Well, I wouldn't apply the word "oppressive" across the board to the cultures of big companies, but the fact is that modern American coporate culture more often than not imitates a top-down, 'statist' culture that is so universal we rarely recognize it. For instance, high-level strategic decisions are made almost entirely in the vacuum of power. And often, that's appropriate. But many times, the actual people who do the work and know the most about the subject are completely out of the loop. Silicon Valley at its best operates in a very different way...companies are far more driven from the product/technology/service perspective, instead of imagining that balance sheets can make a Lucent into a Cisco. (And at its best, if some hot engineers along with a couple of useful management types feel strongly enough about a missed opportunity, they just split off and start doing it.) But the best of Sillicon Valley is a rare exception. Most of the time "they" make decisions and people who are the technical experts must merely quietly implement those decisions. It's interesting to imagine what would have happened to Lucent if, for instance, the employees could have voted on the acquisition of Chromatis. They would have quickly realized that they were getting a raw $3B deal on a mediocre product, AND that they already had something equivalent ready in-house. Retail is the absolute worst. FOr whatever reason (and I don't believe it has anything to do with competitiveness), big CD or Book chains never empower or reward employees on their ability to purchase books for their store that sell well. In fact, almost zero real purchasing decisions are done locally. But nobody seems to notice...we're completely used to being passive cogs in a big, fat machine-state. So in a sense, it's gone way beyond 'repression'...no need for that rat-cage around our heads anymore. -Tyler Durden
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com> CC: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Re: Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19 Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 09:45:33 -0600
On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 04:27:38PM -0800, James A. Donald wrote:
Everyone agrees that big corporations are oppressive, bureaucratic, inefficient, etc. No one more so than the management advisers to big corporations.
I'm not sure I'd agree that big corporations are oppressive. How? I once worked at Xerox and had a splendid time. Didn't feel "oppressed" at all.
As for bureaucratic and inefficient, perhaps, but I've seen 50-people organizations devolve quite well. I suppose it all depends on your frame of reference. If you mean, "I can find perceived inefficiencies," I'm sure you can. But if they become too inefficient, well, over time competitors will rise to take advantage of those inefficiencies. Xerox can be an example here as well. This is just common sense.
-Declan
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On Dec 9, 2003, at 9:39 AM, Tyler Durden wrote:
Well, I wouldn't apply the word "oppressive" across the board to the cultures of big companies, but the fact is that modern American coporate culture more often than not imitates a top-down, 'statist' culture that is so universal we rarely recognize it.
Yes, a company/corporation/enterprise is owned by its owner(s). Sometimes that owner is a single person, sometimes the owners are a family, sometimes the original owners sold pieces of ownership to other people. Sometimes the net result is that millions of individuals own small pieces of the company. In any case, either the single owner or the small group of owners or the large group of owners then chooses some method by which decisions are reached on what products to sell, how to make them, and so on. The difference with government is that we do not have "polycentric" governments. We have a single entity, a single "corporation," which brooks no competition, which brooks little or no "shareholder dissent." Many here miss this point and focus on the superficial aspect that corporations typically have a hierarchy and that this hierarchy supposedly makes them like governments. Yes, in this respect. But the tens of thousands of corporations, the ability to form new partnerships, new companies, new corporations, and for some of these entities to become as large as past corporate giants, is what makes all the difference.
For instance, high-level strategic decisions are made almost entirely in the vacuum of power. And often, that's appropriate. But many times, the actual people who do the work and know the most about the subject are completely out of the loop. Silicon Valley at its best operates in a very different way...companies are far more driven from the product/technology/service perspective, instead of imagining that balance sheets can make a Lucent into a Cisco. (And at its best, if some hot engineers along with a couple of useful management types feel strongly enough about a missed opportunity, they just split off and start doing it.)
Having worked at the largest Silicon Valley company, I can assure you that its management methods and its corporate set up is not nearly as different from the Rest of Business as you fantasize that it is. And being a shareholder in a bunch of non-Silicon Valley companies, I can also assure you that their 'high-level strategic decisons" are NOT "made almost entirely in the vacuum of power." Sure, some non-SV companies make colossal mistakes. So do a lot of SV companies--I could launch into a list of the Big Errors of the past 20 years, but why bother? History gets written by the winners. So people know about Intel, but not about AMI or Monolithic Memories or Intersil. So people know about Apple, but not about Convergent or Fortune Systems or Processor Technology. So people know about Sun, but not about Apollo or Daisy or MAD Computer.
Retail is the absolute worst. FOr whatever reason (and I don't believe it has anything to do with competitiveness), big CD or Book chains never empower or reward employees on their ability to purchase books for their store that sell well. In fact, almost zero real purchasing decisions are done locally.
