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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

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?

badpun 4y ago
> I’ve kinda developed the view that large organisations come to mirror the Russian Communist Party. 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.
- bsenftner 4y ago
  Now this is interesting. I've always found it fascinating that when profit is on the table, democracy is nowhere to be found. I've looked, not too hard TBH, for essays and literature discussing the correlations to business model management structures and government/nation political hierarchies - not education level (propaganda), but critical analysis. I've been an employee of several of the top corporations on our planet, and the idea that corruption is not rampant is a farce. One simply lives within the environmental constraints and leaves when it gets to be too much. Does caring about corporate (and the larger realm of ethics) cast one incompatible with a modern corporate hierarchy?
  - psi75 4y ago
    Unfortunately, the only way to prevent hierarchy is to create a limited hierarchy (this is the purpose of constitutions) a priori; hierarchically naive organizations fail on this account. External parties will demand hierarchy simply because they want to know your organization (or nation) isn't wasting their time--no one wants to deliver a sales pitch to people who can't authorize purchases. If they're not careful, a group of people can end up in a state where the necessary-for-external-relations hierarchy becomes a total one. You see this with startup founders; the one who talks to the investors the most ends up in charge, and the ones who deal with employees or low-status counterparties lose power. This is why "flat" organizations can't really work; people who need things from the organization demand to know who to talk to in order to actually get things done, and eventually those "who to talk to" people end up with informal, then formal, power and it's very difficult to get them to give it back. 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.
    - badpun 4y ago
      > 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. 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.
      - bsenftner 4y ago
        > 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.
        badpun 4y ago
        I hope you're hyperbolic, the worst 3rd world countries have no governance (unless you count local warlords), 5 year olds working in dangerous and toxic conditions, hunger and slavery.
        bsenftner 4y ago
        You don't realize what is going on in the United States. We have portions of the USA where the police don't even bother, and are run by local gangs. We also have children working, in dangerous and toxic conditions. We also have hunger, and yes we have slavery: prison labor. The USA is not what you think it is.
        badpun 4y ago
        > We also have children working, in dangerous and toxic conditions. 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?
- mrcartmeneses 4y ago
  Interesting you say that because there’s some critical analysis I’ve come across in the past that states that taxation is a key driver towards democracy and that captured wealth (such as from oil) promotes oligarchy and dictatorship. There are outliers in either direction, naturally.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
Every large organisation tends to be like a small government. Inefficient, drown in politics and unable to change. 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.
- Kaapeine 4y ago
  That sounds a lot like the DARPA model too.
- mrcartmeneses 4y ago
  There’s way less inefficiency and way more accountability in the public sector. Look at how efficient publicly funded schools are, for example, or publicly funded rail or healthcare. You could literally pick almost any industry. Accountability comes from elections. If managers in companies had to be re-elected it would be interesting.
  - psi75 4y ago
    This. Corporations are great at imposing mean-spirited personal accountability (i.e., if you're perceived to have fucked up, you get fucked) but that doesn't actually solve problems or change anything. People get fired, careers end, new faces replace the old, nothing gets learned. Of course, once you get into middle management you're exempted from the stack-ranking bukkake, and executives write their own performance reviews and almost never face consequences for their actions. 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.

badpun 4y ago

> I’ve kinda developed the view that large organisations come to mirror the Russian Communist Party. 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.

bsenftner 4y ago
Now this is interesting. I've always found it fascinating that when profit is on the table, democracy is nowhere to be found. I've looked, not too hard TBH, for essays and literature discussing the correlations to business model management structures and government/nation political hierarchies - not education level (propaganda), but critical analysis. I've been an employee of several of the top corporations on our planet, and the idea that corruption is not rampant is a farce. One simply lives within the environmental constraints and leaves when it gets to be too much. Does caring about corporate (and the larger realm of ethics) cast one incompatible with a modern corporate hierarchy?
- psi75 4y ago
  Unfortunately, the only way to prevent hierarchy is to create a limited hierarchy (this is the purpose of constitutions) a priori; hierarchically naive organizations fail on this account. External parties will demand hierarchy simply because they want to know your organization (or nation) isn't wasting their time--no one wants to deliver a sales pitch to people who can't authorize purchases. If they're not careful, a group of people can end up in a state where the necessary-for-external-relations hierarchy becomes a total one. You see this with startup founders; the one who talks to the investors the most ends up in charge, and the ones who deal with employees or low-status counterparties lose power. This is why "flat" organizations can't really work; people who need things from the organization demand to know who to talk to in order to actually get things done, and eventually those "who to talk to" people end up with informal, then formal, power and it's very difficult to get them to give it back. 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.
  - badpun 4y ago
    > 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. 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.
    - bsenftner 4y ago
      > 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.
      - badpun 4y ago
        I hope you're hyperbolic, the worst 3rd world countries have no governance (unless you count local warlords), 5 year olds working in dangerous and toxic conditions, hunger and slavery.
        bsenftner 4y ago
        You don't realize what is going on in the United States. We have portions of the USA where the police don't even bother, and are run by local gangs. We also have children working, in dangerous and toxic conditions. We also have hunger, and yes we have slavery: prison labor. The USA is not what you think it is.
        badpun 4y ago
        > We also have children working, in dangerous and toxic conditions. 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?
mrcartmeneses 4y ago
Interesting you say that because there’s some critical analysis I’ve come across in the past that states that taxation is a key driver towards democracy and that captured wealth (such as from oil) promotes oligarchy and dictatorship. There are outliers in either direction, naturally.

jokethrowaway 4y ago

Every large organisation tends to be like a small government. Inefficient, drown in politics and unable to change. 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.

Kaapeine 4y ago
That sounds a lot like the DARPA model too.
mrcartmeneses 4y ago
There’s way less inefficiency and way more accountability in the public sector. Look at how efficient publicly funded schools are, for example, or publicly funded rail or healthcare. You could literally pick almost any industry. Accountability comes from elections. If managers in companies had to be re-elected it would be interesting.
- psi75 4y ago
  This. Corporations are great at imposing mean-spirited personal accountability (i.e., if you're perceived to have fucked up, you get fucked) but that doesn't actually solve problems or change anything. People get fired, careers end, new faces replace the old, nothing gets learned. Of course, once you get into middle management you're exempted from the stack-ranking bukkake, and executives write their own performance reviews and almost never face consequences for their actions. 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.