Higher Levels of Performance

Far Middle episode 168, released on August 7, 2024, falls on the 70th anniversary of the historic one-mile race in Vancouver, B.C., between England’s Sir Roger Bannister and Australia’s John Landy.

Known as, “The Mile of the Century,” Nick looks back on the race and how Bannister and Landy challenged consensus and broke the 4-minute mile mark, thereby sparking higher levels of performance by athletes in the years following. It’s a lesson that applies beyond competitive sport, explains Nick.

Contrasting the levels of performance by Bannister and Landy, Nick returns to present day to discuss the less-than-high levels of performance across America’s federal government workforce. Now four-and-a-half years since the start of the COVID pandemic, and despite calls from the president and his chief of staff for federal employees to return to their offices, remote work “has become an ingrained culture within the federal government workforce.”

Nick comments on not only the cost to taxpayers of paying for and maintaining unoccupied office space, but also the broader economic implications on Washington, D.C., and other government-heavy cities when only 6 percent of federal workers are working full-time in their offices.

And wherever the administrative state is working these days, their quest for “regulation by strangulation” hasn’t taken any breaks. Nick discusses a recent summation by author and energy journalist Robert Bryce of “four recent climate-related rules issued by the administrative state.”

These climate rules, issued between March and May this year, total 1.3 million words. When you add these voluminous and complex rules on top of other rules and regulations being issued, Nick questions how a business, individual, or entity can comply with or even know what these laws say. “We've moved beyond absurd, but this is the environment the real economy must operate in, and I don't think that's going to bode well for America,” says Nick.

In closing, Nick highlights Bob Dylan’s song, “If Not for You,” from Dylan’s October 1970 album New Morning. In less than a year, subsequent recordings of “If Not for You” came from Dylan alongside George Harrison, as well as Olivia Newton-John. The song is another example — like Bannister and Landy running a sub-four-minute mile — of “greats pushing greats to the next level.”