Understanding the Hustle Chain

It is the mere perception of threat or opportunity, which costs us most dearly.

Markets are energized by two species of player, entities which can sometimes whip themselves into a type of frenzy called a hustle chain. Moreover, there is no hustle chain more self-deceiving and harmful than one which resolutely believes that it is transacting authoritative truth. Skeptics, debunkers, and their fact checking media form just such a hustle chain of ‘truth’.

Last week, I received a bill from my medical plan that included a $613 charge for “Treatments and surgical services not covered under plan.” I was shocked because all I had done was go in for my regular six-month dermatological skin check—a necessity due to extensive sun exposure during my younger years as a lifeguard. Normally, I pay a $25 co-pay for this routine check and that’s it.

As I lay on the examination table in my skivvies, the doctor surveyed my back, rear, and legs as usual. She said, “TES, everything looks fine. You are good to go. Oh, wait, you might have the beginnings of a small wart on your foot. Let me just zap that with a bit of freezing spray, just in case.” (*sftt sound). “There you go. Okay, see you in six months.”

Five minutes, in and out. I thought nothing of it at the time.

When I called the medical plan to get an explanation for the $613 charge labeled as a “surgical treatment,” they explained that the “removal of a skin lesion was considered a surgical treatment.” I argued that I had not authorized any surgery, that it was only a “possible wart,” and that I should not be billed for it, much less an amount of $613. I mentioned that I could have used my own freezing spray at home. After an hour of arguing, they agreed to reduce the line item to $180 “through a customer education discount,” although that discount still needs to be approved.

This style of escalation in events illustrates a principle which I call a ‘hustle chain’. A routine event becomes the basis for the sudden introduction of a suspected exception circumstance (gasp!), an exception which is then spun into an absolute certainty. This absolute certainty is then re-expressed in language (surgery!) that makes it appear to be a significant world-shattering issue, and then the charges for this “big deal” (or conversely, “opportunity”) arrive unexpectedly, long after the hustle chain has crashed back down to reality.

My medical event here was not simply a hustle chain, but moreover a ‘hustle chain of truth’, as evidence by my discount being attributed to my need to be “educated” on the matter. The irony being that I have more years teaching corporate ethics than these people have even been alive. This is the problem of shortened life spans – it makes us easy to manipulate and rapidly dumb as a species.

This reminded me of how many times ‘opportunities’ in business development are spun way out of proportion, deceiving through their having been up-scaled, up-languaged, and ascribed an impending certainty—a form of hustle no longer rooted in reality. The discovery of this deception often comes only after extensive funds, time, and focus have been expended.

The Hustle Chain

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, defines two key types of influential entities in a market: mavens and connectors.

Mavens are specialists or experts who accumulate knowledge and understand the intricacies of a particular subject or market. They are the information gatherers who help others make informed decisions by providing detailed and accurate information. Mavens are trusted sources due to their expertise and passion for the subject matter.

Connectors are people who have an extensive network of acquaintances and are skilled at bringing people together. They are the relationship builders who facilitate connections between different individuals and groups, often helping spread new ideas and products through their wide-reaching social networks.

Resource trades, mining claims, sovereign debt bonds, fantastic inventions – they are all out there, ready for the taking. Just ask the persons pitching them. Under a set of low-information conditions or inside the fog of a market, mavens and connectors can sometimes spontaneously assemble into a pathological mechanism I call a ‘hustle chain’. This phenomenon occurs when enthusiasm about a potential opportunity, funding, discovery, project, or lead gets spun out of control as it is passed from maven to connector and onwards – disconnecting the participants therein from the true reality or nature of their targeted undertaking. The hustle chain increases in its energy and momentum with each pass, despite the potential that its subject possesses no sound basis or merit.

Key Aspects of the Hustle Chain

1. Publish-or-perish/Promote-or-die: A market thrives on the transactional success of its entities. Entities within the market are acutely aware that they must continuously engage in transactions or risk ruin. Some entities strive to become the rainmaker, pacesetter, or market influencer in their domain. Some instigators just want to be famous and celebrated. Some, in baseball vernacular, are constantly ‘swinging for the fences’.

2. Pseudo-Mavens: A market relies upon an underbelly of legitimate but up-and-coming ‘fake it ’till you make it’ hopefuls, who may lend false credence to market transactions. A few also seek disruption, deception, or harm as a form of personal satisfaction.

3. Spontaneous Assembly: Chains of mavens and connectors naturally come together and perform their roles of informing and communicating within a publish-or-perish/promote-or-die market context.

4. Chain Spread: Connectors replicate word of one opportunity, job, rumored event, project, funding, or casual mention. Each connector transaction can cause a chain-reaction replication of the rumor or notion inside an upline and downline of familiar market participants.

5. Irrational Exuberance: Mavens live for the challenge of applying their craft for benefit or life goals. They can falsely conflate connector enthusiasm or the presence of other known mavens in the hustle chain with a sound basis for the opportunity itself.

