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You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

paulgraham.com

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Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#121

Post by lstodd »

Thlom wrote: post #97
lstodd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people keep suggesting solutions that were tried and failed of course other people will point that out. 1930-s Gosplan, 1950-s Gosplan, OGAS, Cybersyn, they all failed. Come up with something new maybe?

Cybersyn was an experiment and we don't really know if it would have worked or not because the USA arranged for a military coup to destroy it ...

I think later systems were at a core an attempt to implement something like high-frequency (which is a misnomer, it's more like low-latency) trading over 1960-70s tech at a scope that we still have no means to do now, in 2020s.

"trading" was ideologically prohibited term which didn't help any.

And the whole centralized approach cannot scale.

So there you have it: it can't work, please bring new ideas.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#122

Post by cindyllm »

stephbook wrote: post #49

The naturalistic fallacy needs to die. Then a metaphor about food without any expertise and "programmers are special" sprinkled in. Holy lord, what a wild ride of an article. Guess what? People weren't meant to live in stone houses and get cancer treatment either. Gathering berries all day sucks, that's why everyone abandons that lifestyle as soon as possible. Life in a big company is very well-paid for very little w…

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Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#123

Post by vhantz »

foobarian wrote: post #60
dentemple wrote: post #34

Without a firm proposal of what a company can or should do instead, this just becomes another example of complaints being easier to make than actual solutions. We all know that large corps are structured in a way that eliminates individual initiative. So what can we do about it? I've heard of "hierarchy-less" company structures being attempted before. I've also heard that each and every one of those attempts always e…

You know, you know how communism was supposed to be this nirvana where a central authority would collect all the information and dictate all operations for the good of the people? I.e. centrally planned economy? And in practice it didn't work out because of corruption and information bottlenecks and such? I wonder if a corporation type org could actually make this work by going all in on AI deeply integrated into eve…

Huge corporations like Walmart and Amazon are actually proof that central planning works. And that not planning internally is not viable, as Sears demonstrated.

But this internal planning is not enough and comes up against the limits of capitalism: production for profit and not for need, the market and the nation state. All these contributed to create a system where "too much is produced", that is too much compared to what can be sold for profit, not what is needed.

Ultimately what was missing in the Soviet Union, the democratic aspect of planning, is also what is missing today (on top of the other issues that come with production for profit).

Explained here better than can be done in a HN comment: https://www.marxist.ca/article/the-need-for-a-socialist-plan...

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#124

Post by jleyank »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #66
voakbasda wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

I haven't studied history or political science, but I suspect that a bunch of cooperating individual local municipalities can as easily lead to war as to federalism. The Federalist Papers talk a lot about factionalism versus tyranny. On a larger scale, look at how long it took what are now European Union members to stop warring with each other.

Greek city states and German petty kingdoms suggest conflict and failure to unite vs external threats common.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#125

Post by andyferris »

voakbasda wrote: post #53
antipurist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any relevant research, but to answer the "So what can we do about it?" question I have a wild idea: invert the power structure, with cooperative of workers hiring their managers instead of managers hiring workers. And no, this doesn't automatically lead to the same tree, just inverted, it could form a much flatter structure. I imagine that a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value genera…

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

One problem I see is even in representational democracy (I'll use the Westminster system for concreteness) we get a lot of indirection leading to policies people don't actually want. Even more indirection is bad.

Assume members of parliament are chosen fairly (popular vote approximates number of seats etc). The winning party (or parties) form a cabinet - their own little hierarchy. What we tend to see is a majority of cabinet members voting in cabinet for a policy, a majority of their caucus voting to support their policy (relying on cabinet solidarity to get the numbers across the line), then a majority of parliament passing a bill (using the solidarity of the party to get it across the line). The agenda may have been set by just a few parliamentarians (say just 9 out 17 cabinet members in a parliament of ~100) and an unpolular policy comes to pass.

I'd fear having local representatives choosing state representatives choosing federal representatives would have even worse outcomes in terms of representing the individuals at the "bottom" of this process. There is a reason representatives are voted for directly at each level of governments in our democracies - this wasn't a "simplification" it was a deliberate choice by our forebearers who had seen how politics shakes out in practice.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#126

Post by [deleted] »

lazy_afternoons wrote: post #39

I once worked for a unicorn (1B valuation) company where there were there were No mangers, no product managers, no appraisal (30% hike or out) The rule was "I will treat you like an adult and you have to act like one" Easily the best company I worked for and best Colleuges. But I have seen this model hiccup once it reached ~70 engineers. May be because of the structure or may be it's difficult to hire more such engin…

[deleted]

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#127

Post by alexashka »

jimbokun wrote: post #109
weakfish wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna write a shorter reply because I’m on my phone and frankly too hungry to think, so hopefully it makes sense :-) TL;DR I agree with you re: US culture being too selfish and independent for that kind of thinking. It’s something that has had my curiosity for awhile and lends to another argument I’ve tried to make - that when people say collectivist economic systems won’t work because humans are “inherently selfish,…

You would need an explanation for how every single culture in human history conditions people in this way, if it’s not connected to human nature.

False statements require no explanation.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#128

Post by maxerickson »

voakbasda wrote: post #53
antipurist wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of any relevant research, but to answer the "So what can we do about it?" question I have a wild idea: invert the power structure, with cooperative of workers hiring their managers instead of managers hiring workers. And no, this doesn't automatically lead to the same tree, just inverted, it could form a much flatter structure. I imagine that a cooperative can hire a person who measures the value genera…

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

In the US, local governments are often far worse than state and federal governments.

In general, it's because it's harder for the larger entities to get away with playing favorites (I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying that it happens a lot more in smaller units).

Paying all your taxes to the corrupt local judge (county official) is in fact not a win.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#129

Post by LordGronk »

maxerickson wrote: post #128
voakbasda wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t stop with work. Governments need to be rebuilt from the ground up. Local first, with taxes flowing there first, and only then do they start to trickle up to the county, state, regional, or federal levels. Central governments should be emergent properties of local systems working together, not a choke point of all power and taxation revenue. The current system is completely backwards, if democracy and representa…

In the US, local governments are often far worse than state and federal governments. In general, it's because it's harder for the larger entities to get away with playing favorites (I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying that it happens a lot more in smaller units). Paying all your taxes to the corrupt local judge (county official) is in fact not a win.

It’s also that, with the current system, a person who is young, talented, and ambitious who is interested in public service has little to no reason nor incentive to work outside the beltway or a state capital, leaving local governance to retirees and incompetents.

Re: You weren't meant to have a boss (2008)

#130

Post by kys11 »

LordGronk wrote: post #129
maxerickson wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, local governments are often far worse than state and federal governments. In general, it's because it's harder for the larger entities to get away with playing favorites (I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying that it happens a lot more in smaller units). Paying all your taxes to the corrupt local judge (county official) is in fact not a win.

It’s also that, with the current system, a person who is young, talented, and ambitious who is interested in public service has little to no reason nor incentive to work outside the beltway or a state capital, leaving local governance to retirees and incompetents.

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