Same pub, but later.
The kind of evening where the light’s gone yellow and the wind’s picked up just enough to move rubbish along the footpath like it’s got somewhere important to be. A chip packet skitters past the window, followed by a receipt, then half a betting slip that refuses to lie flat.
Inside, it smells like beer that’s been spilled and never quite cleaned up. The floor sticks just enough to remind you it’s doing you a favour.
The footy’s on mute. The TV above the bar is doing politics instead — Putin and Trump paused mid-handshake, both of them wearing that look blokes get when they’re pretending the game’s going exactly to plan.
Someone squints up at the screen.
“Look at that. Two men playing Risk with real people.”
A sip. A wince.
“Risk has rules. That’s Monopoly energy. Lost the box, half the pieces gone, someone’s nicked all the money and swears they’re still winning.”
A laugh from down the table.
“Chess,” someone says. “But neither of ’em knows how the horse moves.”
Outside, a gust rattles the old sign. Inside, a bloke in a brand-new puffer jacket stands near the bar like he’s waiting to be photographed. Next to him, someone else in high-vis shorts and steel-caps still has red dust on their calves. The contrast goes uncommented on, but everyone notices.
“Power game, they call it.”
“Everything’s a power game if you don’t understand constraints.”
Another mouthful of beer. A pause.
“Does this taste weird to you?”
“Yeah. Like it’s been thinking about being beer but didn’t quite commit.”
“Funky lines or cheap ingredients, jeez, you’d expect a little better for a mere 14 bucks.” sarcastically.
A waitress passes, tying her hair back with one hand, tray balanced like she’s done this forever. Somewhere near the door, a laugh gets too loud, then corrects itself.
“Strategic behaviour’.”
“Yeh, and, markets are rational, and game theory provide good social outcomes, f*cking economics, it ain’t like a reliable narrator.”
“Useful when reality’s too messy and you’ve still got a deadline.”
Someone leans back in their chair, stretching it just far enough to be a risk but not enough to fall.
“It is not like reality is finite, deadlines may be more important, shorttermism has gotten us all as rich as Crosus, dunno why everyone is whinging all the time, change is the very f*cking definition of the future”
“Yeah. Finite sets exist in textbooks. And courtrooms. Reality doesn’t bother.”
“Courtrooms?
“Yeah. Courtrooms require the world to stop.”
Someone frowns.
“da f*ck you on, lawyers are all about finding the truth, ipso facto and all that jazz.”
“They’re about finding an ending.”
Another sip of the now slightly flat and weird-tasting beer.
“Reality doesn’t do endings.”
“Nope. Law needs a verdict, economics needs a model, and physics just keeps going whether anyone’s finished or not.”
“So courtrooms lie?”
“No. They approximate, on a deadline. Court backlogs are long enough as it is, crims walking the streets for months waiting for trial, jails already full anyway so only the f*cking violent crims get any time, f*cking cops too busy looking for funding to investigate minor things so you just get more crims, wheres my f*sking local bobby when you need one to smack a few kids around, stuck behind a shield wall with an f*cking AK47 shooting housef*uckingwives”
A laugh.
“Bit harsh.”
“Necessary fiction,” someone says.
“Like assuming interest rates explain behaviour.”
“Or that the past is done.”
They all glance at the TV again.
Handshake still frozen.
“Funny thing,” someone adds, “the universe never closes a case.”
“And entropy never leaves the room, stuck between zero and one — infinite structure.”
“And between one and zero is where every bloody model dies.”
A bloke at the next table walks past wearing thongs, shorts, and a hoodie that cost more than most people’s cars. Outside, something low and electric glides past — dark, clean, barely making a sound. A couple of heads turn automatically.
“See that? That’s a cool car.”
“Yeah, until you’ve got to explain where the cobalt came from, f’cking modern day slavery, same as good old fashioned slavery except nowadays you find the slaves where the resources are, poor c*unting eskimos I reckon, one thing working outdoors in Africa, another barrel of fish freezing ya tits off, I hate the f*cking cold.”
A snort.
“That’s why averages are bullshit. Average mine doesn’t exist, FIFO wages certainly aint globalised. Similar job, same hole in the ground, different continent — whole different universe.”
“How different?”
“In Australia, fly-in fly-out, air-con dongas, six figures and a super fund.”
“And in Africa?”
“Fly-in fly-out too,” someone says, “just without the fly-out part.”
A pause. Someone swirls their glass.
“So when people say ‘the market sets wages’…”
“…they mean the local fiction does.”
“And everyone agrees to pretend they don’t know.”
“Until they can’t, or don’t”
The wind rattles the door again. Outside, the rubbish keeps moving. The wind pushes another bit of rubbish along the gutter. It catches briefly on the pub’s step, then frees itself.
“So when economists say ‘limited resources’…”
“…they mean limited visibility, they confuse what they can count with what exists and then they’re shocked when predictions don’t work.”
“Well, if your model only works in a finite world…”
“…and the world isn’t finite…”
“…your predictive power’s about zero.”
They all glance back up at the TV.
The handshake still hasn’t finished. The tension is a little sexual and one of them’s definitely smiling like he thinks he did a great deal. The other like he’s already planning the next move.
“Can put the golden shower video back on the shelf for next time,” someone says, rolling the glass in their hands, “playing a finite game on an infinite board.”
“And entropy doesn’t give a shit who thinks they’re ahead, never f*cking has. Why don’t c*nts that aren’t total c*nts stand for election, why did we let money become power, I mean the yanks did everything they could to avoid tyranny in their founding documents and look where they are, f*cking tyranny, divide and conquer, soma, cakes, f*ck, must be something in the water.”
“Could be why the beer tastes a bit off…”
A moment. Not awkward. Just there.
Then someone lifts their glass.
“Cheers to c*nts and to bad models” they say “like a shit beer you’ve already paid too much for…”
Ceteris Paribus 