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Care Doesn't Scale

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Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#311

Post by kubb »

svieira wrote: post #278
kubb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they ever tried to “abolish family”. Where are you getting this stuff? It sounds like bad history lessons. They did stuff like legalizing divorce, or collectivization of parenting.

> 1918 Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship > One year after the Bolsheviks took power, they ratified the 1918 Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship. The revolutionary jurists, led by Alexander Goikhbarg, adhered to the revolutionary principals of Marx, Engels, and Lenin when drafting the codes. Goikhbarg considered the nuclear family unit to be a necessary but transitive social arrangement that woul…

I hope that you can see this doesn’t say that they tried to abolish family, just weaken it.

Additionally, in the totalitarian phase which started in the late 1920s, family was supported and strengthened:

> the government of the Soviet Union first attempted to weaken the family and then to strengthen it from the 1930s onwards

It’s clear as day isn’t it? Totalitarian regimes can very much be based on family values.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#312

Post by mlsu »

bunderbunder wrote: post #249
bumby wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that highlights the issue I'm poking at. "Good communication" doesn't just mean a firehose of information at your fingertips. It means getting the right amount of information at the right time. Developing systems like the latter is much harder than the former, but they both get the same sales pitch.

This is also where I really dislike a lot of this more recent push toward automating communication. One person deciding what needs to be said, to whom, and when, can have a LOT of leverage in the productivity department, by reducing the time that tens or even hundreds or thousands of other people lose to coping with the fire hose. Microsoft Copilot has been yet another downgrade in this department. Since it got adopt…

Pretty funny to see the solution to the paperwork morass is twofold: an AI to generate paperwork and an AI to understand it.

Can we just... not do that at all?

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#313

Post by kubb »

int_19h wrote: post #266
lolinder wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expressed differently: they tried to abolish the family, found that doing so created more problems then they solved, and backed off in order to avoid tearing their country apart. They discovered that in some things doing nothing is better than doing something, but Westerners of all political stripes (both for or against authoritarianism) chronically make the mistake of assuming that everything that a totalitarian sta…

I would argue that the main reason why USSR changed so spectacularly circa WW2 is because Stalin was personally very socially conservative in many ways. It wasn't just religion during WW2 - the country reverted to traditional gender roles in general in many ways, banned abortion, made homosexuality illegal again etc. Most of the early extreme experiments that really didn't work out were already long abandoned by then…

Dictatorship is very compatible with conservative values.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#314

Post by atq2119 »

Kevguy wrote: post #242
bumby wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s an error in conflating “not for profit” with “charity”. You could provide all care at cost and have zero charity care. That d doesn’t imply all “profit” goes to executives, but rather to keep reimbursed or charged costs lower.

1. Thanks for the nuanced view. I agree that zero charity care doesn't necessarily mean greedy execs. 2. In my mind keeping costs lower is a form of charity. Especially with something as frequently difficult to understand as health care costs. 3. Executives do deserve to make a fair amount for their skills and effort. I'm not sure myself what salary I consider it fair pay vs taking greedy advantage of not-for-profit…

On your last point: I think it's useful to think in multipliers and desired outcomes.

Do you want the best doctors involved in care for patients and training juniors, or do you want them to spend time jockeying for a position in the hierarchy because that's a plausible but also the only way to 2x their income?

This doesn't fully answer the question, of course, but it suggests that large pay disparities are extremely wasteful for society as a whole.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#315

Post by taneq »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #171
vegetablepotpie wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but orgs that scale usually rely on metrics. It's metrics that are easier to measure, not the one that measure system performance (i.e. lines of code written per day, points closed per sprint) that get selected. Then management lampoon workers for not meeting those metrics (they need to prove their doing something, and can't lose control), regardless of how the system is performing. So trust erodes.

I honestly think most orgs would leap forward considerably (with some pain) by doing a severe reduction in middle management, basically making them prove why they are actually providing value, and removing them if they aren't. Tons and tons of middle managers do absolutely FUCK ALL in terms of delivering product, meeting goals, and serving customers.

