Comment by Arodex

8 days ago

>It's baffling how these people have entirely shut their ears to all the obvious warnings about this, and are now congratulating themselves for their slightly less psychotic outlook and pivoting to blaming the workers for inefficient usage, after specifically forcing them to tokenmaxx.

It's not baffling. They are a caste, wholly insulated from the consequences of their own actions.

Almost every company is run in a basic dictatorial way. We almost never discuss it, when there is a wide corpus of political Science analysing the pros and cons of governance models that certainly puts it at the bottom.

>They are a caste

Sometimes literally.

(Meaning that it's not just business school indoctrination, but a dynamic they've been raised to expect and uphold. Fixing it isn't simply about convincing them of the folly of their approach, because you're attacking their personal sense of self in doing so. Which, I'm to understand, is a no-no, professionally.)

If it was so clearly ineffective, why does it get challenged more often and replaced? Existing corporations aren't likely to change, but new startups and work owned coops exist, so why don't they compete?

Maybe ranking it on a scale of best to worse is too simplistic a view, and there are reasons this develops. Maybe it is the best option when there is a good leader, thus such structures dominate, much as a government ran by philosopher kings are better. But this only lasts as long as a wise rule is in charge, and it reverts back to a norm, and eventually, due to pure time and chance, enough bad leaders come on board that slowly dismantle the giants, but this happens at a time scale we don't particularly notice due to how much inertia large corporations can have (before we even get into the less pleasant issues like regulatory capture).

  • >If it was so clearly ineffective, why does it get challenged more often and replaced?

    I supposed you meant "why doesn't it get challenged"?

    Well, look at how long it took for a democratic/Republican system to appear and survive. The French 1st Republic was immediately at war with all of Europe (I am not talking of Napoleon at all here, it was before that, when the French King was executed).

    Nowadays, good luck getting any kind of financing with an "alternative" governance model. The banks and investors will either refuse or edge by pushing higher return rates on you. The whole system is conservative.

    The adage "democracy is the worst system, apart from all others" only becomes true long-term. There are plenty of short-lived democracies back to antiquity, in the middle of the middle ages, during the Renaissance, the XIXth century... All stamped down by "more efficient" dictatorial empires... That aren't here anymore. You can expect the same in the even more cutthroat corporate environment, where fitting the system buys you leverage.

    And don't get me stated on startups: most of them seek only an exist strategy. Very few challenge any existing behemoth. They are basically externalized R&D.

    • Apologies on the typo.

      One other question I had but wasn't sure if it would leave my previous post too unfocused is "aren't we a bit too early to determine in our current government systems are really the most effective?" This is something that will be decided by political scientists far removed from the current societies who can see how our current societies evolve.

  • Dictatorial systems are most assuredly good at one thing: consolidating wealth and power.

I should have perhaps said "galling" instead.

After ejecting anyone who spoke out or were even publicly hesistant against the hard swerve into "just do maximal amounts of AI stuff above all else", they're now surprised to find that everyone that remains is dutifully excited about the emperor's new clothes, and yet he remains mysteriously exposed to the breeze.

> Almost every company is run in a basic dictatorial way. We almost never discuss it, when there is a wide corpus of political Science analysing the pros and cons of governance models that certainly puts it at the bottom.

Is it not wild that in the Freedom Loving West, we all spend the vast majority of our time as adults living inside tiny totalitarian states?

I think this persists largely because the people atop those tiny states are also the ones behind most of our media apparatus, so they can make it look and feel pretty normal. But that may be a little tinfoil hat of me.