Gregory's ServerIf you're interested in understanding what's wrong with corporations right now, what's driving our global capitalist omnishambles? This is an amazingly insightful (if long, and entertainment-industry focussed) deep dive into the madness of modern management theories:
 55 comments
Nah not really any of that, mostly talking about how execs with no actual domain expertise are a net loss for companies in a capitalist framing. Some mentions about proper leadership being about nurturing and growing people, which in itself is a slight nod towards the infantilizing views of capitalist societies where workers are seen as children to be tended to, as opposed to being grown-ass people who know their shit and can work together without additional supervision.  @cstross Something I feel all these pieces miss is how the demographics play into this. The need to grow enormously and the need to spend so much money on everything that there is no real impact of doing it wrong (no nega feedback loop) is intimately linked to the fact the *retirement schemes* money needs to get invested somewhere. And there was bluntly not enough stuff to invest in. So we have a whole industry dedicated to finding ways to do this, and modern management is the answer to that. @cstross <Reads article. Looks at how UK politics keeps trying to pull power away from experts and back to central Government. Rereads article> @mrdalesmith Those folks with MBAs I know (who aren't shitheads) say it's really basic stuff, the magic you get from it is the interpersonal networking with other MBAs. So look at Rishi Sunak as the type specimen. I think we could do better by crunching the MBA down to the absolute basics of management theory and making it an elective extra course available with any other degree. In other words, dilute and devalue it by making it part of what everyone knows, rather than mystical executive shit. @cstross Back in the day, I did a HR qualification and I felt almost exactly the same: the people who needed to know this stuff were the staff and their managers, not people like me who exclusively got flown in when someone had severely fucked up because they didn’t know it. The more this knowledge gets spread around, the more people will be aware of what’s happening when things go South and be able to act appropriately. @cstross (As an aside, the best thing I learned on my course was that pregnant people can do whatever they want in the workplace because no-one can prove their behaviour isn’t linked to the pregnancy, and firing people for being pregnant is an instant loss at a tribunal) @cstross @mrdalesmith That will never happen because the business schools at universities rely on this mystique to get huge tuition fees from students. It's not in their interest to devalue it. @mrdalesmith @cstross There's a business school shaped carbuncle attached to the place I work, so my dreams are very much tempered by reality. @davecl42 @mrdalesmith Yeah: so to add to my to-do list is, nationalize higher education (and private fee-paying schools at every level). @cstross @mrdalesmith Not sure that a nationalised university system is what you want. You really don't want Johnson or Truss (or Trump!) setting curricula! @davecl42 @mrdalesmith Indeed, but it should be possible to design circuit-breakers to prevent political meddling. The NHS is a case in point: despite *decades* of trying to corrode it, the Torie haven't quite succeeded in breaking it. @cstross @mrdalesmith This was true of universities too, but the combination of REF, TEF and capped tuition fees have done it, so we now have the rise of business school bollocks and the fall of modern languages, english, history etc.  @cstross One thing I did when I was working up to buying a house was read a bunch of landlord stuff. And well that doesn't apply to owner occupied housing. But what is useful to to learn the simplistic models they use to value assets. And then realized that's how everything has been run for 50 years in the west. And it shows. It's renters all the way down and slumlords all the way up. @cstross I keep being reminded of this scene as I read it: https://youtu.be/qaF8_islEZA?si=HtTFUVVXa8PnuQqu  @cstross The US system of production depends on business owners using their wealth as productive capital and major business owners have abandoned this. If this continues, the end result will be a gutted economy dominated by a handful of wealthy people, like that of Russia or Mexico. These people aren't capitalists. I've started calling them economic nihilists. http://adviceunasked.blogspot.com/2024/03/neo-feudalism-anti-capitalism.html   @cstross I am watching this dynamic close up and personal with many of my former clients, who have now moved into the extractive phase solely to make their stock price go up by any means necessary. They used to make a great product, & are busy gutting it on the Number Go Up alter. Notice no corporation ever settles into their old age of a stable stock price & issues dividends anymore? @EricCarroll If I was Planetary Overlord, I'd have to urgently consider proposals to abolish shares and dividends and replace them with company interest-bearing bond issues as a way of raising working capital. Share ownership in joint stock corporations has turned into a toxic death-spiral of short-termism. @EricCarroll @cstross Tobin tax (tax on all financial transactions to discourage speculation). Tobin disavowed it eventually, but it greatly reduces the most serious abuses, especially the tendency to pump money into things that will inevitably become illegal sooner or later (unless so much money is pumped in that they buy the regulator).  @cstross @EricCarroll Another (not exclusive) option is to removed limited liability: you own shares, you're liable for that percentage of the business debts if it goes bust. @EricCarroll @cstross For an investor it's a failure when the outcome is a stable company with 20 people doing what they like on a yearly 4 million USD revenue with 15% profit margin. @grimmware I am unfamiliar with Nu Metal. * Shakes walking stick at passing cloud, shouts in Paleo-Goth *  @grimmware @cstross There is no shame in admitting your shame. I only know Linkin Park via my wife, who knows no shame. (cc @CatRyan) @kianryan @grimmware @cstross I sit here in my Barbie t-shirt, with a drawer full of nin, electric 6, and Amanda Palmer shirts... Of course you mention my choice of nu metal in my Youth.. of course. @cstross They're a super popular nu metal band from the 2000s. Like @grimmware, I couldn't not notice that once I saw that, especially since every single new section starts with a Linkin Park lyric. Did you read the entire article? The author acknowledges that that's what they did in the last couple paragraphs. @grimmware @anvit @cstross "Technically in a meeting" I guess that's my next hour sorted.  @cstross 'tis indeed a MUST READ for being a TL;DR of this hellscape of late-stage capitalism; ESPECIALLY how he explains corporate hierarchies, set up by the capitalists themselves, to be social classes perpetually at war. @cstross This is a damn good writeup. "They’re fracking the economy, in other words, and the only thing coming out of it is a great deal of suffering. The people who are doing well are so irrelevant that in data science, we’d call them statistically insignificant outliers."   @ratkins I'm opposed to killing. (But I'd be quite happy to ban MBAs from all non-manual labour for a number of years and confiscate their assets for the duration on the grounds that they're almost certainly the proceeds of crime.) @cstross And any rational person in an actual democracy would vote for leaders (there’s that word again) who would institute regulation, hell, even a tax regime, that would tamp down the excesses of the MBA-class. But the underlying problem is regulatory capture.  |
@cstross Does it go into the actual political and ideological reasons, or is it mostly surface-level stuff? Any class analysis or talk about how unions and organized labor fits into the picture?