You’ve never worked in middle management, have you? Just because they do largely ‘soft stuff’, mediating between different departments, teams and layers of the organisation, and (hopefully) running interference so that their team can focus unimpeded on the actual fun part of the job, doesn’t render their contribution null and void.

I’ve dealt with bad upper management, bad project management, bad clients, bad suppliers, but only rarely bad middle management. (And no, I’ve never worked in middle management although at times I’ve been some of the other categories above. :P )

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#316

Post by atq2119 »

sabarn01 wrote: post #267
harimau777 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that capitalism discourages that behavior. If the system is setup to be transactional, and you can't rely on others reciprocating altruism if you need it; then it seems like engaging in altruism would be for suckers.

capitalism is so that strangers with no reason to cooperate can via the market. It should have nothing to say about you network or closer relations and how you interact. Altruism has a large place in life but in general it is directed to friends and family then your larger social groups.

Nit: That's not the defining property of capitalism. The defining property of capitalism is that the means of production are privately owned, as opposed to e.g. market socialism.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#317

Post by s5300 »

mmooss wrote: post #272
endoblast wrote: post #109

>We’re pretty limited when it comes to care. In any given moment, you can only really care deeply and individually for one person. Absolutely. Society tends to assume that people are interchangeable units and that 'care' is a commodity which can be dispensed evenly as if from an industrial nozzle in a food factory. So we have 'care homes', 'daycare', 'care packages'. We are enjoined to be more 'caring'. But the reali…

> >We’re pretty limited when it comes to care. In any given moment, you can only really care deeply and individually for one person. The evidence very strongly points the other way, IMHO: Almost all people care deeply and individually about many others, starting with their families - spouse and children are a clear and I think irrefutable example of deep caring and love for multiple people. And for most, also sibling…

[dead]

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#318

Post by jeffreygoesto »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #262
cassepipe wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for elaborating further what we mean by "scaling". Couldn't it be said that when organization acquire ranks, it is to solve coordination problems that arise with scale but that in this case, there isn't much that is solved by more organization ?

There's also a different kind of coordination problem. The incentives of an organization - or at least of a corporation - are to make money and to continue to exist and to enrich and empower the people who control it. But employees' incentives are usually pretty different. Nurses usually get into nursing because they, at least to some extent, want to help people. Engineers get into engineering because they, at least…

The goal of "getting money" is what is the problem here. For what? To do nice things with it? Can't you do nice things in the first place? If we could agree on more than money as exchange among us, working on/in humanities would not be such a grind. The idea of "you take care of this, I take care of that" is completely lost.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#319

Post by bigstrat2003 »

com2kid wrote: post #307
dkarl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The food system is different from homecooked meals This is a good point, and everything I've heard from parents says that it's parents, not children, who identify home-cooked meals with care. Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. In order to feel cared for, all children need is to trust that the person caring for them will make sure they ge…

> Children notoriously prefer prepackaged industrially processed food over whole foods prepared with care and love. Nearly all people do, food scientists are really damn good at their job. It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain and causes people to want more. No one eats an entire bag of doritos because they taste better than a good steak.

> It isn't even that the stuff tastes better, it just triggers more of the pleasure centers in the brain...

What exactly do you think "tastes better" means? If it's triggering more of the pleasure centers of the brain, then it tastes better.

Re: Care Doesn't Scale

#320

Post by 331c8c71 »

kubb wrote: post #127
lolinder wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expressed differently: they tried to abolish the family, found that doing so created more problems then they solved, and backed off in order to avoid tearing their country apart. They discovered that in some things doing nothing is better than doing something, but Westerners of all political stripes (both for or against authoritarianism) chronically make the mistake of assuming that everything that a totalitarian sta…

I don’t think they ever tried to “abolish family”. Where are you getting this stuff? It sounds like bad history lessons. They did stuff like legalizing divorce, or collectivization of parenting.

Bolsheviks were absolutely pushing quite radical ideas on sex, rekationships and family in the early 20s e.g. Kollontai with her Glass of water theory.

https://poloniainstitute.net/recommended/the-bolshevik-sexua...

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