3 ms·

Thanks for the reference. There are quite a few writers railing against the current Professional Managerial Class (PMC). It's very interesting to see that their

Thanks for the reference. There are quite a few writers railing against the current Professional Managerial Class (PMC). It's very interesting to see that their rise has quite a long history. Where things appear to have gone off the rails is that the PMC are now more interested in the management of perception than actually managing. The proposed solution is to get more competent managers but Burnham points out that the issue is likely more fundamental than that and a new social organisation may be required to deal with their shortcomings.

jack_riminton 3y ago
Yes the 'management of perception' is a key point here because that is essentially what politics is, and this case was so close to politics i.e. the government was the sole shareholder, the Post Office needed to show a profit so it could be sold The CEO was effectively rewarded for managing the crisis (when the crisis was in full swing in 2019) by the government through the award of the CBE and a seat on the board of an NHS trust etc.
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
One cannot understand politics without philosophy, and I believe we are currently in a golden age of philosophy, with Twitter being the rough equivalent to Vienna's Café Central. I hope the current phase of freedom its going to last a while longer. We will see how long the current system will prevail - according to Céline, a ruling class becomes parasitic if they no longer supply the military cadres, and that this is to be the only criterion. Looking at the US army recruitment numbers, it is clear that families who fought in it for generations no longer see a reason to do so, understandably. The best we can hope for is that the phase of decline will be short, and that transfer of power will take place within the constitution, and not go off-script.
- staunton 3y ago
  > Twitter being the rough equivalent to Vienna's Café Central Presumably, what paved the way for that development was the recent and widely reported solution of the "nuance problem", such that we can now conduct philosophy debates without any need for going beyond a few thousand characters?
  - whythre 3y ago
    Respectfully, I think y’all are both out to lunch. Twitter and the golden age of philosophy? I just see preening fools ranting at each other for clout. Twitter arguments don’t solve the nuance problem, they ignore/amplify it by reducing everything to a soundbite-level of text. Most real world solutions are very complicated, and not the kind of thing that can be solved by clever ‘gotcha’ style quips. Twitter is the chattering class, comprised of the managerial types whose portfolio is their own appearance.
    - staunton 3y ago
      My comment was sarcasm (which I thought was obvious, but I'll just have to finally accept that sarcasm on HN is never obvious enough).
  - MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
    Twitter a lively conversation where the participants are expected to have read the material that is being talked about, which is often books or long-form articles, sometimes podcasts - at least that is the corner I'm interest in. The best refutations of political and philosophical positions are written by absurdly overeducated guys dunking on a (usually) less sophisticated counter-party with a terse one-liner.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > with Twitter being the rough equivalent to Vienna's Café Central The Vienna Café Central under the Nazi regime maybe? Especially if it was bombed, that would make for a good comparison. Twitter is fundamentally unsuited to philosophical debate due to its nature (short form tweets), impersonality (everyone can say shit online, it's quite different to having to defend your antisemitism in the face of Theodor Hertzl), and automatisation (it's cheap to spray tweet crap from a St Petersburg troll farm to tilt public perception).

jack_riminton 3y ago

Yes the 'management of perception' is a key point here because that is essentially what politics is, and this case was so close to politics i.e. the government was the sole shareholder, the Post Office needed to show a profit so it could be sold The CEO was effectively rewarded for managing the crisis (when the crisis was in full swing in 2019) by the government through the award of the CBE and a seat on the board of an NHS trust etc.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

One cannot understand politics without philosophy, and I believe we are currently in a golden age of philosophy, with Twitter being the rough equivalent to Vienna's Café Central. I hope the current phase of freedom its going to last a while longer. We will see how long the current system will prevail - according to Céline, a ruling class becomes parasitic if they no longer supply the military cadres, and that this is to be the only criterion. Looking at the US army recruitment numbers, it is clear that families who fought in it for generations no longer see a reason to do so, understandably. The best we can hope for is that the phase of decline will be short, and that transfer of power will take place within the constitution, and not go off-script.

staunton 3y ago
> Twitter being the rough equivalent to Vienna's Café Central Presumably, what paved the way for that development was the recent and widely reported solution of the "nuance problem", such that we can now conduct philosophy debates without any need for going beyond a few thousand characters?
- whythre 3y ago
  Respectfully, I think y’all are both out to lunch. Twitter and the golden age of philosophy? I just see preening fools ranting at each other for clout. Twitter arguments don’t solve the nuance problem, they ignore/amplify it by reducing everything to a soundbite-level of text. Most real world solutions are very complicated, and not the kind of thing that can be solved by clever ‘gotcha’ style quips. Twitter is the chattering class, comprised of the managerial types whose portfolio is their own appearance.
  - staunton 3y ago
    My comment was sarcasm (which I thought was obvious, but I'll just have to finally accept that sarcasm on HN is never obvious enough).
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  Twitter a lively conversation where the participants are expected to have read the material that is being talked about, which is often books or long-form articles, sometimes podcasts - at least that is the corner I'm interest in. The best refutations of political and philosophical positions are written by absurdly overeducated guys dunking on a (usually) less sophisticated counter-party with a terse one-liner.
sofixa 3y ago
> with Twitter being the rough equivalent to Vienna's Café Central The Vienna Café Central under the Nazi regime maybe? Especially if it was bombed, that would make for a good comparison. Twitter is fundamentally unsuited to philosophical debate due to its nature (short form tweets), impersonality (everyone can say shit online, it's quite different to having to defend your antisemitism in the face of Theodor Hertzl), and automatisation (it's cheap to spray tweet crap from a St Petersburg troll farm to tilt public perception).