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Accountability Sinks

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81–90 of 407 posts

Re: Accountability Sinks

#81

> Bad people react to this by getting angry at the gate attendant; good people walk away stewing with thwarted rage. I disagree, slightly. We have to expect some degree of ethical behaviour from everyone, even those who nominally have no room to manoeuvre. If everyone in such positions were to disobey unjust orders the orders would eventually have to change. Walking away stewing in rage does nothing except fill you w…

If I ever feel like writing my own "12 Rules for Life", one of them is going to be called "Don't yell at the Barista" or some version of that. You can get angry, but not at the person who would probably get fired for showing initiative. Find the people actually responsible and yell at them.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no way I could convince her that it wasn't my fault. Perhaps there was a rigid process in place that disallowed her from helping, even though I'd make it to the second flight on time. Yeah they generally have the capability to prevent that auto cancellation of your segments (within a certain time frame) but in this case unfortunately they were unwilling or it was too late to catch it. It's generally to pr…

> It's generally to protect revenue because buying A-B-C instead of B-C can be cheaper, and hoards of people used to just segments to save money. So they just assume everyone is trying to cheat them. Isn't it ridiculous in the first place that flying A-B-C is less expensive than B-C? These are the pricing games airlines deliberately play to make more money out of nothing.

>Isn't it ridiculous in the first place that flying A-B-C is less expensive than B-C?

It's no more ridiculous than something being cheaper at a liquidation store than a retail store.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#83
post #49

One example that's missing from the list is the TV series 24. A recurring plot point was that, yes, of course torture is bad and it's against the rules and we don't do it, etc etc, but it just so happens that here is such an exceptional, unprecedented, deeply urgent emergency situation where we need to have the information now or horrible things will happen, we need the hero who breaks the rules and goes on torturing…

Convictions aren't convictions if you abandon them when it's hard. It's just cosplay

Re: Accountability Sinks

#84
post #22

> Bad people react to this by getting angry at the gate attendant; good people walk away stewing with thwarted rage. Notwithstanding the rest of the column, this particular example brings the following thought to mind: It could actually be argued that getting angry at the gate attendant is not a "bad people" response. Suppose that under those circumstances, the typical individual passenger would demand the gate atten…

Still wouldn't change a thing. The gate keeper has no say into who gets let on the plane and who doesn't, they are there just to enforce the decision. The only way to get this solved is if in the executive meetings one person goes "Our processes that bumps people resulted in xxxxxx cost, that's too much". The way those costs are incurred doesn't matter, if its direct compensation or fines, but unless you can attach a…

> The gate keeper has no say into who gets let on the plane and who doesn't, they are there just to enforce the decision.

No, that's not true. He is literally, physically, the gate keeper: To pass the gate, he has to let you pass. Now, you could insert another gate keeper into the scenario at the entrance to the airplane, or some turn-style with a scanner etc. but that wouldn't change the basic argument, just make the scenario a little more complex.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#85
> And it turns out that the German soldiers faced surprisingly mild consequences for disobeying unlawful orders.

Huh. Franz Jägerstätter was executed for refusing to fight in the war.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#86
post #49

One example that's missing from the list is the TV series 24. A recurring plot point was that, yes, of course torture is bad and it's against the rules and we don't do it, etc etc, but it just so happens that here is such an exceptional, unprecedented, deeply urgent emergency situation where we need to have the information now or horrible things will happen, we need the hero who breaks the rules and goes on torturing…

[flagged]

Re: Accountability Sinks

#87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You somehow can't apply logical statements to what we choose to kill and eat. Cultures differ on their opinions here. But at some extreme we should all be vegan.

The logic is simple, we eat what's convenient to produce and we construct our morals around that.

Meat costs a lot to produce. We eat it because it tastes good, not because it's convenient.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#88
post #44
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you imply that there is another Holocaust currently ongoing?

Look at what's happening in the US right now. People getting snatched off the streets. This is how it starts.

And a large part of the population are cheering it on.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#89
post #11

Another fun one is asking for a higher salary - for obvious reasons moderately sized companies have formal systems that make it logically impossible to do on an employees initiative (the boss doesn't control salaries, payroll doesn't control salaries and all the formal systems point to the boss and payroll). The real approach is that a worker has to somehow convince one of the people with serious power to overrule th…

> the boss doesn't control salaries

I would call them a supervisor then.

It’s not logically impossible for any buyer to decide to pay or not pay more to a seller, it just depends how replaceable the buyer thinks the seller is, and how much they care (the buyer could be retiring with golden parachutes before shit hits the fan).

Re: Accountability Sinks

#90
Ah, I love when I'm a software engineer sitting for coffee in the morning, and I open up my tech newspaper to read some extremely overly verbose way of explaining to me like I was just born that yelling at floor staff doesn't change anything (this is actually not a product of modern society, you could yell at a soldier fighting against you and that also won't change anything). Had to stop after that second massive quote. Seriously, what? I thought this was going to be about managing the 1000 compliance settings in Azure and how that sucks.
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