(Verse 1) Charles watched the central banks adjusting the supply, Tracking every ledger under autumn fiscal skies. He noticed that the compass needle wavered in the hand The moment that you used it as a lever on the land. Then Strathern took the chisel and she carved it on the stone, A warning for the kingdoms where the numbers rule alone: When an indicator turns into the finish line in sight, It bends the very gravity and blinds you to the light. (Chorus) When the measure is the target, then the measure falls apart, It hollows out the mission and it suffocates the heart. You optimize the shadow while the substance slips away, Building paper monuments that crumble in a day. Call it Goodhart’s bitter law, or the metric in the gears— We are winning on the dashboard while we drown beneath our fears. (Verse 2) Count the lines of written code, and watch the bloated sprawl, Count the patient minutes, hear the doctor rush the call. Grade the school by multiple-choice bubbles on a sheet, And watch the wonder wither as the test takes over street. Reward the volume traded and you summon hollow sales, A swarm of clever players learning how the system fails. Nobody has to cheat to make the true objective die— Just tell an honest worker that a number will decide. (Chorus) When the measure is the target, then the measure falls apart, It hollows out the mission and it suffocates the heart. You optimize the shadow while the substance slips away, Building paper monuments that crumble in a day. Call it Goodhart’s bitter law, or the metric in the gears— We are winning on the dashboard while we drown beneath our fears. (Bridge) The boardrooms love the certainty, the dogma of the gauge, KPIs and dashboards painted neatly on the page. They think a rigid index forces honesty to grow, Refusing to acknowledge what the human instincts know: You cannot map competence to an isolated score, You only train the army how to barricade the door, To polish up appearance while capacity decays, A pantomime of progress lost inside a spreadsheet maze. (Verse 3) So what remains of healing when throughput is the prize? And what remains of teaching when the metric tells the lies? We engineered an altar out of proxy signs and trends, Confusing all the instruments with what we called our ends. (Outro) Tear the target off the gauge. Let the reading be a guide, not a cage. Watch the real work standing in the raw, uncounted sun— Before the scoreboard claimed the match was won. When the measure becomes the target, It ceases to be true. It ceases to be true.
