F-499-Lia: Mundo Zargo Downport, Noms! Café

Lexi indicates Lia and herself with an eating utensil, “look at us.  entrepreneurial, smart, perceptive.  We use our creativity and knowledge to provide services to people based on listening to what they want or need.

“But, so much of the time that involves operating outside the rules of the established system, and the established system is based on top-down control, not bottom-up responsiveness.

“Someone at the top makes a set of assumptions about what the people at the bottom need and the system rewards the fulfillment of that assumption, not the fulfillment of unmet need.  People are creative and clever, but that is often suppressed, and what is rewarded is group compliance with the imagined assumption.

“For example, right now Mundo Zargo is in the optimal temperature phase of the orbital cycle, but it’s getting warmer as the planet moves closer to the star.  You know what the people on the Benevolence are getting?  Cold weather gear.  Why?  Some of the bureaucrats at Trade have KPIs that reward them exceeding their targets.  In the warm weather the cold weather clothing import targets go down so maintaining the imports at cold-season levels makes them look good.”