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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

#551

Post by darkwater »

rawgabbit wrote: post #325
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually not advocating for a reduction in the size of government bodies and I'm a bit frustrated about it. I'm not advocating anything about the size of government bodies (though naturally I have my feelings.) I'm confused why people seem to be intuiting this. I'm in fact doubly frustrated because I feel that people seem to be injecting modern political points into something that I feel predates many of our mode…

Hmmm... I would argue the disengagement of citizens and the lack of participation is not strictly because of organizational size. It is the fact these organizations cannot care less about their customers, citizens, or the law. These rogue organizations are typically large. The cause of disengagement is that organizations, large or small, are not responsive to customers needs or citizens needs. In many cases, they are…

Unresponsiveness is still a factor of size. First, there are numbers: typically only of X% of clients will have problems. As a company, you can either fix that problem or ignore it. If you ignore it, eventually the customer will churn. Now, if the market is made of 5-6 mega-corps, as a churned customer you have only a few options for a migration. That will rise (eventually) your bar to churn out.

If the market was made of 2000 small companies, you have much more options and companies are forced to better interact with you. Also, with a smaller user base a user churning is a higher percentage of revenue loss so, they are even more interested.

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

#552

Post by wolvesechoes »

hudon wrote: post #530
pessimizer wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an explosion of these little groups in the US after the 1st edition of Robert's Rules of Order was published, which incidentally was also heavily adopted by churches (and women's suffrage groups, who helped him with the Newly Revised.) I'd say this fulmination culminated in FDR and strong unions, aspects of both made illegal afterwards - term limits to limit democracy, striking made into a kabuki ritual by…

I don't know if it's intentional, isn't this the ultimate form of liberalism? To give the individual full autonomy, unshackled from the dependencies of family, neighbors, community, and any other local associations individuals are "born in". Seems like we are exactly where we've been aiming at for a couple hundred years.

Yeah, liberalism preaches selfishness under the false guise of pseudo-individualism. Everyone today is special, unique individual, but ironically, at the same time, almost identical to the next special, unique individual, with their identity constructed by fervent consumption of the same mass produced goods and images.

Final product of liberalism is Nietzsche's Last Man.

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

#553

Post by wolvesechoes »

softwaredoug wrote: post #261

Is there data to back this up? I'm skeptical. I see all kinds of "small organizations" forming in Slack communities, subreddits, and other online spaces. Some might be described as influencer driven communities like substack. Or audiences of a specific podcast. And so on. It's almost never been easier to participate in one of these "organizations". Even locally, where I live, the school board, city council, local adv…

Subreddits and Slack "communities" do not form communities. Bonds created in such groups are as ephemeral as the nature of communication enabling them.

In the same way bunch of individuals do not exhaust the meaning of the concepts of society and nation.

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

#554

Post by wolvesechoes »

esjeon wrote: post #545

What's being described here lines up with what Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt warned about decades ago. Habermas, for instance, wrote about the "colonization of the lifeworld", where large systems eat into the small, everyday spaces in which people actually build meaning and trust. Arendt, likewise, warned about the fragility of such "space of appearance", where people gather, talk, and act together. The result is…

Many insights described by technically-oriented people are quite old and better expressed in the work of humanities they so often despise.

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

#556

Post by merlinnn »

A corollary of economies of scale is high opportunity cost for maintaining small organizations. Partly because of this, many institutions providing the benefits of small organizations have high costs of entry---sport/country clubs, boating groups, HOAs, social clubs, etc. The opportunity cost is real, and it must be paid.

This has made membership to small organizations unaffordable for some portions of society. Especially students, fresh graduates, and other young people in formative parts of their lives. The result is a disenfranchised youth with very weak ties to a disparate and diffuse set of communities, and often none of those communities are robust enough to supply the empathetic benefits mentioned by Tao in the post.

It seems like this trend is only increasing in the near term.

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

#557

Post by ako »

ezst wrote: post #154
ako wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and that is why big countries should also be broken up. No more countries over 50m citizens. Many people in Europe don’t want the EU, but there’s really no alternative when competing with large countries like China and US.

> Many people in Europe don't want the EU Those things Americans say about the rest of the world...

Who is the American here? I’m from the Netherlands, very much pro-eu, but also see lots of people complaining.

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

#558

Post by toofy »

tjs8rj wrote: post #548
snowwrestler wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall national wealth and power shrink under monopoly super corporations, that is the reason it is a matter of public policy in the first place. If you go back and review the major antitrust actions of the 20th century, each one was followed by an explosion of market-creating innovation: Standard Oil, Bell Telephone, even Microsoft. Look even further back, and many national economies were organized around a few sta…

Really? 20 mid sized Googles is better for US power than 1 mega Google dominating the planet? Repeat for any corporation. Breaking these megacorps benefits little guys like you and me, but I doubt it benefits state power on the global stage

i think it could be argued that sure, 20 Googles would be better for US power, yes. why wouldn’t it be? it would drive more innovation which likely would only increase our influence on multiple levels.

there could be more reason to argue it would absolutely be more secure—if any of these tech giants or one of the people inside were to sell us out it could be very very bad. if one or two out of twenty were to sell us out, the damage is much much less severe.

not to mention we’re significantly stronger as a country when we have diversity of ideas leading to diversity in innovation which the dominance from a tiny few just entirely undermines.

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

#559

Post by littlestymaar »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #494
littlestymaar wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What small groups though? YouTube is owned and moderated by a trillion dollar company which heavily editorialize the user feed. And more an more YouTube channels are owned by PE funds.

The small groups of influencers. YouTube is the new spectrum and public square. That’s why it was so harmful when Biden censored tens of thousands on it.

> That’s why it was so harmful when Biden censored tens of thousands on it.

Come on.

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

#560

Post by softwaredoug »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #553
softwaredoug wrote: post #261

Is there data to back this up? I'm skeptical. I see all kinds of "small organizations" forming in Slack communities, subreddits, and other online spaces. Some might be described as influencer driven communities like substack. Or audiences of a specific podcast. And so on. It's almost never been easier to participate in one of these "organizations". Even locally, where I live, the school board, city council, local adv…

Subreddits and Slack "communities" do not form communities. Bonds created in such groups are as ephemeral as the nature of communication enabling them. In the same way bunch of individuals do not exhaust the meaning of the concepts of society and nation.

Subreddits, often yes. Though some have meetups, etc.

I'm in a lot of slack communities around local activism where I see the people and slack is just an organizational tool.

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