Groups never admit failure
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Re: Groups never admit failure
#2I was on the board of a foundation that was charged with giving out money for a cause, and I found it very disillusioning because what I learned was that no matter what the foundation did, they would declare victory. Every project was victorious. Every project was a success. There was a lot of back slapping. There were a lot of high-sounding mission statements and vision statements, a lot of congratulations, a lot of nice dinners—but nothing ever got done.
This is what most nonprofits, and a surprisingly large number of businesses, are like: https://seliger.com/2012/03/25/why-fund-organizations-throug.... Some nonprofits mistakenly believe that grant evaluations are about evaluating the efficacy of the program, rather than declaring victory: https://seliger.com/2013/06/02/with-charity-for-all-ken-ster...
Re: Groups never admit failure
#3A group will never admit they were wrong. A group will never admit, “We made a mistake,” because a group that tries to change its mind falls apart. I’m hard pressed to find examples in history of large groups that said, “We thought A, but the answer’s actually B.”
Now that is a useful insight.
It's a big problem for voluntary associations. Companies can sometimes change their culture, but it usually requires replacing the CEO.
This has come up a few times in military history. "L'audace, toujours l'audace" was a WWI French slogan. It took a huge number of casualties before high command got it that charging into machine guns does not work. Courage does not help. In WWII, a big change was discovering that battleships are not useful once the enemy has torpedo bombers. The resistance of the battleship admirals was overcome by Congress, not the Navy. Congress ordered that the captains of aircraft carriers must be qualified to fly aircraft. Sidelining the "Gun Club" took major political effort.
Now, the US military is struggling with the "Fighter Mafia", which tends to run the USAF despite the ascendancy of drones and the usefulness of the A-10.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#4No post body was provided.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#5Quoted post unavailable.
You speak as if theres anotver reality than profit. There is none
Re: Groups never admit failure
#6I can’t agree more with this post. This brings to mind some Milton Friedman quotes:
* Governments never learn. Only people learn.
* One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
* He moves fastest who moves alone.
* Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own…
* It's always so attractive to be able to do good at someone else’s expense.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#7Re: Groups never admit failure
#8Quoted post unavailable.
Money is the medium of transaction of human needs and desires. Profit causes global warming only in so much as it fulfills human needs and desires for light, heat, transportation, industry, and energy in general.
Your argument is not with profit but with human nature, which in its infinite ambition always desires more. Removing the profit motive is like shooting the messenger, your fundamental issue remains unaddressed. Easy evidence for this is that communist societies are by no means greener or less rapacious than capitalist ones.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#9Quoted post unavailable.
You speak as if theres anotver reality than profit. There is none
Exactly what a devout believer of the market ideology would say. The market is a social construction. If you can't imagine a different social arrangement then nothing will change and the planet will continue to become less and less habitable for people.
Re: Groups never admit failure
#10Quoted post unavailable.
Money is the medium of transaction of human needs and desires. Profit causes global warming only in so much as it fulfills human needs and desires for light, heat, transportation, industry, and energy in general. Your argument is not with profit but with human nature, which in its infinite ambition always desires more. Removing the profit motive is like shooting the messenger, your fundamental issue remains unaddress…
This is a common confusion. My argument is with profits and not with human nature because human nature is malleable. People can change their eating habits, they can change their transportation habits, they can change institutional arrangements that favor profits over well-being, they can change the forms of market transactions they find valuable.
This isn't anything deep. These are just basic facts.