6. Hyperbole: As word of the opportunity is passed from connector to maven to connector, slight alterations to the story accrue, boosting its perceived merit, scale, or impact. Exaggeration inevitably ensues, regardless of the ethics or professionalism of the participants.

7. Disconnection from Sound Basis: Despite the increasing buzz, the underlying opportunity may lack substance, leading to misinformed decisions and actions.

Fact Checkers, Skeptics, Debunkers, and Syndicate Journalism: A Hustle Chain Themselves

Counter-intelligence specialists are trained to spot and exploit this circumstance within opposing agencies, often referred to in social contexts as an echo chamber. They exploit this natural tendency within social circles by using a ploy called the ‘Lob & Slam’—feeding false or partially true information that is to be revealed for its error later, to visibly and publicly (hence the need for the syndicated ‘journalist’) discredit a targeted echo chamber—similar to the setup and spike move in volleyball. This process is executed by a species of false expert called a pseudo-maven, a dishonest entity usually heavily connected to syndicate journalists, and is usually based on specious, falsely represented, or scant scientific ‘facts’. They are upspinners, fully disconnected from the science they purport to represent.

Pseudo-Mavens (and Syndicate Connectors)

A pseudo-maven is an individual who presents themselves as an expert or authority in a particular field but lacks the depth of knowledge, expertise, or credibility typically associated with true mavens. Unlike genuine mavens, pseudo-mavens often rely on superficial understanding, incomplete information, titular credentials, armchair philosophy, or unverified data to make claims, issue denials, or provide advice. Their influence can contribute to disinformation and perpetuate the hustle chain within a market or social context.

Example of the exorbitant cost of hustle chains acting in lieu of actual medical services in the US alone.
Example of a truth hustle chain harming a person (and thousands of innocent people) who turned out to be right.

Especially when it entails the perceived virtue of science, the pseudo-maven often seeks to exploit a market conflict in order to craft a buzz about them self, malign a targeted enemy, or build celebrity in some fashion. The syndicate journalist is only too happy to accept the windfall of acclaim in spreading such propaganda in major media outlets. (Note: this is why I choose to stay out of the limelight, not seek money for my work, and remain mute or in epoché on topics about which I know very little. The first duty of ethical skepticism is opposing authorities/agencies who pretend to truth, not mere dissent or error per se.)

Dissent and error can be deliberated, but oppression, even if factually correct, cannot be negotiated with and must be opposed.

   Examples:

• Scientific Skeptic

• Debunker

• Fact Checker

• “PhD”/Appeal to credential

• Appeals to special authority, ignorance, ignoratio elenchi, or ingens vanitatum

• Syndicate ‘Journalist’ Connectors

However, the mechanism we refer to as a hustle chain is not so much an echo chamber, which is not a professional entity per se, but rather a chain of specialists or market participants who should otherwise know better. Those who pretend to represent science should already be wise to getting caught up in hype, even if hype towards accepted convention. This type of hustle chain lacks the quality control mechanism or maven who can speak up and say “Not so fast everyone…”. American society in particular lacks this type of market entity (information is a market).

My thesis here posits that, in any context, a critical entity is missing from such professional foible—an entity capable of qualifying or terminating the hustle chain, free of the ill-intent of the Lob & Slam, pseudo-maven, or opposing-agency player. Skeptics, debunkers, and fact checkers often lack real market knowledge and rely on armchair philosophy or incomplete information, fed into what amounts to nothing more than an opposing hustle chain itself. Such entities merely pretend to hold the deep expertise of what I call in contrast, the ‘anchor maven’.

On many subjects for example, when in discussion with deep expertise holders or field scientists regarding specific issues which are decried by prominent skeptics, I find them to consistently be far less dismissive than are their pretend representatives, the skeptics. They would be the erstwhile ‘mavens’ in the Malcolm Gladwell sense, or in reality a form of anchor maven (not all mavens are created equal).

Anchor Maven

   Examples:

• Bond Issuer

• Medial Practitioner

• Permit Administrator

• Insurance/Reinsurance Underwriter

• Financial Auditor

• Regulator or Compliance Official

• Lawyer/Legal Specialist

• Patient Advocate/Ombudsman

• Appeals & Complaints Specialist

• Capital Financier/Loan Officer

• Field Investigator or Research Tech

• “the Customer/At-risk Stakeholder”

Finally, one of the functions of the Chief Executive Officer within an organization is to provide the ample experience base from which to spot the presence of a hustle chain and keep the organization focused on only those processes and priorities which bear merit, inside the panoply of opportunities which present themselves to both maven and connector alike.

The Ethical Skeptic, “Understand the Hustle Chain”; The Ethical Skeptic, WordPress, 10 Jun 2024; Web, https://theethicalskeptic.com/?p=88811