Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity

Almost, but that's the gist. Letting people know about your product creates value if and only if the product itself brings them positive net utility for buying it and there were no other even better products that you distracted them from. Convincing someone to buy your product doesn't show that it's actually good (surely you have regretted a purchase before).

Additionally, essentially no marketing is a dry list of facts informing people of products to help them make rational choices. A great deal of marketing contains no explicit facts at all. A large amount of effort is spent getting people to buy things they don't even need (or worse: harms them) and/or throw out perfectly usable items they already have or otherwise participate in conspicuous consumption, which is frankly quite grim against the backdrop of climate change being a (the?) top problem being shouldered onto our successors.

Social media rewards mediocrity, LinkedIn is just the most button down.

Unlikely as it sounds, being normal is a strategy that works on LinkedIn.

The quality bar is very low. People post so much fluff and AI thought leadership that the algorithm has recently started rejecting it, and LinkedIn essentially ran out of content.

For the past couple of months it's been showing people posts from two or three weeks ago due to the lack of suitable material.

What I've found is that it's surprisingly easy to stand out and build an audience if you just post honestly and thoughtfully about the interesting little puzzles or dilemmas you face during your workday.

Some posts of mine that have hit it off:

> Why is it hard to find clothes for men? > Why do people think it's weird when I drink milk on Zoom? > Should I post on X, or do people still frown on it?

Try posting about what you don't know, rather than what you do. People like that more.

This is indeed in development although I’m not sure LinkedIn is involved yet. Look up:

Learning and Employment Records (LERs)

> The way I look at this is that the Adam Smith-ian free market makes the implicit assumption that market information (pricing, quality) disseminates via neutral, unbiased channels.

This couldn’t be more incorrect. In Smith’s day your sources of information would be interpersonal, or one of your local newspapers. Newspapers in the 18th century wore their bias on their sleeves and had very particular world views, they were anything but neutral. You might also learn about commercial interests in coffee houses where stock markets first developed. This was a place where people were trying to sell you something, like shares in a commercial shipping business.

I’m always astonished that people make these claims about Smith’s work without having read his books or any relevant history.