It’s Not Easy Beating the New York Yankees (But You Should Respect the Ones Who Can Compete)
There’s a certain type of person who always frowns at the West.
They speak with a tone that implies detachment, as if they’ve ascended above the noise of capitalism and competition.
They cite inflation, inequality, overconsumption, and call it “the decline of the West.”
But what they’re really saying is:
“It’s hard to win here.”
Because it is.
It’s not easy to compete in an environment where everyone is exceptional, where capital and consequence move at the speed of thought, and where the game doesn’t pause for your narrative.
The West — for all its flaws — is the ultimate semi meritocracy of consequence.
And just because someone can’t win at Yankee Stadium doesn’t mean baseball itself is broken.
The people who build entire worldviews around “Western decline” are doing it as emotional insulation.
It’s copium, dressed up as philosophy.
They romanticize alternatives — slower economies, softer competition, less volatility — because they feel safer there.
They confuse comfort with strength, and coordination with power.
But make no mistake: the game doesn’t get easier outside the West.
It just gets smaller.
It’s not that the West is perfect.
It’s that it’s competitive.
And competition is what forces evolution.
You can dislike the noise, the prices, the politics — but you can’t deny the velocity.
That speed of iteration, that constant trial-by-fire, is what makes it the only ecosystem where true scale emerges.
And the ones who can compete here — who can win under the bright lights, against algorithms, capital, and history — deserve respect.
Because beating the Yankees is hard.
Beating the Yankees at home is harder.
Trust the ones who’ve prospered in both the East and the West (360) — who’ve seen both systems, both tempos, and can say, objectively:
None are perfect, but some are better.
And the honest truth is this:
Your dissatisfaction with one system doesn’t make another inherently superior.
It just exposes where your threshold for competition ends.
So next time someone tells you the West is collapsing, just smile.
Because if it ever did, they’d have nothing left to compare themselves to.