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The tyranny of metrics arose with the industrial revolution, not capitalism. It is obviously easier to measure many things by proxy with money in a capitalist s

The tyranny of metrics arose with the industrial revolution, not capitalism. It is obviously easier to measure many things by proxy with money in a capitalist society, but Robespierre and Stalin were no strangers to optimizing society around metrics.

sophacles 3y ago
Nonsense, you're just forgetting the metrics that matter most: Number of pennies (or whatever currency happens to be in vogue that millenium) Number of people who will do what you say. (Some say they are the same). If you include those two metrics, it's a problem at least as old as writing.
- svieira 3y ago
  If you have enough people who will do what you say it doesn't matter how many pennies you have. Mao was right (analogously to how Machiavelli was "right", not in the moral sense of "right" where, as Socrates says [paraphrased] "it would be better to be the one man unjustly put to death for doing what is right than the man who comes to power doing what is unjust").
unclebucknasty 3y ago
What we choose to measure reflects what we value. And, I think your parent's point is that money is not merely a proxy for measuring things in a capitalist society. It has become the only thing; which, in turn, creates distortions.
- kbolino 3y ago
  And my point is that the existence of a metric and optimizing for it are not the same thing. Money is definitionally quantifiable and, in a capitalist society, very visible. Optimizing for it, just as optimizing for units produced by a factory, or counterrevolutionaries successfully reeducated, or prisoners incarcerated, or graduation rate, or billable hours, etc. is a choice and not inherent to capitalism or socialism or really any other economic system, except insofar as they are all downstream of the industrial revolution and its emphasis on quantity and repeatability.
  - unclebucknasty 3y ago
    Drug companies measure themselves, not by number of lives saved or patients helped, but by profit or its close-cousin EPS. And, in this and many cases, money is actually a poor proxy for anything but money. It's called "capitalism". That's what's definitional here. Profit (return on capital/money) and profit-growth are recognized as ultimate end goals. So, of course we measure it and clearly pursue it for its own sake. VCs aren't interested in raw unit production if those units can't be sold at a profit. And, in simple terms, the company can't yield ROI to the investor if it is unprofitable. That's why we measure money instead of unit production. It's not because money is "a convenient proxy, something-something Industrial Revolution". But, all of this is self-evident, so makes for boring discussion. What's interesting is considering how this emphasis on money distorts and underserves society.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - kbolino 3y ago
      Whether we optimize for widgets per hour or dollars per hour, we end up at the same place: a ravenous, soul-crushing machine consuming blood and sweat to produce a bigger number. This is the result the industrial revolution has wrought.
      - unclebucknasty 3y ago
        >Whether we optimize for widgets per hour or dollars per hour, we end up at the same place That might be true, but was not your original assertion. Your earlier comment stated that the type of economy didn't matter: socialism, capitalism, etc. weren't the problem; only the Industrial Revolution. Socialists agreed with you about the Industrial Revolution crushing souls. They also believed capitalism was to blame (specifically, laissez-faire capitalism). We don't measure widgets. We measure money. That has everything to do with capitalism, and little to do with the Industrial Revolution. And, even less to do with socialism.
        3y ago

sophacles 3y ago

Nonsense, you're just forgetting the metrics that matter most: Number of pennies (or whatever currency happens to be in vogue that millenium) Number of people who will do what you say. (Some say they are the same). If you include those two metrics, it's a problem at least as old as writing.

svieira 3y ago
If you have enough people who will do what you say it doesn't matter how many pennies you have. Mao was right (analogously to how Machiavelli was "right", not in the moral sense of "right" where, as Socrates says [paraphrased] "it would be better to be the one man unjustly put to death for doing what is right than the man who comes to power doing what is unjust").

unclebucknasty 3y ago

What we choose to measure reflects what we value. And, I think your parent's point is that money is not merely a proxy for measuring things in a capitalist society. It has become the only thing; which, in turn, creates distortions.

kbolino 3y ago
And my point is that the existence of a metric and optimizing for it are not the same thing. Money is definitionally quantifiable and, in a capitalist society, very visible. Optimizing for it, just as optimizing for units produced by a factory, or counterrevolutionaries successfully reeducated, or prisoners incarcerated, or graduation rate, or billable hours, etc. is a choice and not inherent to capitalism or socialism or really any other economic system, except insofar as they are all downstream of the industrial revolution and its emphasis on quantity and repeatability.
- unclebucknasty 3y ago
  Drug companies measure themselves, not by number of lives saved or patients helped, but by profit or its close-cousin EPS. And, in this and many cases, money is actually a poor proxy for anything but money. It's called "capitalism". That's what's definitional here. Profit (return on capital/money) and profit-growth are recognized as ultimate end goals. So, of course we measure it and clearly pursue it for its own sake. VCs aren't interested in raw unit production if those units can't be sold at a profit. And, in simple terms, the company can't yield ROI to the investor if it is unprofitable. That's why we measure money instead of unit production. It's not because money is "a convenient proxy, something-something Industrial Revolution". But, all of this is self-evident, so makes for boring discussion. What's interesting is considering how this emphasis on money distorts and underserves society.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kbolino 3y ago
    Whether we optimize for widgets per hour or dollars per hour, we end up at the same place: a ravenous, soul-crushing machine consuming blood and sweat to produce a bigger number. This is the result the industrial revolution has wrought.
    - unclebucknasty 3y ago
      >Whether we optimize for widgets per hour or dollars per hour, we end up at the same place That might be true, but was not your original assertion. Your earlier comment stated that the type of economy didn't matter: socialism, capitalism, etc. weren't the problem; only the Industrial Revolution. Socialists agreed with you about the Industrial Revolution crushing souls. They also believed capitalism was to blame (specifically, laissez-faire capitalism). We don't measure widgets. We measure money. That has everything to do with capitalism, and little to do with the Industrial Revolution. And, even less to do with socialism.
      - 3y ago