You don't have data points.

I do. I've talked to people. Everyone who's tried to get an agent says it was the worst experience imaginable. You work your ass off just for the right to offer someone a job. You're not even published yet. You have no way of knowing whether your agent can place, unless you were born into connections and don't need anything from anyone.

Someone in another subthread said that agents no longer take meetings. Well, why are we just accepting Boomer Damage? As Millennials, we're going to spend 40 years undoing the damage done by Boomer Cliques (whom I must admit are only 1% of that generation) in all aspects of American life-- business, culture, politics, economics, geography-- and we might as well start now. Let's stop being hopeless and actually fix this country.

You think you see something. I'm telling you it's not there.

That may be. For as much damage as the Boomer Cliques have done not only to publishing but to the entire country, I think that there probably are a lot of great people in publishing and in agencies who are really trying to do the best job they can.

The game-theoretic aspect of publishing is obnoxious, though. There's severe information asymmetry. How am I, as a person who isn't on the board of any museums, going to figure out who can deliver and who can't?