Human Capital: 1 - Jag

Jag was never very good with algorithms.

“I’m sorry Jag but there’s truly nothing I can do” Professor Arming said as he unplugged his laptop, his gaze not meeting Jag’s. “I sympathize, I really do, but look, Wall Street and academia, they've flirted with each other before, but after IHOs, they're fully bedfellows," he continued, putting his laptop in his bag. “Now they look out for each other. If I pass you even though the numbers all point to you failing, and some investor loses money and complains to Whitewater or some other broker, and they complain to the school, then I get fired, you still end up failing, and we all lose. But chin up, you're a junior, you've still got time. If you ace all your other classes then your GPA won’t go down too much, and you probably won’t lose too much market cap. Or just Cap like you kids say.” Arming walked over to the door and held it open for Jag, his other arm gently implying that Jag should leave. A poster on the door of a smiling proton saying “Stay Positive!” seemed quietly mocking this morning.

Jag walked out of Arming’s office in a daze. He wasn’t sure where to go; the department head’s office to complain? Maybe to the school psych, make up some story to get the grades invalidated? No, when it came to the human capital markets doctor-patient confidentiality was more theoretical than the theoretical physics class he just failed, and a mental health flag would sink him. Jag found his feet taking him, stumbling at first before working their way up to a jog to the bathroom. There Jag burst into the closest stall and threw up. He flushed and wiped his mouth with a square of toilet paper. Lowering the lid, he sat on the toilet, head in his hands, heart in his stomach, and said a quick prayer. “Damn” he said. “Damnit” he whimpered. He couldn’t fail this class.

Jag had grown up in rural India. He was always curious, loved taking apart anything he could get his hands on, and loved putting them back together almost as much. At least that’s what he wrote in his IHO.

“I-H-O?” Jag had questioned, years ago. “What’s that Papa?”

“A way to help your family.” Seeing the confusion and worry that flashed across Jag’s face he beckoned him closer to the family computer. “Look, pay attention to what I’m doing. An I-H-O is an Initial Human Offering. It’s like an Initial Public Offering, an IPO, in the stock market.”

Jag’s blank face told Papa that his comparison wasn’t working.

“Ok, draw up a chair.” Sitting together in front of the flickering screen Papa used pictures, words, and the wild gesturing of his hands to explain.

“I’ll keep it simple, I don't want to fill your brain with this stuff. You need to focus on your studies, it’s a father’s job to know about money. Sometimes if a company needs to raise money it will do something called an I-P-O. That stands for initial public offering. That means it will sell off a part of itself to the public, the P in IPO. Then if people like you and me think the company is good they will buy a part of the company. Now if the company makes money, meaning their revenue is higher than their expenses – sorry, meaning they take in more money than they spend –, then you make money, and if the company loses money you lose money. You understand so far?”

Jag nodded.

“Good. Now one day someone in America decided ‘Hey, why don’t we do the same thing with people.’ I-H-O. Initial human offering. Same thing as an IPO but with people instead of companies. Instead of looking at revenues and expenses its salaries and credit card bills, instead of mission statements its ambitions, instead of employees its skills and so on; that’s why we always tell you to work hard and dream big. And instead of going onto the stock market people list on something called the human capital markets.”

“Uh-huh. So if it's like with companies, does that mean you're selling a part of yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?”

“Well, sometimes you might not have any other choice.”

“So does that mean *we* don’t have any other choice?”

“Yes,” Papa sighed, “it does. I wouldn’t ask this of you otherwise.”

“And we can do this? I can do this?”

“The rules change from country to country. Lucky for us, India lets kids IHO. Kids in America can’t. Of course their parents can invest in kids abroad though. As long as the money keeps flowing. Don’t forget that.”

They turned back to the computer and worked on Jag’s forms in silence.

The forms said that Jag was a “brilliant student with a head for numbers like Ramanujan who wants to raise money to go to college, study engineering, and create businesses to help neighborhoods like the one he grew up in” Jag actually preferred history and literature but that wouldn’t sell as well. They included some relevant documents, transcripts, awards, etc. to back up their story. Sure, some of them were “enhanced” but a phone call here and a bribe there from Papa made sure the regulators looked the other way.

Later that night Jag lay awake in bed. He was staring at the cracking paint on the ceiling. He sometimes liked to pretend it was a maze. But tonight he kept making the wrong turns at each fork in the road.

