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In fact, large corporate entities are nearly as wasteful and inefficient as the socialist bureaucratic state-controlled monsters from the USSR. Looks like key h

by sklogic 12y ago

In fact, large corporate entities are nearly as wasteful and inefficient as the socialist bureaucratic state-controlled monsters from the USSR. Looks like key here is in being monstrous, not in the underlying ideology.

jerf 12y ago
While I sometimes describe myself as "libertarian", this is actually closer to one of my core positions. Large organizations become large because somehow, at some point in their past, they discovered how to produce some sort of wealth greatly in excess of what they were spending to produce it. This creates security for the entity. This security means that they are no longer getting feedback from the real world about what is working and not working; long before the feedback reaches the people in the organization it needs to reach, it has been absorbed by the buffers of high wealth and a lot of people. Consequently the entity begins acting without feedback from the real world. As control systems theory would teach us, the system begins slowly-but-inevitably spinning out of control until it finally exceeds its buffers and comes down in one or another form of catastrophe. I've phrased this in "wealth" and "feedback" because it has jack-shit to do with "capitalism" or "socialism" or anything else. It's a general problem with things that get too big. (It does so happen to be a special case of this problem that many, many people want to pile everything into one big entity and call it the "government", but the problem is very widespread beyond just that one case.) Everything needs feedback to stay connected to the real world, and any time that an entity gets too large to respond to feedback, trouble is assured. The bigger the entity, the bigger the trouble. Big governments, big corporations, big anything is dangerous. And it's not because of some mystical badness due to largeness, it's very specifically their ability to operate without or even despite feedback from the real world. It isn't magical thinking to think that's trouble... it's magical thinking to think that entity could ever operate without feedback. Despite how this may appear to be ideology, I consider this engineering, and rather simple engineering at that. Smaller organizations can still do very bad things. My parents happen to live in a township (a local government entity that stands in for a town/city in the rural area they live) that did something very financially stupid and now they've got some disturbingly substantial extra taxes to pay for a few years to pay it off. Smallness didn't prevent the township government from doing something stupid. However, the people who did that stupid thing were immediately outsted and will never serve again... that's feedback. When's the last time you heard that last bit from a big company or government? (Who in the Federal government has ever paid for any of the bad things that you can name in the past 14 years? It's not an empty list, but it's a short one for such a massive entity and long time.) And there's a township full of people now keeping a closer eye on what financial commitments it makes. So, with that foundation, I'd submit a lot of these bullshit jobs are themselves an expression of the fantastic, astonishing wealth we've generated as a society. We have them because we can afford to have them. And don't forget the fact that the people with bullshit jobs are applying their full human intelligence to the task of looking busy, whether they are doing it on purpose or otherwise. When an entity is large and flush with cash, it lacks the motivation to push through the fog of deception and start ensuring that people are actually generating value.
- jimbokun 12y ago
  I think you're on to something. It's fascinating to me how executives are so often enamored with large mergers and acquisitions, while it seems very rare for such transactions to result in greater overall growth or profitability. I suspect the real reason is to increase the buffer between the CEO and real world feedback. At some level, I suspect the executives instinctively know the real reason to increase the size of the organization is to further insulate them from market feedback. Certainly makes more sense than the underlying financials in most cases, as far as I can tell.
- dnautics 12y ago
  (self-described libertarian here:) you don't suppose that large organizations often become large because they benefit from government subsidy? Aside from obvious candidates like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, I personally think that the inflation/investment social model whereby individuals are pushed into stock market or mutual funds that trade stocks, is a stealth subsidy that selectively benefits large companies and incentivises corporate aggregation.
  - jerf 12y ago
    Obviously, my post is at best a sketch of a principle rather than a complete description of the economy and government as a whole :) But the advantage of describing it in the terms that I did is that, yes, government subsidy can be a way that an entity generates more wealth than it is spending to obtain it. But it is only one way. If that particular way is special, it is only due to its especially feedback-isolating effects (being beholden to voluntary customers for money provides more direct feedback than being beholden to another over-large entity), rather than any special "government" badness.
refurb 12y ago
The big difference there is that when a company is wasteful, they do it with their own money. When the state is wasteful, that's my money they are pissing away.
- sklogic 12y ago
  This difference is not that clear. Governments are bailing out failing banks and handing out beefy contracts; pension funds are owning sizeable proportions of the huge, slow, stupid companies, etc. All with my money.
  - refurb 12y ago
    I think your comment supports my point entirely. Your issue is with the gov't and pension funds, not with the slow, stupid companies.
    - sklogic 12y ago
      Money is not my only issue. Bullshit jobs are also bothering me, as well as the fact that I'm forced to deal with such inefficient and stupid entities on a daily basis. Banking, shopping, whatever else - you can't hide from the large companies stupidity.

