5 ms·

In the old days a master was responsible for those under him. People were owned, they were not viewed as people with their own agency. Anything bad they did was

In the old days a master was responsible for those under him. People were owned, they were not viewed as people with their own agency. Anything bad they did was treated as a sign that their master failed in disciplining them properly. With the increasing complexity of organizations, this idea of a high level boss bearing the entire responsibility for all of his underlings becomes unreasonable. We also have a different view of individuality now -- this particular development is modern. So I attribute this disappearing act of accountability to the increasing complexity of things and perhaps too much faith in individual autonomy. But I agree that people have always naturally tried to make accountability disappear, it's just that we are really really good at it now and the world is often too complicated to come to the bottom of any matter efficiently.

mikeash 8y ago
I wonder, is it really an unreasonable standard now, or is it merely an inconvenient one for the people who determine the shape of the system?
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
If organizations are too complex to hold someone accountable for their actions, then perhaps those organizations are too complex to allow to exist.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Good in principles for avoiding self creation of abusable situations but I'm not sure about in practice. The problem is complexity creep really and there is little serious effort in "code maintenance". The law itself demonstrates such problems. The Justinian Code was one example of a famously successful refactoring and ironically its creator despite his talent was also very corrupt. One ancient solution which probably wouldn't scale well with needed complexity was "reading of the laws" - a periodic reading aloud of all laws on the books and if any were forgotten and went unobjected to they were automatically repealed as essentially irrelevant. Just hard limiting complexity isn't a very good solution given increased complexity of the world and scale it often ammounts to "if I can't understand it ban it". It is populistic and anti-intellectual and a bit of a meme - that what can be easily understood is better and what can't is worse. Except reality doesn't work that way - the main reason why we bother with extra complexity and difficult to understand fields is because it works better. Needless complexity may be a good concept to define abusability but defining it is tricky just like pinning down Hollywood accounting - where do you formally draw the line between overmarketing and intentionally torpedoing profit margins without proof of intent?
  - dllthomas 8y ago
    Maybe no hard cap, but a soft one imposed by way of criminal liability up the chain for a pattern of illegal behavior at the bottom, even where the higher-ups didn't know and purportedly didn't intend it. Complexity and missing accountability and controls is then a direct personal threat to decision makers. Of course, we'd probably get bigger cover-ups.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> In the old days a master was responsible for those under him. True now, too; notably, by way of the legal doctrine of respondeat superior.

mikeash 8y ago

I wonder, is it really an unreasonable standard now, or is it merely an inconvenient one for the people who determine the shape of the system?

TheCoelacanth 8y ago

If organizations are too complex to hold someone accountable for their actions, then perhaps those organizations are too complex to allow to exist.

Nasrudith 8y ago
Good in principles for avoiding self creation of abusable situations but I'm not sure about in practice. The problem is complexity creep really and there is little serious effort in "code maintenance". The law itself demonstrates such problems. The Justinian Code was one example of a famously successful refactoring and ironically its creator despite his talent was also very corrupt. One ancient solution which probably wouldn't scale well with needed complexity was "reading of the laws" - a periodic reading aloud of all laws on the books and if any were forgotten and went unobjected to they were automatically repealed as essentially irrelevant. Just hard limiting complexity isn't a very good solution given increased complexity of the world and scale it often ammounts to "if I can't understand it ban it". It is populistic and anti-intellectual and a bit of a meme - that what can be easily understood is better and what can't is worse. Except reality doesn't work that way - the main reason why we bother with extra complexity and difficult to understand fields is because it works better. Needless complexity may be a good concept to define abusability but defining it is tricky just like pinning down Hollywood accounting - where do you formally draw the line between overmarketing and intentionally torpedoing profit margins without proof of intent?
- dllthomas 8y ago
  Maybe no hard cap, but a soft one imposed by way of criminal liability up the chain for a pattern of illegal behavior at the bottom, even where the higher-ups didn't know and purportedly didn't intend it. Complexity and missing accountability and controls is then a direct personal threat to decision makers. Of course, we'd probably get bigger cover-ups.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> In the old days a master was responsible for those under him. True now, too; notably, by way of the legal doctrine of respondeat superior.