Unable to find his way to the end, Jag was about to fall asleep when he heard his parents whispering through a crack in the door. Jag slinked out of bed and peeked through. He saw his father, head in hands, and his mother slowly rubbing his shoulders.

The next day Papa came up to Jag with the printed forms. “You know what you’re signing up for right? I don’t want you to think I’m pressuring you into this” Jag’s father said, pushing the paperwork into his hands. “Yeah I think so,” Jag lied as he signed on the dotted line. A chip of paint fell from the ceiling.

On the day of his IHO Jag and his family sat around the computer. At noon his name popped up along with thousands of others all over the world. Then it was up to the markets. Trading algorithms scanned the fresh meat in milliseconds. Everyone’s life story, converted to 1s and 0s for the algorithms to devour and digest and defecate a buy or a sell. Jag’s value as a human being, his “Cap”, shorthand for his market capitalization, representation of his value as a human, was being figured out in real time. His family cheered as Jag became smarter, stronger, savvier before their eyes; no, scratch that, they cheered as the all important line went up and booed when it went down. Each move up was a vote of confidence, each move down an insult. Lucky for Jag the algos shit out more buys than sells for him. And so, at the end of the day, just like that Jag had more money than he had ever seen. All it cost was 49% of himself. He could’ve had more, but he insisted on staying majority shareholder. Papa conceded him that. He gave Papa half and still had enough money left over to attend University.

Recruiting departments in colleges all over the world kept an eye on the human capital markets and Jag’s promising IHO got him a spot at a good school in the United States. Once that news hit the markets his Cap increased again. After a year Jag chose to major in both Computer Science and Physics. Dual majoring in such in-demand fields? That’s a Cap increase. He decided to treat himself with his newfound Cap. He upgraded his living situation, his food, his, uh, *entertainment.* “It’s an investment in myself,” he rationalized.

"I was so cocky," he said to no one, alone in the bathroom stall. He pulled out his phone and texted the group chat. "Didn't go so well."

. . .

Maisie: "Oh no :("

. . .

Pete: "Tell us who we have to beat up."

. . .

Carl: "If Whitewater kicks you out of the dorms can I have your room?"

. . .

Jag: "Fuck off."

"Ugh, the dorms," Jag groaned.

“Hey Jag, you going to Howard's party?” his friend Pete yelled while skating past Jag’s dorm room. It was the beginning of sophomore year and everyone had just returned to the dorms.

“Oh shit, yeah.” Jag yelled back, closing his books.

“Hurry up my man, Carls about to drive off.”

“Ok, ok!” Jag quickly got dressed and tossed his phone onto the bed. He sprinted to catch up before they left.

Carl’s red truck loomed in the distance. When Jag was about five feet away Carl started driving. Jag leapt into the back and crawled towards the last empty seat.

“Asshole!” he yelled at Carl.

“Hey you made it didn’t you?” Carl laughed back. “Everyone leave their phones at home?”

“Yeah”, “Yup”, “Uh-huh.”

“You're good people. No one has to know about our little adventure.”

“I wonder if this counts as fraud?” Jag posited to no one in particular.

“If so fraud never looked so good,” a cute redhead replied, striking some model poses. smiling at him. Jag smiled back.

As they pulled up to that night’s designated party house Jag timed his exit from the back of the truck such that he would end up walking in with the cute redhead, whose name he discovered was Maisie.

“I’m so awkward at parties. In high school I was totally the type of girl who would set up camp somewhere and just scroll through my phone” she reminisced.

“Good thing we can’t really do that anymore. Maybe Whitewater did you a favor, forcing you to get out of your shell.”

“Maybe so. That’d be a first. Thanks Whitewater!”

“How much of you they got?” Jag asked as they walked into the house. A bit of a faux pas, like asking someone's age or weight, but Jag felt a bit of a rapport. "They got 42.381% of me. My shares. Same thing I guess," he offered as a show of vulnerability.

“Ouch. About twenty percent for me. Got lucky. A scholarship bought out about twenty-five percent so they can’t boss me around as much as they’d like."

“That is lucky."

“I guess.” Maisie replied as they took off their coats and threw them onto a leaning tower of outwear.

“Hey it ain’t so bad. I haven’t found anything that motivates me quite like knowing that if I fail a test I’ll be deported and my family will go hungry” he joked to Maisie, who looked back at him with her large, brown, sad eyes.

“I’m joking. Hey, seriously, it’s really ok” he assured her.

