The ultimate iron fist in a velvet glove is the concept of efficiency.
A pretext invoked by sociopathic governments to visit harms upon those least able to counteract them, in the superficially unarguable name of economic prudence.
Efficiency, in its purest form, would have deleted the need for fixtures like Saturday’s to exist at all.
Perhaps even football as a whole, at levels such as this at least – for while a pursuit where any change in the scoreline will delight half the participants and anger the rest might sound Pareto optimal, there is surely a more practically beneficial use for all the money thrown at a game whose rewards are available only to a select and remote few.
But what the emotionless theory of efficiency, and its soulless, inhumane disciples, fails to account for is the necessary imperfection of the human experience.
There are some things which people wish to exist solely because they make the journey around the sun more pleasant, more colourful or more fragrant, even if the resources expended in their creation help to delay the point at which the species concedes this is the only planet it will ever live on.
And within that landscape must there be acres of the stony, fallow ground walked at McDiarmid Park, to provide contrast to those seeds which, against hostile odds, burst into glorious bloom. That is to say, if all football matches were thrill rides, we would never experience the high on those days where the extraordinary truly happens.
We must embrace these instances where algorithms would tell us our time or money has been wasted; perhaps if algorithms could appreciate the uncommon, unexpected rush of a trophy win or a late equaliser, they’d produce more sensitive, useful output.
If everything were perfect, then nothing would be special.
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