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The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

tech.mit.edu

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Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#91

Post by repsilat »

strongsauce wrote: post #65
jonp wrote: post #8

The author's first two articles on Dubai: http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N16/dubai.html http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N17/dubai.html

thanks for this, tried looking for them after the little footnote but their website had no links to them that i could find.

Interestingly, a google search for "This is the first in a four-part series on the author’s experiences as a consultant in Dubai." and "This is the second in a four-part series on the author’s experiences as a consultant in Dubai." (with or without the quotes) turns up the other two articles well enough.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#92

Post by Murkin »

abalashov wrote: post #50
holdenc wrote: post #46

This story is written with a wonderful naivete. Consultants like BCG exist only to lend credentials and competent temporary labor. The companies who hire these consultants are looking for affirmation and peace of mind -- most of them too mired in bureaucracy or incompetence to draw even the most basic conclusions by themselves.

Still, it's hard to believe that peace of mind is worth paying 5 kids graduated 6 weeks ago in Political Science from Stanford to come give Powerpoints on meaningless, vapid crapola billed to you each at $300/hr, even where such figures don't make much of a blip on the bottom line.

Or simply "Cover my ass" jobs.

Before middle management makes a big decision, they need to prepare the ground work of excuses they will use if the project fails.

Expert report is an excellent tool to show your boss and shift the blame. (And hey, the company is paying for it).

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#93

Post by albertsun »

strongsauce wrote: post #65
jonp wrote: post #8

The author's first two articles on Dubai: http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N16/dubai.html http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N17/dubai.html

thanks for this, tried looking for them after the little footnote but their website had no links to them that i could find.

Clicking on the author's name will also bring them up.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#94

Post by Confusion »

dantheman wrote: post #35
barrkel wrote: post #21

Something that leaped out at me: "I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system". Voluntary exchange is not a moral system. A free market doesn't have morals.

You are completely incorrect, the free market is a moral system because it does not rely on coercion or force to compel others to interact. All interactions in a free market system are voluntary and beneficial to all participants in the transaction. No other economic system can make those claims.

Firstly, 'The free market' can never be 'a moral system'. The first term refers to a system of trading, where goods and services are interchanged and relative monetary values are established. The second refers to sets of principles, reasons and motives for doing certain things. The first is at most a subset of the second, but that is only the case if you amend it with a philosophy that equates monetary value to moral value.

Secondly, your view of free markets is naive. Lack of transparency and the problem of monopolies are only a few of the many problems that completely free markets suffer from. We have an FTC, because markets need to be regulated. Leaving them completely free leads to morally unacceptable results.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#95

Post by barrkel »

oconnore wrote: post #86
barrkel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have completely missed the point. Contrasting economic systems is completely irrelevant . The choice here is not between different economic systems, but between different moral systems. You cannot make a free market your moral system because markets are amoral . That is, it is not that they are not immoral and so should be replaced with something else; rather, they have no moral content - morality comes from some…

Your use of "moral content" is entirely ambiguous, because that content will vary depending on which moral system you refer. And since a market is essentially an amalgamation of individuals (whom likely have or are capable of inducing moral content through their actions and desires), it is likely that a market has a great deal of moral content regardless of which system you pick.

The moral system I'm referring to is the moral system called "free market" - which is what the article actually says.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#96

Post by barrkel »

tkahn6 wrote: post #84
barrkel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have completely missed the point. Contrasting economic systems is completely irrelevant . The choice here is not between different economic systems, but between different moral systems. You cannot make a free market your moral system because markets are amoral . That is, it is not that they are not immoral and so should be replaced with something else; rather, they have no moral content - morality comes from some…

Do not confuse capitalism with anarchism. Capitalism believes in a government which protects private property and human life with physical force. You can pay someone to punch someone else, but that's inconsistent with capitalistic philosophy.

Why would a government protect human life with physical force? Remember, the justification must be from a free market, not with reference to some other moral system.

What, in a free market moral system, prevents slavery? The justification must come from the free market, if free market is to be the moral system.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#97

Post by fauigerzigerk »

Silhouette wrote: post #19
bkrausz wrote: post #12

The tl;dr version: Large consulting companies often tell their clients what they want to hear, which more or less negates the point of consultants but can often pay better. There are ethical concerns here. I like the story, but the article itself has way too many metaphors that cloud the point. Or maybe I'm just too used to having all my stories condensed into 140 characters...

There was another important point: a guy new to the consulting business and with no significant amount of relevant training or support wound up being marketed as an expert and became the senior person on each project he joined. I've seen this in action, both from the client side (management brought in absurdly highly paid consultants to back up what they wanted when their own people wouldn't support it) and the other…

Shareholders care only about relative performance. Absolute performance is irrelevant. So as long as all big companies in a particular sector waste X on consultants, that's fine for the shareholder. It doesn't even affect the dividend as you might think, because if everyone does it the cost can be passed on to clients.

Shareholders start to care once a lean competitor enters the scene. Someone who does away with all the fluff and is more profitable. These things happen. But my reaction as a shareholder is to become a shareholder of the better company and dump the stock of the inefficient one. I'm not trying to make the inefficient company more efficient. Some activist shareholders do that, but most don't.

There is one very important truth that too few people are considering: Shareholders are not entrepreneurs. Most shareholders have no interest in improving a particular company. Their interest is in choosing undervalued companies and selling them when they are not undervalued any longer, preferably at a higher price.

The distinction between investors and speculators is a lie. There is no difference between the two. The important difference is the one between owners and entrepreneurs.

Re: The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

#99

Post by fauigerzigerk »

"Absent negative externalities or monopoly effects, a man receives from the free market what he gives to it, his material worth is a running tally of the net benefit that he has provided to his fellow man"

I'm not surprised that someone whose ideology makes him believe that Einstein's contribution to society was smaller than that of the bosses of Lehman or AIG would be disappointed by reality. Or is it that reality itself is a "negative externality"?

No, I think the issue is one of faulty interpretation of that ideology. It's a serious mistake that people make all the time. They mix up statistical probabilities and individual causality. The average efficiency of markets includes scams as well as geniuses. It includes people who contribute a lot but market themselves badly and it includes the exact opposite.

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