“That doesn’t sound like it is.”

“It is. Sometimes it stresses me out but usually its just a nagging voice in the back of my head. Kind of sounds like my mom.” Her smile told Jag that he successfully lightened the mood.

“You ever think about buying back your shares? Buying out Whitewater?” she asked him.

“You can do that?”

“Yeah, it’s called taking yourself private.”

“How much does it cost?”

“Whatever your Cap is.”

“Hah, I definitely don’t have that kind of money on me right now. Not to brag or nothing but I have a *pretty* high cap” he said, bragging.

“Not like right now,” she rolled her eyes, “but in the future.”

“Maybe I will.” With that they proceeded into the party together.

The debauchery that took place that night was immortalized only in the minds of the partygoers; not you, not me, and definitely not Whitewater.

Jag eventually woke up. He’d somehow managed to find his way home. Alone. He checked his phone groggily.

“Pix from last night <3”

“I still can’t believe what we did to Carl’s truck lmao”

“Dude do u know what the hell happened to my truck???”

“Yesterday you logged 6 hours studying. Impressive! Good luck on your exam today! - Your friends at Whitewater”

Jag groaned. He rolled out of bed with all the urgency he could muster, that is to say almost none, and hobbled over to his computer to begin the online exam.

That was a year ago. He felt so carefree that day. A lot can change in a year, huh? He got off the toilet and quickly composed himself. He exited the stall and walked with some purpose to the sink. He washed his face and his hands of what was about to happen.

Jag left the bathroom and, purposefully avoiding looking at his phone, made his way to the library. He began climbing the stairs to the sixth floor, the one reserved for the IHOd students. His friends should be there, studying for their Algo finals. He drummed his fingers on the banister the whole way up.

“You know how Arming is, he's such a dick” Jag repeated over and over, practicing his delivery. “You know how Arming is, he's such a dick,” he repeated with a lilt in his voice. “You know how Arming is, he's such a dick,” this time with a smirk. Yup that was the one.

Jag made it to the sixth floor and took a minute to catch his breath, more out of nerves than exhaustion. He headed to the Whitewater wing, paused outside the study room, saw his friends laughing inside. A slight grimace flashed over his face, a sucking in of air through his teeth, then his rehearsed smirk. He held his phone to the scanner. It flashed green, letting him in; the grades weren’t posted yet.

“Hey man,” his friend Pete greeted him, “what happened with Arming?” he said as he moved his bag off a chair.

Jag sighed. “I don’t know man” he responded as he slumped down next to Pete. “Aghhh."

“That bad huh? Screw him man. It’ll be ok, just kick this Algo final’s ass and you’ll be fine.”

“Screw you Pete. You sound just like Arming” Jag thought. “These aren’t the algos I’m worried about” he said aloud.

“C’mon man, it’ll be fine, I promise. I failed a class before. I’m still here.”

“Your investors aren’t gonna jump ship just cause you failed one class” chimed in Maisie. She gave him a reassuring smile. “Their algos are smarter than that, they look at tons of data points, they're 'holistic'. Your grades for once class are basically just noise.”

“Yeah dude they’re probably too busy analyzing what you had for breakfast this morning. Or if you had breakfast this morning. Most important meal of the day and all that” Pete suggested. “If I had an algo that’s what I’d do. It’d be stupid not to” he continued. “Here’s how you’d do it. You ask them to take a picture of their breakfast. Use machine learning to figure out what it is. Break it down to the macronutrient level. Protein, carbs, fats. Figure out how healthy they are. There’s some biological relationship between -”

“Oh my god shut up” Maisie interrupted. Pete could go on for hours if someone didn’t stop him.

“I don’t know what they do but it’s probably not that” Jag said. No one save an algo’s makers really knew its secret sauce. And even they barely had a handle on it at this point. Many a student had tried to decipher their ins and outs to game the system, and no one had anything to show for it besides a lower Cap.

“I think what Pete was trying to say was that if the nerds at Whitewater can get away with writing a trading algo so bad that it would sell off one of its best investments just because you did poorly in one class and they still ended up rich then you’ll definitely be able to write an algo that can pass your final.” she finished.

“I guess,” Jag said unconvinced.

“Dude I bought some shares in you, and I know my investments gonna pay off. Diamond hands baby,” Pete chimed in. That got a weak smile out of Jag.

“I might have to sell my shares in Maisie if they drop me so I can buy some ramen” Jag joked back.

