Nic on Nostr: There was a goalie coach who was fairly popular in my city a few years ago. I never ...

There was a goalie coach who was fairly popular in my city a few years ago. I never liked his coaching style or goaltending philosophy.

Part of the reason was that the system he taught relied heavily on players making specific decisions. He wanted all of his goalies to play "compact", meaning that on every shot, they were to drop down with their knees tight together and their hands and elbows tucked in close to their body. The idea was that no puck could go through the goalie.

The problem was that this made it extremely difficult for goalies to react to shots around them, because their limbs were locked in so tightly. They couldn’t move effectively.

When his goalies got beat on shots going around them, his usual response was, “The players aren't shooting where they’re supposed to.” He expected shooters to fire pucks at the goalie if the goalie was in position. If they shot around the goalie, even when the goalie was technically in position, he viewed it as an anomaly.

JF, the goalie coach, expected players to behave according to how he thought they should behave. If they didn’t, the issue wasn’t with the system he created, it was with the players for not conforming to it.

That’s why I never liked the way he coached. What he taught wasn’t based in reality. He believed reality should bend to fit his system, not the other way around.

And reading Mark Carney’s book gives me a similar feeling. I’m only about 30% through, but his ideas about how an economy should function feel a lot like JF’s approach to goaltending. He seems to expect people to behave differently, and if they did, then his system would work.

A player will always try to shoot around a goalie to score. They won’t just shoot at the goalie simply because the goalie is in good position. Their goal is to score, and they’ll do whatever they can to make it happen.

Carney’s economic ideas seem to rely on the assumption that everyone will act altruistically, which we all know isn’t realistic. Because of that, his system is bound to fail.

To me, he’s too much like JF. He seems unwilling to adapt and will likely double down, trying to brute force his system to work rather than adjusting it to reflect how people actually behave.

JF ruined many goalies during his career... goalies who had real potential to play professionally. I fear Carney could have a similar impact on the economy if given enough influence.