5 ms·

Care does scale and the human race is evidence of that. It is centralisation that doesn't scale well.

by hardlianotion 2y ago

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
but centralization is in many ways the thing that is needed to scale all sorts of other things.
- lucideer 2y ago
  No. Centralization isn't needed to scale, it's just needed to exploit scale. Exploitation has become so commonplace it's replaced everything as the primary "desirable metric". I'm writing this comment on a platform founded on the idea of exploitation being a desirable metric.
  - theamk 2y ago
    Try giving everyone housing without centralized production of things like nails, screws, siding electrical wire... Decentralizization is fine sometimes, but a single huge nail factory is going to beat thousands backyard forges in (average/95th percentile) quality and especially in prices.
    - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
      Yet somehow houses were still well built before the huge nail factory existed. Which means it is not required.
      - theamk 2y ago
        Sure, it's not required to build _some_ houses, but it's required for scale. Backyard forges are OK if you have few hundred million people, most of them in farming, with most families living in a house with a a single room. But you cannot build New York on without large factories.
    - lucideer 2y ago
      This isn't true though. Neither in theory nor in practice. A broad set of individual product quality has consistently declined throughout the industrial era - not least, infamously, one of your own examples: nails. Many products have increased in quality due to factors unrelated to centralised production: new scientific research, intensive r&d, internal standardisation efforts - but centralised production tends instead to produce demonstrable reductions in individual quality. We're living in an age of unprecedented consumer waste due to this phenomenon. Planned obsolescence is a relatively recent term (& while it may not be real in terms of being intentional it's definitely true in terms of increases in obsolescence-rates).
      - tightbookkeeper 2y ago
        Are you suggesting there is no provider of high quality nails at industrial scale? That’s ridiculous. Many people just prefer to pay for cheap nails because they are good enough for the application, and that’s a good thing because this option did not previously exist. But the high end still exists and is higher quality than ever. Capitalism has problems, but providing low complexity commodity improvements at scale and quality is not one of them.
        lucideer 2y ago
        > Are you suggesting there is no provider of high quality nails at industrial scale? Nails was one of the examples cited by the gp, which I found funny since there is one famous example of nails being lower quality by definition as a result of centralisation. That example isn't the case for all nails (nor for all the gps examples), but it is still an excellent, if isolated, example: cut nails. Most carpentry nails you buy today are wire nails. I don't know if it's possible to buy cut nails today from any large factories, but broadly speaking, manufacture of cut nails does not scale. The switch to wire was a detail of the manufacturing processes, not of consumer demand (nor quality assurance). Cut nails are still considered superior today. If you look at antique diagrams of nails available for purchase, you'll see 20 or 30 varieties, all with very distinctly different designs. Those designs have converged on a single design for all applications, not because it's a better design, but purely because it's a design that scales for manufacture. Flaws in the design are compensated for via material choice & worker skill. There's likely thousands of such cases in industry.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  yeah centralization is a proxy for trust and stability, it adds some friction on the edge to give you that benefit i also think that ultimately no single system is best and that regular renegotiation about the amount of central vs decentral is key (something we should help people be better at)
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I'd argue that centralization allows a scale that otherwise wouldn't have been possible, but at the cost of added fragility and externalized costs. We produce way more corn in the US today than we could without a centralized industry, but we do so by subsidizing the hell out of an industry that is driven only by how much volume of corn is produced. Nutritional quality of the food produced is ignored, damage to the land is ignored, damage to the broader environment is ignored, etc. We grow a small amount of corn on our land. We absolutely don't have as high or consistent yields as an industrial farm, but we also don't spray any poisons on the land and if the soil health was being negatively impacted we would know it pretty darn fast. Rain water from the corn patch runs down into the pond our cows drink from, another reason we wouldn't use poisons on the land. All of these are considerations one will likely make at a smaller scale that just won't happen with a centralized system driven by one or two primary goals (currently that's just money).
- hardlianotion 2y ago
  I was mainly thinking of care when I wrote this, but I think there is generally a trade off between centralisation and increases in efficiency, in some part given by standardisation, and increased fragility as more comes to depend on fewer things that aren’t a complete fit for what you are trying to do, or that might fail.
jstummbillig 2y ago
What exactly is the evidence, and how is it not exactly centralisation? All the advances in care that I can think of (those that actually unburden more humans from having to give their life to care) are brought to us by some sort of centralisation.
intended 2y ago
This comes across as a comment on the headline and not the article. The article had a very specific circumstance it built upon - how much human time time it takes to help kids. This doesn’t scale, in the context of the article. Your statement would translate into a point on economics and organization, than individual care. This still obscures the fact that many critical functions don’t scale. I would add that these tend to be under resourced in favor of things that do scale.
- hardlianotion 2y ago
  The comment comes from reading the article, then wondering how can societies make things scale? We make things scale by delegating our concerns to people who know and care more about specific outcomes, and helping them to make the differences that are required. Scale comes from people learning that things around them matter and that they are responsible for making them good.
  - intended 2y ago
    Ok. In that case i'll ask for a clarificaiton on the link. From the article it seemed quite a clear cut case about activity types that dont scale. Outsourcing the responsibility doesn't mean it scale, which seems contradicted by what you are saying. People learning that things matter and that they are responsible, doesn't change this does it?
    - hardlianotion 2y ago
      The article noted that, when you care for someone, you give of yourself and your attention and you cannot spread this to a significant number of people. If you outsource the activity, then whoever you outsource it to has to pay attention in the same way. But the world is full of people that were cared for, and mostly quite well. So in that sense, care scales. I am only really suggesting that scalable care schemes might be those that help people to support those they already have a connection with, and that organisation/coordination be managed on that level.
- openrisk 2y ago