“Hey don’t tank my Cap, I can’t go back to the crappy school dorms.”

“Yeah, bet you can’t give up your vape either.”

Maisie laughed at that.

“Kidding, kidding.”

They began studying. Jag focused harder than he had in a long time. Until he felt his phone buzz.

“What’s the time complexity of a merge sort?” Maisie read off an index card.

BZZZZZZZZZZZ

“Uhh, N squared”, he replied.

“No, not quite.”

“Is it N log N?”

“Yeah there you go!”

BZZZZZZZZZZZ

“I should’ve known that, that’s beginner stuff” he said.

BZZZZZZZZZZZ

“You have a lot on your mind. Whats the space complexity?” she continued.

“O(N) space complexity.”

“Yup!”

He felt it buzz a few more times before quieting down.

After a few more rounds with the index cards they moved over to the whiteboards - a little old-fashioned but they enjoyed using them more than their laptops. They worked over a few problems, arguing over the most efficient approaches, the choices the algorithm should make at each step, whether it should let Jag live or die. At least, that’s what it felt like to Jag.

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Campus security.

“There a Jag here?” the guard questioned.

“Yeah that’s me” Jag responded.

“You know this areas for Whitewater students only right?

“Yeah, I am one?” he responded.

“Not as of fifteen minutes ago. They dumped you. And sent us a notification to kick you out.”

“But he’s with us!,” Pete and Maisie protested.

“Doesn’t matter. You're not paying me, it’s Whitewater what pays for these spaces and my salary. Look, take it up with them if you want, but for right now you can study anywhere else, just not here. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” He looked more annoyed than sorry.

Jag’s face went red. He packed his things, the security guard watching him the whole time, and left. He was at the staircase when he heard Maisie yell “Hey wait up!” She jogged over; Pete was behind her, stuffing papers into his bag as he walked.

“We don’t need to study there. We can find a bench somewhere.”

“Yeah” Pete chimed in. “We don’t need those comfy chairs, or that projector, or those whiteboards, or that -”

“Haha I get it … asshole” Jag laughed. Pete smirked back at him.

“C'mon, let’s finish” Pete said. The three of them went to the public wing of the library and found a small corner to study in. It was cramped, loud, and uncomfortable, but at least there weren’t any cameras watching them, any algorithms studying them, any expectations placed on them.

It was one thing to not live up to your parent's expectations of you. Another thing entirely to not live up to your own expectations of yourself. But Jag and his therapist could deal with that. But the nebulous, constantly changing expectations of dozens of algorithms, informed by traders, influenced by trends, and occasionally totally upended by some policy change or paradigm shift. It was *exhausting*. And therapy hadn't caught up to that.

Later that night Jag paced in his dorm room. He kept checking his bank account, but not his cap. That he'd find out soon enough.

Right on cue he got a call from his father.

“Hey Papa.”

“What’s going on? Are you ok? What happened?”

“Nothing happened. I’m totally fine.” Jag feigned ignorance. “You’d think I was in the hospital” he thought.

“Your Cap Jag! I wake up and it’s down in the gutters - you’d better be in the hospital or something!” There was some anger in his voice. Jag couldn’t recall the last time his father sounded angry.

“I failed my Physics class and Whitewater dropped me. Guess the money stopped flowing.”

“What, did you hit your head? Did you forget what that means?"

“No. I'll send back what I can to help. We'll manage, somehow. But I need to do this now. I’m sorry Papa.”

Jag heard his father yelling through the speakers as he hung up.

The next day Jag walked into his Algorithms final. He flashed a smile to Maisie and Pete and got into his seat. They logged in to the exam site and began.

After all their studying Jag knew everything on the test.

“What is the time complexity of a merge sort?” the test read. “N log N” Jag thought. He checked the box for “N squared.”

“What is the space complexity of a merge sort?” the next question read. “Linear space complexity” he thought, checking the box for “Constant space”.

He continued in this fashion for a while, filling in just enough correct answers to not be suspicious.

Jag was one of the first to finish but he sat in his chair and tried to look busy. Maisie gave him an encouraging smile and a wink when she got up to leave; Pete gave him two thumbs up on his way out. When Jag was one of the last students in the room he submitted his test and went up to the professor.

“Hey Mrs. Ruman.”

“Hey Jag, what’s up?”

“I totally wiped out on that test. Is there any way you can give me some extra credit or something so I don’t fail?”

