The Middle

 

Stuck in the Middle

Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.

But the middle is where you want to be.

The eternal debate always seems to be between the right vs left, whether that is monarchists vs. lower case r republicans; capitalists vs. communists; conservatives vs. liberals; libertarians vs. progressives; red vs. blue; etc. One side are User Optimalistsm, UO. The other side are System Optimalists, SO. But humans are individual users (UO) that form a society (SO). No side should win, or we have no society, and not thus no society to protect individuals from each other.

Mathematics/game theory provides the guidance that when individuals form a system they seek a Nash Equilibrium. Some users will achieve less than their own User Optimal, but all members of the System will be at Equilibrium,  will achieve the same value.

While this may sound like an unfamiliar concept, you probably have experienced it if ever you have driven in a lane drop in traffic, due to construction, work zones, accidents, etc. The System Optimal solution is for the lane which continues to move at capacity and for traffic to continue to operate in the lane that is being dropped for as long as possible until there is a safe gap to merge into the continuing lane. This is called a rolling merge. In fact few travelers have ever experienced a rolling merge. This is because an individual vehicle can always continue in the lane which is being dropped and then force its way to the head of the still moving lanes, because “don’t you know who they are.”  To prevent last-second lane jumpers, most other vehicles  move into the continuing lane at first notice. Also some vehicles will block the lane being dropped to block any attempts at lane jumping. This is neither a User Optimal free-for-all nor a System Optimal rolling merge, but somewhere in-between where individual Users function as if they were a System.

It is neither winner takes it all, nor everyone wins, but the team wins because some team members are willing to take one for the team. Neither extreme wins, but the middle wins.