by sklogic 12y ago

jerf 12y ago

While I sometimes describe myself as "libertarian", this is actually closer to one of my core positions. Large organizations become large because somehow, at some point in their past, they discovered how to produce some sort of wealth greatly in excess of what they were spending to produce it. This creates security for the entity. This security means that they are no longer getting feedback from the real world about what is working and not working; long before the feedback reaches the people in the organization it needs to reach, it has been absorbed by the buffers of high wealth and a lot of people. Consequently the entity begins acting without feedback from the real world. As control systems theory would teach us, the system begins slowly-but-inevitably spinning out of control until it finally exceeds its buffers and comes down in one or another form of catastrophe. I've phrased this in "wealth" and "feedback" because it has jack-shit to do with "capitalism" or "socialism" or anything else. It's a general problem with things that get too big. (It does so happen to be a special case of this problem that many, many people want to pile everything into one big entity and call it the "government", but the problem is very widespread beyond just that one case.) Everything needs feedback to stay connected to the real world, and any time that an entity gets too large to respond to feedback, trouble is assured. The bigger the entity, the bigger the trouble. Big governments, big corporations, big anything is dangerous. And it's not because of some mystical badness due to largeness, it's very specifically their ability to operate without or even despite feedback from the real world. It isn't magical thinking to think that's trouble... it's magical thinking to think that entity could ever operate without feedback. Despite how this may appear to be ideology, I consider this engineering, and rather simple engineering at that. Smaller organizations can still do very bad things. My parents happen to live in a township (a local government entity that stands in for a town/city in the rural area they live) that did something very financially stupid and now they've got some disturbingly substantial extra taxes to pay for a few years to pay it off. Smallness didn't prevent the township government from doing something stupid. However, the people who did that stupid thing were immediately outsted and will never serve again... that's feedback. When's the last time you heard that last bit from a big company or government? (Who in the Federal government has ever paid for any of the bad things that you can name in the past 14 years? It's not an empty list, but it's a short one for such a massive entity and long time.) And there's a township full of people now keeping a closer eye on what financial commitments it makes. So, with that foundation, I'd submit a lot of these bullshit jobs are themselves an expression of the fantastic, astonishing wealth we've generated as a society. We have them because we can afford to have them. And don't forget the fact that the people with bullshit jobs are applying their full human intelligence to the task of looking busy, whether they are doing it on purpose or otherwise. When an entity is large and flush with cash, it lacks the motivation to push through the fog of deception and start ensuring that people are actually generating value.

jimbokun 12y ago
I think you're on to something. It's fascinating to me how executives are so often enamored with large mergers and acquisitions, while it seems very rare for such transactions to result in greater overall growth or profitability. I suspect the real reason is to increase the buffer between the CEO and real world feedback. At some level, I suspect the executives instinctively know the real reason to increase the size of the organization is to further insulate them from market feedback. Certainly makes more sense than the underlying financials in most cases, as far as I can tell.
dnautics 12y ago
(self-described libertarian here:) you don't suppose that large organizations often become large because they benefit from government subsidy? Aside from obvious candidates like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, I personally think that the inflation/investment social model whereby individuals are pushed into stock market or mutual funds that trade stocks, is a stealth subsidy that selectively benefits large companies and incentivises corporate aggregation.
- jerf 12y ago
  Obviously, my post is at best a sketch of a principle rather than a complete description of the economy and government as a whole :) But the advantage of describing it in the terms that I did is that, yes, government subsidy can be a way that an entity generates more wealth than it is spending to obtain it. But it is only one way. If that particular way is special, it is only due to its especially feedback-isolating effects (being beholden to voluntary customers for money provides more direct feedback than being beholden to another over-large entity), rather than any special "government" badness.

refurb 12y ago

The big difference there is that when a company is wasteful, they do it with their own money. When the state is wasteful, that's my money they are pissing away.

sklogic 12y ago
This difference is not that clear. Governments are bailing out failing banks and handing out beefy contracts; pension funds are owning sizeable proportions of the huge, slow, stupid companies, etc. All with my money.
- refurb 12y ago
  I think your comment supports my point entirely. Your issue is with the gov't and pension funds, not with the slow, stupid companies.
  - sklogic 12y ago
    Money is not my only issue. Bullshit jobs are also bothering me, as well as the fact that I'm forced to deal with such inefficient and stupid entities on a daily basis. Banking, shopping, whatever else - you can't hide from the large companies stupidity.