking space. This obstructs others as they wind through the multi-story parking garage and drives demand for increasingly massive parking lots and structures, as mentioned above.

I’m going to skip the size of people.?It’s a controversial topic that extends far beyond the point of this article, and I’m sure you can extend the good-bad analysis for yourself.

Big Bad(?) Tech

Yes, I left a question mark after the bad.

The notorious FAANG or, more correctly these days, MAANA (Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet) have arguably brought more positive change to the world over the past three decades than all the companies that preceded them.?But they’ve also been demonstrably bad.

Whether they are now definitively bad – with the bad consistently outweighing the good – is a matter of debate, and not one I’m getting into here.

Big tech allows us to connect, research, know, and share like never before.?

We do things that would have tested the limits of a science fiction publisher only a couple of generations ago.

But with that interconnectedness and real-time-everything-ness comes an equally massive opportunity for manipulation, exploitation, and harm.

Why not just lump the tech companies (and their ilk) in with the other examples I gave under Big Bad Wolves??After all, the other examples also showed a good and a bad side to size.

I see tech differently because neither the upside – the potential for good – nor the downside – the potential to be bad – is easy to quantify.

You can measure the unit cost difference achieved by economy of scale in manufacturing as well as the supply chain, labor, and environmental consequences.

You can see and apply the size and power difference between a compact car and an F-150, as well as their relative impact on infrastructure and emissions.

You can roam the aisles of a big box store, marveling at the vast array of affordable goods while seeing the acreage that has been turned from green space to grey and measuring the miles driven – by consumers and delivery truck drivers – to keep the goods flowing.

It’s hard to say the same for tech.?How does one quantify the beneficial value of human connectedness??Or of our access to information??And what about the harm caused by misinformation, disinformation, social pressure, or organized terror?

This is a conundrum for which I have no answer.?However, I read and respect the opinions of Professor Scott Galloway, an open critic of big tech and how it has infiltrated our lives, and I think some of his ideas (and others like him) on how to manage tech more positively are worth considering.

Bryson Versus Bryan

If you’re a golf fan, you will likely see where I’m going with this.?Bear with me while I explain for the benefit of others.

Over the years, golfers and golf technology (the clubs and balls, primarily) have become better and better at producing longer, more accurate golf shots.?Consequently, it has become easier to play a round at a particular course in fewer shots.

For the amateur golfer, this feels great.?With a moderate amount of skill (so that they can take advantage of the tech), they can shoot a lower score.?

At the professional level, however, this creates a problem.?Hazards, such as water, sand bunkers, and trees are suddenly no longer in play.?Long holes once requiring a challenging approach shot can be attacked with a much-more-controllable short iron.?Fearsome golf courses are neutered.

In response, golf course owners and developers have reinforced their facilities, moving tee boxes further away from greens, narrowing fairways, and adding new hazards to snare the longer-hit shots.?

Amateur golfers have suffered, while the pros hired personal trainers.

The epitome of today’s David vs. Goliath game comes in the form of Bryan Harman and Bryson DeChambeau.?

Harman is a 34-year-old left-handed player from Savannah, Georgia, who stands 5’?7” and weighs 150 lbs (according to pgatour.com).?He plays a very effective, traditional game, has won twice on the global stage, and has earned over $20 million in his 12-year career.

DeChambeau is a 28-year-old right-hander from Modesto, California, who stands 6’?1” and weighs in at 235 lbs.?He plays like someone who has teleported in from another planet, has won nine times, and has earned $26 million in his first 5 years on tour.

Tiger Woods introduced the professional golf world to physical conditioning and power.?DeChambeau has taken it to a whole new level.?

He bulked up his physique and worked with specialist trainers to increase the speed of his swing.?He now routinely drives the ball 50 yards or more beyond his (professional) playing companions.

Tournament directors and course designers have taken note, racing to “Bryson proof” their venues before he grips-it-and-rips-it past all the trouble and plays pitch-and-putt while the rest of the field trails along behind.

The national associations that set rules about equipment specifications and performance are contemplating changes, much like the tennis tours debating slower tennis balls.

For the Bud Light crowd who delight in shouting “get in the hole” after every shot, no matter how far away the target, this is manna.??

For the golf purist who wants to see skillful shots, picking apart a complicated layout using club selection, trajectory management, and spin control, this reduction of the game to oomph and putting is a tragedy.

For the amateur golfer, it means relentless online ads for things to help you hit the ball longer, faster, and straighter.?Who cares if you can work the ball up, down, left, and right, if you can’t “bomb it”?

Last weekend, I took my son to the Houston Open to see how the pros operate.?Bryson wasn’t playing but there were several “lesser bombers” in the field.?We marveled at their ability to consistently hit the ball straight and to orchestrate their way out of trouble when they didn’t.?

We also witnessed many occasions when they left the big stick (their driver) in the bag and chose to hit their ball less far.?Thank goodness because it made for a far more interesting experience.

Battling the Big Bad

What can we do to avoid the big bad things?

The first steps are to notice them and to challenge them.

To hear ourself saying things like “the more the merrier” when the opposite is true.

Examples are all around, even if you don’t live in Texas.?We encounter them every day, but we don’t always stop to recognize them or to do anything about them.

The shop local movement isn’t just about supporting the little guy.?It’s about diverting our cash flow away from the big, sometimes bad guys.

Reducing our excesses – from portion sizes to vehicle choices to sustainable suppliers instead of sweat shop operators – is a habit we can develop that, in conjunction with others, slowly signals to the market that bigger isn’t what we want.?And markets are exceptionally good at reacting to signals.

We can learn to put the big stick (whatever that means in the moment) back in the bag and to take something less aggressive.?

Finesse is the new power.

Why the relentless pursuit of more followers and bigger audiences if what we really care about is adding a few customers or clients for whom our product is perfect?

I’m no Marie Kondo, but do you really want more stuff??Bigger everything?

We’ll see where MAANA (née FAANG) take big tech – or where society takes them – and where Bryson takes golf – if the powers that be don’t take it somewhere else first.

Meanwhile, within the realm of things we control, I hope you’ll think twice before always choosing whatever’s biggest.

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash