How Not To Be Wrong: The Hidden Maths of Everyday

by Jordan Ellenberg

Complete freedom to enter trade and the continuance of competition mean the perpetuation of mediocrity. New firms are recruited from the relatively “unfit”—at least from the inexperienced. If some succeed, they must meet the competitive practices of the class, the market, to which they belong. Superior judgment, merchandising sense, and honesty, however, are always at the mercy of the unscrupulous, the unwise, the misinformed and the injudicious. The results are that retail trade is over-crowded, shops are small and inefficient, volume of business inadequate, expenses relatively high, and profits small. So long as the field of activity is freely entered, and it is; and so long as competition is “free,” and within the limits suggested above, it is; neither superiority nor inferiority will tend to persist. Rather, mediocrity tends to become the rule. The average level of the intelligence of those conducting business holds sway, and the practices common to such trade mentality become the rule.