“Jag, you know I can’t do that.”

“Please Mrs. Ruman, I already failed my Physics class, Whitewater just dropped me, and if I fail Algo too my Cap will hit rock bottom.”

“Jag don’t try to guilt trip me. You don’t think we all have our own Cap to look out for? Forget the ‘If I help you then I have to help everyone else’ spiel, it’s more like ‘If I help you then I could lose my job, my house, and get sued off the face of the earth’. I’m sorry bud.”

“It’s ok, I understand” Jag said. “Gotta sell it for the cameras” he thought, “and for them,” catching Maisie and Pete staring through the glass pane in the door. They slunk away.

Jag left the room and met up with Maisie and Pete outside. “I caught you looking.”

“Can’t blame us for being curious. Everything ok?” Pete asked.

“Yeah,” Jag let out a big breath, “I think it will be.”

“Uh-huh” Pete said, one eyebrow cocked quizzically. “Lunch?”

“Yeah, let’s go, I’m feeling paninis.”

“Fine by me” Maisie said, throwing a curious look at Jag. He shrugged back at her.

The three of them headed off to lunch.

Things move a lot quicker in academia ever since the algorithms got involved. As soon as Jag hit submit his multiple-choice answers were instantly scored. His grade was 60% so far. While he was talking to Maisie and Pete his code was sent to a scoring bot where it was tested to make sure it ran correctly. 58% now. As they walked to their favorite panini place the paragraphs Jag wrote for the short answers were sent to AI graders which quickly scanned it for the right keywords, structure, themes, and gave it a score. 61%. Jag ordered a vegetable panini and as the cook was making it his scores were put together and logged in the school blockchain. Thirty seconds later the update was broadcast to a thousand algorithms who parsed it, sliced it, diced it, and shoved it into their black box. Jag was eating his panini, joking with Pete, flirting with Maisie in the meantime.

They headed back to their dorms, more than ready to put their semester behind them. The "IHO STUDENTS ONLY” sign seemed quietly mocking this afternoon and shook Jag out of his good spirits. He said goodbye and headed up to his room. The linoleum floors shined a little brighter today. If he was even still a student next semester he wouldn’t be living here anymore but in the decidedly less nice school housing. If he could even afford that. But that was a problem for tomorrow’s Jag. He lay down on his bed. He didn’t check his cap, he knew he’d find out soon enough.

Right on cue he got a knock on his door. He got up and opened it, and Maisie let herself in. She sat down on his bed.

“Jag what the hell? You got a 61? Why didn’t you say anything? I knew something was up, but like why -”

Jag kissed her. Maisie was surprised but unopposed, and kissed him back. Her lips tasted fruity.

Jag reveled in his newfound ownership over his own body. There was no one to answer to anymore. He was in charge now. And his first executive order was pushing Maisie onto her back. This was a merger, an acquisition, a hostile takeover. This was freedom. Freedom to kiss her neck, her chest, down her body until...

An hour later they were under the covers, Maisie cuddled up to Jag, her head on his shoulder.

“That was unexpected,” she said, “but in a good way! But not good enough to make me forget about your Cap.”

“That’s all anyone ever talks about anymore. Cap this, cap that; what if I don’t care about my Cap?”

“Jag -”

“Dont Jag me. It's all I've thought about since my IHO. It's all everyone ever thinks about. You included. It's exhausting. And sad. Did you see that article about the senate voting on lowering the minimum IHO age down to thirteen? They wanna put thirteen year olds through this shit. Soon they’ll be letting parents IHO you in the womb so they can pay for you."

“Jag -”

“No, I’m done with all that. I want out. I’m going to buy back all my shares and try to rough it on my own. And if I can’t afford to finish school then I’ll figure something else out. I’m smart, I’ll be fine. And at least I won’t have to check in with some goddamn algo every time I take a shit.”

“You failed that test on purpose, didn’t you?”

“For legal purposes I can neither confirm or deny. But I'm definitely happy I did. After all I’ve never been very good at algorithms.”

“Well, I think that’s stupid. But maybe I’m just not thinking big enough -”

“Yeah, it’s about thinking outside the -”

“Shhh, I was talking. Like I was saying, I think that’s stupid. You're right about Cap, that's not what's stupid. But it’s a lot easier to play along than go against the grain. But if you know what you’re signing up for then I support your decision. I’m a little jealous even.”

“Well, I don’t know what I’m signing up for but when has that ever stopped me before?”