4 ms·

> The terms of Presidents or CEO's (4-8 years) are not long enough to meaningfully restructure things Interesting. When was it sufficient, then? Intuitively yo

by varjag 10y ago

> The terms of Presidents or CEO's (4-8 years) are not long enough to meaningfully restructure things Interesting. When was it sufficient, then? Intuitively you'd really expect a better pace of things now with much increased communication/transportation speeds and (in many places) reduced bureaucratic latency.

coldtea 10y ago
>Intuitively you'd really expect a better pace of things now with much increased communication/transportation speeds and (in many places) reduced bureaucratic latency. That's on a first intuition though. Because another intuition is that things that needed adjusting/restructuring back in the day were simpler, less inter-connected, and with fewer implications if they didn't move as fast. When you have "increased communication/transportation speeds" then you also have faster impact of any breakage / bad decision (in the way e.g. that a software glitch can cost billions in a few hours, whereas an error in some accountant's book in 1960, not so much), but also that they are much more tangled together and complex. In other words: while you can communicate your intents of restructuring faster now, things are also much more complicated and difficult to understand even (much less restructure). In fact the summary above already points out to some of this: " A challenge of hypercoherent societies is that if there's a problem in one area, it creates a huge impact on the whole (ie. computer network outages)"
- varjag 10y ago
  Right, I can see where this idea comes from. On the other hand, if we look at the things in factual terms, pretty huge (even by today standards) undertakings were done in the times of rolodex and rotary phone. Bloody combined arms wars were fought and won on several theatres simultaneously over the globe in less time than U.S. involvement in Iraq. People got sent to the the Moon on a relatively short notice. The 747, which is still one of the most complex planes around by 2017 standard, took 3 years from concept to the maiden flight. If we take any of the past achievements today, would you intuitively expect it to take longer nowadays? Take the 747 again: do increased friction, bugs in logistic software and Slack downtimes really offset productivity boost from model-based structural engineering CAD packages? So I see how this idea might come up at a lunch discussion, but kindof sceptical to taking it at face value.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Take the 747 again: do increased friction, bugs in logistic software and Slack downtimes really offset productivity boost from model-based structural engineering CAD packages? That's an engineering work though, on a constrained end product which is a known quantity. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to make it in the same time, or faster than in the 70s. Whereas what we were discussing was whether presidential terms were big enough to affect change -- some of which involve millions of people, special interests, thousands of systems, deeply interconnected (and non expected) side-effects and reactions, etc. Some 1880s or 19930s politician ruled in a much simpler country.
falcolas 10y ago
> When was it sufficient, then? From the point of view of the country, I think the terms being insufficient to meaningfully restructure things is good and intentional. There's a lot of negative in our government, but there's a lot of positive as well. We wouldn't ever want a single, charismatic sociopath in place long enough to single handedly destroy our country. A huge portion of our tax money goes towards helping our fellow citizens, through Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I view this as a positive thing, as I recognize that I am one accident away from needing any to all of those.

by varjag 10y ago

coldtea 10y ago

>Intuitively you'd really expect a better pace of things now with much increased communication/transportation speeds and (in many places) reduced bureaucratic latency. That's on a first intuition though. Because another intuition is that things that needed adjusting/restructuring back in the day were simpler, less inter-connected, and with fewer implications if they didn't move as fast. When you have "increased communication/transportation speeds" then you also have faster impact of any breakage / bad decision (in the way e.g. that a software glitch can cost billions in a few hours, whereas an error in some accountant's book in 1960, not so much), but also that they are much more tangled together and complex. In other words: while you can communicate your intents of restructuring faster now, things are also much more complicated and difficult to understand even (much less restructure). In fact the summary above already points out to some of this: " A challenge of hypercoherent societies is that if there's a problem in one area, it creates a huge impact on the whole (ie. computer network outages)"

varjag 10y ago
Right, I can see where this idea comes from. On the other hand, if we look at the things in factual terms, pretty huge (even by today standards) undertakings were done in the times of rolodex and rotary phone. Bloody combined arms wars were fought and won on several theatres simultaneously over the globe in less time than U.S. involvement in Iraq. People got sent to the the Moon on a relatively short notice. The 747, which is still one of the most complex planes around by 2017 standard, took 3 years from concept to the maiden flight. If we take any of the past achievements today, would you intuitively expect it to take longer nowadays? Take the 747 again: do increased friction, bugs in logistic software and Slack downtimes really offset productivity boost from model-based structural engineering CAD packages? So I see how this idea might come up at a lunch discussion, but kindof sceptical to taking it at face value.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Take the 747 again: do increased friction, bugs in logistic software and Slack downtimes really offset productivity boost from model-based structural engineering CAD packages? That's an engineering work though, on a constrained end product which is a known quantity. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to make it in the same time, or faster than in the 70s. Whereas what we were discussing was whether presidential terms were big enough to affect change -- some of which involve millions of people, special interests, thousands of systems, deeply interconnected (and non expected) side-effects and reactions, etc. Some 1880s or 19930s politician ruled in a much simpler country.

falcolas 10y ago

> When was it sufficient, then? From the point of view of the country, I think the terms being insufficient to meaningfully restructure things is good and intentional. There's a lot of negative in our government, but there's a lot of positive as well. We wouldn't ever want a single, charismatic sociopath in place long enough to single handedly destroy our country. A huge portion of our tax money goes towards helping our fellow citizens, through Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I view this as a positive thing, as I recognize that I am one accident away from needing any to all of those.