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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)

#141

Post by green_wheel »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #28
lordkrandel wrote: post #3

If I hear the argument of "naturality" and "natural design" I explode. We are "naturally" meant to die at 21, after getting whatever illness, never to move with massive transport, not even speak. 'cause all we naturally are is monkeys, right? AaaaaRGHHHH This argument makes me nuts

I think there can be a middle ground here. Yes the appeal to nature fallacy is a thing. However, it's not obviously wrong to say that humans evolved in a specific environment, and to question whether moving them to a completely different environment is going to make their life worse. We evolved living in smaller cooperative groups, and spending most of our time in nature. The farther we move away from that the more w…

Working 90 hours a week in a 15 person startup is arguably further from what we were supposed to do than cruising at Google

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

#142

Post by lordkrandel »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #28
lordkrandel wrote: post #3

If I hear the argument of "naturality" and "natural design" I explode. We are "naturally" meant to die at 21, after getting whatever illness, never to move with massive transport, not even speak. 'cause all we naturally are is monkeys, right? AaaaaRGHHHH This argument makes me nuts

I think there can be a middle ground here. Yes the appeal to nature fallacy is a thing. However, it's not obviously wrong to say that humans evolved in a specific environment, and to question whether moving them to a completely different environment is going to make their life worse. We evolved living in smaller cooperative groups, and spending most of our time in nature. The farther we move away from that the more w…

Not counting that we already have been studying our own behaviour for thousands of years, as social individuals and society... sometimes you just cannot go back, throw a bat on everyone's head and convince everyone that since we work better in groups of 7, there shall be no corporation

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

#143

Post by weakfish »

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.

I mean... that's just.. wrong?

Indigenous North American cultures, Amish cultures, medieval monastic communities, the list goes on.

Really, you can't just make blanket claims like that over _all of human history_ and expect to be right.

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

#144

Post by weakfish »

alexashka wrote: post #127
jimbokun wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, the comment you're replying to is patently false, as explained in a separate comment.

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

#145

Post by weakfish »

jimbokun wrote: post #108
weakfish wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should coin a law that any time something vaguely cooperative or worker-focused is proposed, someone will inevitably reply that it will fail because the Soviet Union did something sort of maybe similar once.

It certainly has to be considered. China and the Soviet Union are the largest scale attempts to implement a cooperative system and they failed in spectacular and tragic ways. So you certainly need to consider why the new plan will be different and won’t meet the same fate.

"Cooperative system" is such an immensely broad net. I could also say that the largest scale attempt ever at implementing a competitive system failed when the market crashed in 2008, so you probably shouldn't try starting a company again. But that would be silly, wouldn't it?

For whatever it's worth, I'm not a communist or a Soviet apologist or what have you. I also just think it's incredibly silly that Westerners are so conditioned to jump at the hint of the Soviet's shadow when there's any suggestion that capitalism might not be the most effective economic system.

The common counterpoint to that is "capitalism isn't perfect, but it's the best we got!" And maybe I'm naive, but I can't help but think humans can do way better. Isn't capitalism supposed to be a bet on human ingenuity? Then why do we pretend that humans are inherently limited when it comes to creating a good society?

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

#146

Post by weakfish »

lstodd wrote: post #121
Thlom wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's impossible to debate a topic with someone who takes anecdotes, declares it is proof of something and then says smugly "there you have it!"

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

weakfish wrote: post #146
lstodd wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's impossible to debate a topic with someone who takes anecdotes, declares it is proof of something and then says smugly "there you have it!"

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by rcxdude »

lowercased wrote: post #117
jimbokun wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah a lot of management isn’t just a desire for power and control over others, but just the unglamorous and boring work of tracking what everyone is working on and how it fits into the bigger picture. In large organizations it becomes harder and harder for individual contributors to see how their work fits into the larger organization.

"In large organizations it becomes harder and harder for individual contributors to see how their work fits into the larger organization." ... because the planning and reasoning and vision aren't shared? As an IC - in small and large companies - I would often get this "you just don't understand" and "you don't see the big picture". Well.. because it's not shared. Decisions made in secret, or in boardrooms without any…

Maybe, there is an aspect of things being deliberately kept hidden, but also communicating this stuff is just pretty hard. Large organizations often spend huge amounts of effort on it and still get things wrong.

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

#149

Post by jimbokun »

HWR_14 wrote: post #120
jimbokun wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly has to be considered. China and the Soviet Union are the largest scale attempts to implement a cooperative system and they failed in spectacular and tragic ways. So you certainly need to consider why the new plan will be different and won’t meet the same fate.

China failed? They seem to be doing well to me.

Their Communist system failed. They experienced increasing prosperity when they adopted capitalism.

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

#150

Post by wahern »

antipurist wrote: post #50
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…

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…

That's how the oldest European universities worked originally, the students hired the teachers. I don't remember how long that system lasted or exactly why it ended, but the history might be instructive.
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