I’ve kinda developed the view that large organisations come to mirror the Russian Communist Party.
I’m interested in “flow capture based on power relationships”.
Do you have any recommended reading on this?
I’m interested in “flow capture based on power relationships”.
Do you have any recommended reading on this?
There are exceptions - where someone principled dictator impose a VC style model where teams basically become independent startup and die or succeed. 100 fails, one becomes the next revenue maker for the company. That's how AWS was born.
Accountability comes from elections. If managers in companies had to be re-elected it would be interesting.
Companies are fantastic at making it look like accountability exists, because people at the bottom get punished for even the smallest mistakes, but avoiding any consequences that would affect high-ranking members or force the organization to change how it does business.
Only the ones which have an unkillable cash cow. So, I suspect Google or large banks are mostly like that, but places like SpaceX or even large consulting firms (Delloitte, IBM etc., where managers essentially eat what they kill) cannot allow themselves to degenerate into a Chinese court.
The large-scale failure of democracy that's happening all over the world is something different, though. Regulation is struggling to keep up with technology, and it doesn't help that nation-states have already been doing a piss-poor job of protecting people from their employers. If the US falls in the next 20 years, it won't be due to Covid or Trump or nation-level adversaries; it'll be due to the obscene power given to employers, who can literally ruin an employee's life--not just fire him, but anally ravage him in perpetuity with bad references--for any reason or none. Eventually, unless national governments start dropping serious lead pipe on employers' heads, people are going to tire of paying 30+ percent of their incomes to a government that lets bosses get away with this shit.
How do you define "US falls"?
>Eventually, unless national governments start dropping serious lead pipe on employers' heads, people are going to tire of paying 30+ percent of their incomes to a government that lets bosses get away with this shit.
People endured much worse in medieval times, and endure much worse right now in China.
Really? The USA has hollowed out portions of the country equal/worse than the worst 3rd world countries.
Can you elaborate on that? I've never heard that parcitular thing about the US. For reference, In Kongo, there are 5 year olds today carrying heavy buckets in makeshift cobalt mines, a'la XIX century England or France (plus the toxicity of cobalt, people who work in these mines get cancer if they don't die in an accident first). Even with whole families working in such conditions, the pay is not enough and not stable enough to sustain the family, and they are often working while hungry. Is there anything comparable going on in the US?
The places where the police do “bother” are, ipso facto, also run by local gangs.
The US does seem to lag the UK and Europe in terms of employment law in some cases (no formal employment contracts for most employees, can be fired without notice, little statutory holiday, maternity or paternity leave entitlement, etc. etc.)
It has been argued that the union movement — while susceptible to corruption — was a hugely positive force in economic and political terms for American workers. Unfortunately thatcher and Reagan saw this as such a threat that they attempted to destroy their own manufacturing base in order to smash the unions.