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You seem to be in a violent agreement with parent. What parent calls "[flawed] culture", you call "layers of indirection between the principals and the agents"

You seem to be in a violent agreement with parent. What parent calls "[flawed] culture", you call "layers of indirection between the principals and the agents". The number of these layers is a vital characteristic of the business culture, and you cannot just wish them away and claim victory. Have an idea for a system that will work with as many people but less layers - please do tell about it (and about its relation to individualism, if there is any). But my guess it'd be radically different from the current one.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
One of the biggest reasons that the economy has transitioned to such enormous corporations is that regulatory compliance burdens are a ratchet. Every year new laws are passed but the old laws are not repealed, so every year the minimum size of an entity that can comply with all of the rules increases. We've also seen, on the other side, lax antitrust enforcement as large corporations regularly buy out their competitors and use vertical integration and vendor lock-in to constrain upstarts. That isn't a cultural problem at all, it's a regulatory problem. We need the rules to be easier on smaller entities and harder on larger ones. So that more of the decisions actually are in the hands of individuals rather than large institutions, and individuals are once again given the authority to choose to do the right thing instead of being constrained by perverse institutional incentives. More to the point, the parent's complaint was about the culture of individualism in particular, not some generic cultural problems that you can shoehorn any arbitrary failing into just because it's possible to describe anything systemic as cultural.