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That's an easy setup with an obvious answer. But "Obey the little shit who got elected as our sandlot 'king' no matter how tired you get of this game" is not showing agency, persistence, or drilling and practice. It's just being a submissive bootlicker.
Is there an obvious answer to to that setup? One of the kids loves baseball and seems to enjoy every part of the practice, the other kid's maybe only there because the authority figures in his life are forcing him and does the bare minimum to not get in trouble. We don't get any insight whatsoever into the first kid's agency, and the lack of more open defiance from the second could show a lack of agency, but then that would be counter to FHMs larger point. (Which I think is nonsense, tbf. His entire post seems to be "agency=good, therefore the action that lead to the best outcome must have been the highest agency".)
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I think the connection between the two setups is that the lazy and annoying kid who refuses to play right field or be in the band if he isn't lead singer or play DnD if he isn't DM, he will always insult the other kids by saying that they are
This is the universal cry of the burnout too lazy to study calculus, the kid who doesn't want to be on the football team if he has to do two-a-days, the guy who never makes progress in the gym because he doesn't want to stick to a program, the unemployed loser insulting his brother who just made VP at the bank. There's a balance between the two, Agency as a virtue means a moderation of willfulness and submission, having the strength to endure unpleasant things to get what you want, and the strength to choose what it is you want.
I guess we're both projecting our own version of what the setup and rules for ancient Persian and Mede kids playing "Palace" would be, and determining the outcome based on our vision.
But surely you can see my point here, that refusing to play isn't inherently more agentic than choosing to play, and that in many cases the individual who "takes his ball and goes home" is in fact less agentic than one who endures discomfort or a less than ideal situation to keep up with something they want to do?
Nor is choosing to play inherently more agentic than refusing to play. You can choose not to play. And if that means breaking commitments or you choose not to play because it was too hard, perhaps that speaks poorly of your character. But--
Agreeing to make some other kid "king" is not a commitment as binding and serious as joining a sports team or signing up for calculus or agreeing to start a workout program. The scenario you (Herodotus) present is that some kids made Cyrus king for a day, one kid got sick of it, and you argue that he was wrong to get tired of the game. He should have continued bowing and scraping until Cyrus said the game was over, dammit! Again, I think "running to daddy" was the weak part, not when he got tired of calling Cyrus king. But Cyrus responded to some kid not respecting his "authority" by getting the other kids to gang up on him and beat him, and you (Herodotus) praise him for this!
You are presenting one principle ("You should choose your commitments and stick to them") but supporting it with an entirely different argument ("You must be obedient and you may not change your mind").
I honestly find your entire argument rather baffling. "You gotta serve somebody" is a truism that sounds profound on the surface, but essentially you're saying "Choose your master and obey him." Herodotus presents this as an anecdote about how awesome and naturally kingly young Cyrus was. Not being enamored of kings, or the concept of any man being "born to rule" (and others born to bend the knee), I don't know what to make of your ode to submission except that I reject the premise. We all serve someone, willingly or not. We don't have to make a virtue of it.
Let's take a closer to home example of self-organized play then: is the poster on theMotte who lashes out at the moderators and refuses to play by the rules more or less agentic than the poster who abides by the rules and advocates for their position?
TheMotte is actually a pretty good example of what I'm talking about, when I think about it. We respect those who demonstrate their worth, their skill and charisma, often if they are interested they end up as mods, they're in a position to change some of the rules if they want to enough. Those who lash out and can't handle the rules, they flame out, they don't have any impact.
The Motte equivalent of Artembares is someone who decides we suck and leaves (and then goes to whine about us on reddit). We can't actually keep people here who decide they don't want to play anymore.
Or if you want to compare Artembares to the guy who lashes out and gets banned - yes, he is being agentic and he's quite entitled to decide he doesn't want to follow the rules. And we're entitled to ban him.
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