Care does scale and the human race is evidence of that. It is centralisation that doesn't scale well.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

but centralization is in many ways the thing that is needed to scale all sorts of other things.

lucideer 2y ago
No. Centralization isn't needed to scale, it's just needed to exploit scale. Exploitation has become so commonplace it's replaced everything as the primary "desirable metric". I'm writing this comment on a platform founded on the idea of exploitation being a desirable metric.
- theamk 2y ago
  Try giving everyone housing without centralized production of things like nails, screws, siding electrical wire... Decentralizization is fine sometimes, but a single huge nail factory is going to beat thousands backyard forges in (average/95th percentile) quality and especially in prices.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    Yet somehow houses were still well built before the huge nail factory existed. Which means it is not required.
    - theamk 2y ago
      Sure, it's not required to build _some_ houses, but it's required for scale. Backyard forges are OK if you have few hundred million people, most of them in farming, with most families living in a house with a a single room. But you cannot build New York on without large factories.
  - lucideer 2y ago
    This isn't true though. Neither in theory nor in practice. A broad set of individual product quality has consistently declined throughout the industrial era - not least, infamously, one of your own examples: nails. Many products have increased in quality due to factors unrelated to centralised production: new scientific research, intensive r&d, internal standardisation efforts - but centralised production tends instead to produce demonstrable reductions in individual quality. We're living in an age of unprecedented consumer waste due to this phenomenon. Planned obsolescence is a relatively recent term (& while it may not be real in terms of being intentional it's definitely true in terms of increases in obsolescence-rates).
    - tightbookkeeper 2y ago
      Are you suggesting there is no provider of high quality nails at industrial scale? That’s ridiculous. Many people just prefer to pay for cheap nails because they are good enough for the application, and that’s a good thing because this option did not previously exist. But the high end still exists and is higher quality than ever. Capitalism has problems, but providing low complexity commodity improvements at scale and quality is not one of them.
      - lucideer 2y ago
        > Are you suggesting there is no provider of high quality nails at industrial scale? Nails was one of the examples cited by the gp, which I found funny since there is one famous example of nails being lower quality by definition as a result of centralisation. That example isn't the case for all nails (nor for all the gps examples), but it is still an excellent, if isolated, example: cut nails. Most carpentry nails you buy today are wire nails. I don't know if it's possible to buy cut nails today from any large factories, but broadly speaking, manufacture of cut nails does not scale. The switch to wire was a detail of the manufacturing processes, not of consumer demand (nor quality assurance). Cut nails are still considered superior today. If you look at antique diagrams of nails available for purchase, you'll see 20 or 30 varieties, all with very distinctly different designs. Those designs have converged on a single design for all applications, not because it's a better design, but purely because it's a design that scales for manufacture. Flaws in the design are compensated for via material choice & worker skill. There's likely thousands of such cases in industry.
agumonkey 2y ago
yeah centralization is a proxy for trust and stability, it adds some friction on the edge to give you that benefit i also think that ultimately no single system is best and that regular renegotiation about the amount of central vs decentral is key (something we should help people be better at)
_heimdall 2y ago
I'd argue that centralization allows a scale that otherwise wouldn't have been possible, but at the cost of added fragility and externalized costs. We produce way more corn in the US today than we could without a centralized industry, but we do so by subsidizing the hell out of an industry that is driven only by how much volume of corn is produced. Nutritional quality of the food produced is ignored, damage to the land is ignored, damage to the broader environment is ignored, etc. We grow a small amount of corn on our land. We absolutely don't have as high or consistent yields as an industrial farm, but we also don't spray any poisons on the land and if the soil health was being negatively impacted we would know it pretty darn fast. Rain water from the corn patch runs down into the pond our cows drink from, another reason we wouldn't use poisons on the land. All of these are considerations one will likely make at a smaller scale that just won't happen with a centralized system driven by one or two primary goals (currently that's just money).
hardlianotion 2y ago
I was mainly thinking of care when I wrote this, but I think there is generally a trade off between centralisation and increases in efficiency, in some part given by standardisation, and increased fragility as more comes to depend on fewer things that aren’t a complete fit for what you are trying to do, or that might fail.

jstummbillig 2y ago

What exactly is the evidence, and how is it not exactly centralisation? All the advances in care that I can think of (those that actually unburden more humans from having to give their life to care) are brought to us by some sort of centralisation.

intended 2y ago

This comes across as a comment on the headline and not the article. The article had a very specific circumstance it built upon - how much human time time it takes to help kids. This doesn’t scale, in the context of the article. Your statement would translate into a point on economics and organization, than individual care. This still obscures the fact that many critical functions don’t scale. I would add that these tend to be under resourced in favor of things that do scale.

hardlianotion 2y ago
The comment comes from reading the article, then wondering how can societies make things scale? We make things scale by delegating our concerns to people who know and care more about specific outcomes, and helping them to make the differences that are required. Scale comes from people learning that things around them matter and that they are responsible for making them good.
- intended 2y ago
  Ok. In that case i'll ask for a clarificaiton on the link. From the article it seemed quite a clear cut case about activity types that dont scale. Outsourcing the responsibility doesn't mean it scale, which seems contradicted by what you are saying. People learning that things matter and that they are responsible, doesn't change this does it?
  - hardlianotion 2y ago
    The article noted that, when you care for someone, you give of yourself and your attention and you cannot spread this to a significant number of people. If you outsource the activity, then whoever you outsource it to has to pay attention in the same way. But the world is full of people that were cared for, and mostly quite well. So in that sense, care scales. I am only really suggesting that scalable care schemes might be those that help people to support those they already have a connection with, and that organisation/coordination be managed on that level.
openrisk 2y ago