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The Shirky Principle
- erikstarck 17y ago"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." -- Clay Shirky This is brilliantly well put and one of the most important reasons capitalism works so much better than any other system: destruction of the preserving institutions is built in to the process. "Too big to fail", on the other hand, is something completely different.
- fakelvis 17y agoIt's worth noting that this Clay Shirky quote is a modern retelling of a classic Upton Sinclair quote from 1935: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" (I, Candidate For Governor: And How I Got Licked, p109—available on Google Books.)
- greenlblue 17y agoAre you serious? Capitalism is just as bad as anything else. The problem that capitalism perpetuates is the constant exploitation of the lower echelons. How is that so much better? Also, where is this built-in institutional destruction that you speak of?
- devinj 17y agoYou're looking at the wrong end. He's saying that companies compete with each other and try to undercut one another, which allows some smaller companies to solve the problems allowed by the larger companies. These smaller companies rely on a problem still, but a smaller one (to convince people to switch, and thus get income, it must be smaller). And you're talking about something totally different as far as I can tell, so it's not a very good critique of his point.
- greenlblue 17y agoYou don't need capitalism to have what you just described. When people bundle economic and social principles together that's when capitalism turns into what I described because under the banner of capitalism politicians refuse any social policy that runs counter to free market principles. In fact half of capitol hill has made this their battle cry.
- cema 17y agoThe problem that capitalism perpetuates is the constant exploitation of the lower echelons. "Under capitalism, people exploit people. Under socialism, it's the other way around!"
- greenlblue 17y ago"People under people, exploit capitalism" - that makes no sense dude.
- MHordecki 17y agoHe probably meant that "people exploit people" phrase should be put the other way around, concluding that there's no difference in this aspect between capitalism and socialism at all.
- cema 17y agoActually, thinking about it, it does! "People under people" is a metaphorical description of a business, and they "exploit capitalism", that is, use it to their advantage, selling products and living off the profit. But, of course, that is not what the joke I quoted means. What it means is that, like Churchill's alleged saying about democracy goes, "it's the worst system except for all others". So far, anyway.
- gruseom 17y agocapitalism works so much better than any other system: destruction of the preserving institutions is built in to the process. Boy did you pick the wrong decade to argue this. (The point being that it's a weakness of capitalism, or at least of the contemporary system everybody calls capitalism, that institutions that would otherwise die off are able to preserve themselves through political influence and other unsavory means.)
- lotharbot 17y agoThat's not a weakness of capitalism (an economic system), but a weakness in the way our regulatory agencies and legislatures interact (our political system). People who call themselves "capitalists" typically want to reform the political end of things so it stops distorting the economic system.
- chrischen 17y agoConsider if government did not exist. A company can still use it's established might to artificially prolong it's existence. If any thing regulatory measures are actually designed to prevent this. Whether they are effective or not is a different story.
- lotharbot 17y agoWhat regulation is supposed to do and what regulation actually does are two very different things. Again, people who call themselves "capitalists" would generally like to reform the regulatory/legislative system so that it supports, rather than distorts, the market.
- dhs 17y agoFrom where I see it, it looks like people who call themselves capitalists would generally like to reform the regulatory/legislative system so that it only supports the capitalists.
- Qz 17y ago
- naner 17y agoThat quote was from Jobs in 1997. Now look where Apple is now and see if they've made any similar comments. Apple was more vulnerable back then. The fact of the matter is Microsoft executives are still openly hostile towards free software, always threatening they own IP that overlaps with a lot of open source. This is why Amazon pays Microsoft for Linux patent coverage and why TomTom gets sued for using open source FAT32 drivers. So it makes sense to be wary.
- naner 17y agoAh, dammit. Wrong thread and now I can't delete it. :/
- neilk 17y agoThis is a generalization of Neil K's law of software consultancy: "Any firm that calls itself a solutions provider is actually a problem provider". I mean that literally. The consultant offers a solution to an acute problem, in exchange for the client voluntarily accepting a chronic problem. Typically, only open source or open standard technologies actually solve problems.
- timf 17y agoI'm shocked, humans and human institutions act in their own self interest? If an institution's strongest aim is e.g. profit/preservation (as it often is) then of course it is trying to preserve or create conditions where the product or service is attractive. This often includes undermining better solutions. Just look at the lobbying money flowing through Washington DC for blatant examples. Other situations are more subtle.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- gruseom 17y agoThis is a variation of a famous aphorism by one of the founders of sociology to the effect that an institution's first purpose is to perpetuate itself and only secondarily to achieve its stated goal. I heard it years ago, attributed to Durkheim, I think, though I was unable to find an attribution the last time I looked. Perhaps someone here knows? In any case, it isn't original enough to be named after Shirky (from what little I've read of whom, he's flexible-minded enough not to care).
- betageek 17y agoYour missing the point - any social construction that provides a solution to a problem no longer has a point if that problem ceases to exist. Therefore the construction will not just act to preserve itself, it will try to preserve it's antithesis. It's not just acting in it's own interests, in extreme cases it's prolonging the very thing it's set up to destroy. In other words - Batman / Joker
- known 17y agoSocialism is preventing race to the bottom Capitalism is promoting race to the top
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- jamesbressi 17y agoWow, doesn't that seem to sum up the institution of the Big Pharma industry? I was just on a plane to New Orleans on Monday and sat next to a former high-level employee at a pharma company who even said "we were in the business of managing sickness, not curing it."