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Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

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Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#201

Post by brap »

solatic wrote: post #155

Author posits a causal relationship in a zero-sum game that he provides no evidence for. Paraphrasing, that uncontrollable intangibles like technology gave slightly more power to individuals and much more power to large organizations at the expense of small organizations. Since when do these uncontrollable intangibles exhibit a genuine agency of their own? Is there some zero-sum pie of power to be distributed? So if…

On one hand you’re saying property rights and free markets, on the other you’re saying private entities should be kept in check (by who? I assume the government). Isn’t that a contradiction?

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#202

Post by huijzer »

cs702 wrote: post #21

Great post, thought-provoking. Highly recommended. Interestingly, in the past, the US federal government actively made efforts to keep private organizations from becoming too dominant. Here are just a few examples, from memory: * The Bell system was broken up, resulting in a geographically distributed telecom network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System : Your phone company was local. * Banks cou…

> Interestingly, in the past, the US federal government actively made efforts to keep private organizations from becoming too dominant.

They seem to do the opposite now because small businesses can expect little support from the government (and surely no big subsidies like the large players are getting in for example the Stargate joint venture). Especially COVID was seen by many small business owners are extremely tough since larger stores were allowed to stay open while the small businesses were not.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#203

Post by [deleted] »

simpaticoder wrote: post #199
doctorpangloss wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I associate the Hacker News forum with authentic, reasoned debate and sharing of personal experience and perspective. Your comment wants to engage in a kind of rhetorical pugilism that is very common in other forums, but is uncommon here. It is a style I personally dislike and find counter-productive for every topic, inflaming emotions and driving division rather than synthesizing a variety of perspectives into an in…

[deleted]

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#204

Post by hazn »

Nadia wrote recently published the book "antimemetics" about this exact finding: https://nayafia.substack.com/p/introducing-antimemetics-my-n...

Her takeaway is that the value of small, antimemetic, high-trust groups has risen -- exactly because there are less than before

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#205

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #113
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracies, even if flawed, are accountable to their citizens at least to an extent. Stock corporation, even if flawed, are accountable to their stock holders at least to an extent; thus your point > Private companies are accountable to no one clearly does not hold. Corporations, of course, can also be steered and course-corrected (shareholders meetings).

The unit of power in stock corporations is dollars, while in democracies it is personhood. In the former, one person can acquire multiple units, while in the latter they cannot. There is an obvious difference.

> while in democracies it is personhood

Suffrage*. Not personhood.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#206

Post by 999900000999 »

Tribe is a fantastic book that goes into this, fundamentally most humans exist best when they have some form of status in their community.

This could be as simple as a small community club where your assigned a role like treasurer or something, my grandmother did this when she was young. People actually know you and care about your problems .

For various reasons, these groups just aren't as significant anymore.

There's not a really good solution to this. I'm lucky enough to be in a game dev group, and I do have my bar that I go to every now and then, but aside from that I'm not really a part of any small organizations.

I haven't been to church in decades, but arguably that's why most people actually go. It's not because you imagine God is taking attendance, but it's the joy of being around other people. Historically most people stayed in the same town from cradle to grave, maybe you would move for work, or marriage, but for the most part you just stayed put.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#207

Post by [deleted] »

yannyu wrote: post #121
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interestingly, in the past, the US federal government actively made efforts to keep private organizations from becoming too dominant. Yes but one can't just ignore the federal government itself, as if this wasn't an organization. In this framing of small organizations kept small by the government the largest organization is the State. Indeed in this framing the State's job is to control other organizations. While a…

Yes, but also we've eroded state and city rights in favor of federalism and standardization in the US as well. It's arguable that many steps in that direction have been for the better, but the consequence still remains that we've eroded the power of smaller organizations as a result. You're correct to note that this phenomenon crosses all aspects of life in the US, whether talking about churches, PTAs, book clubs, bu…

[deleted]

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#209

Post by glitchc »

cs702 wrote: post #21

Great post, thought-provoking. Highly recommended. Interestingly, in the past, the US federal government actively made efforts to keep private organizations from becoming too dominant. Here are just a few examples, from memory: * The Bell system was broken up, resulting in a geographically distributed telecom network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System : Your phone company was local. * Banks cou…

> * The Bell system was broken up, resulting in a geographically distributed telecom network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System : Your phone company was local.

It's worth noting that Bell's size and reach allowed it to create Bell Labs, and the subsequent breakup led to their eventual demise.

Re: Terence Tao: The role of small organizations in society has shrunk significantly

#210

Post by brap »

Large organizations provide economical value.

Small organizations provide a sense of belonging.

Both can and do exist at the same time. We don’t need to compare them using the same scales and we don’t need to sacrifice one for the other.

You can shop at Amazon but go to the local bar. Work at Google and attend church. Vote for The Party and start a garage band. Now more than ever we have the time and resources to do both.

Although I agree this is easy to forget.

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