This is silly, socialist nonsense. I know some of the book buyers at the "Borders" store in Santa Cruz (the very one that the "anti-bigness" lefties tried to ban from opening in Santa Cruz). Not only do they have a "local authors" section which is larger than the similar section at the "local" bookstore, but they have a sophisticated system for re-ordering books based on sales. If a title sells, they know it. And can order replacements. So, what's missing? Local authors?--check. Books that sell?--check. A wider selection of books than the 'locally-owned" store?--check. The selection of books at the Borders in Santa Cruz is wider than the selection at the other bookstore. For example, history, or the Greek and Roman classics. I was looking for a book on the pre-Socratic philosophers recently (Heraclitus and that cohort). The locally-owned bookstore (which I like a lot, by the way) had a small selection of classsics, less than a shelf or two. No pre-Socratic philosophy that I could find. So I went down the street to Borders. A floor to ceiling (well, top of their shelves, which are tall) selection of books on the Greeks and Romans, including two of the standards on the pre-Socratics, plus a couple of books just on Heraclitus. An experience I've had many times. Borders usually has it, the smaller bookstores (in Aptos, Watsonville, Capitola, and S. Cruz) tell me "No, but we can order it for you." Gee, I can order it myself, too. Now tell me that Borders is deficient in selection? And the Barnes and Noble stores I sometimes go to over in the Valley are vast collections of books as well. This is the real reason why the smaller stores are complaining. Exactly what was heard 60 years ago when "supermarkets" came to town and the small grocery stores faced competition. Exactly what was heard 30 years ago when Wal-Mart and their type came to town and the small "five and dime" stores faced competition. Corporations have sales tracking software out the wazoo. If it sells, they buy more and sell them. Sounds like they're doing precisely what their owners want them to do.
But nobody seems to notice...we're completely used to being passive cogs in a big, fat machine-state. So in a sense, it's gone way beyond 'repression'...no need for that rat-cage around our heads anymore.
You silly Bolshies are obviously on the wrong list if you think strong crypto is going to help your cause. Feh. --Tim May --Tim May "The State is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." --Frederic Bastiat
Tim May quoted Tyler Durden who wrote:
Well, I wouldn't apply the word "oppressive" across the board to the cultures of big companies, but the fact is that modern American coporate culture more often than not imitates a top-down, 'statist' culture that is so universal we rarely recognize it.
Well, yes. Most big corporations are in effect constitutional monarchies. Decisions are made by bureaucrats with some oversight or direction provided by the "king" (CEO in some places, significant shareholders in others). When it all goes totally pear-shaped owners (or more likely, the banks) step in. [...]
The difference with government is that we do not have "polycentric" governments. We have a single entity, a single "corporation," which brooks no competition, which brooks little or no "shareholder dissent."
Yes, but in practice a lot of big companies are just like that. Whatever the paper ownership decisions tend to be made by a few large corporate owners, often banks, insurance companies, pension funds and the like; themselves run by officers and managers who share interests with the managers who run the company they own. The situation is in some ways analogous to "it doesn't matter who you vote for: the government always gets in". In most large corporations the chain of responsibility back to individual owners is so long and so flexible that there is little real control. Small business is different of course. You make money or you go broke. Very direct feedback.
Many here miss this point and focus on the superficial aspect that corporations typically have a hierarchy and that this hierarchy supposedly makes them like governments. Yes, in this respect. But the tens of thousands of corporations, the ability to form new partnerships, new companies, new corporations, and for some of these entities to become as large as past corporate giants, is what makes all the difference.
Emotional reactions & gut feelings about this point are one of the things that make people happier with one political camp or another. The state-socialism that you Americans call "liberal" tends to be supported by people who feel that their governments are more responsive to their needs or wants than corporations are. Conservatives US-style libertarians are likely to feel happier with corporations than government. The "anti-globalisation" crows and European-style left anarchists & old-style non-Marxist socialists dislike both equally. If I was cynical, or a Marxist, I'd say that it has a lot to do with having money. People whose wealth makes up a larger share of the whole than their vote does are more likely to feel happy about corporations than they are about representative government. OK, it's before noon and I've only had one cup of tea, so I'm cynical. [...]
Corporations have sales tracking software out the wazoo. If it sells, they buy more and sell them. Sounds like they're doing precisely what their owners want them to do.
Yes, but, it might be that a corporation makes more money for its owners by centralising and systematising and reducing the local autonomy of business units. It's a lot easier to manage a thousand identical stores than a hundred unique ones. So from "Tyler Durden's"'s POV there might be more responsiveness from an independent store than a chain. Though like you said, that doesn't seem to apply to books. Might to food though.
On Dec 11, 2003, at 1:56 AM, ken wrote:
Corporations have sales tracking software out the wazoo. If it sells, they buy more and sell them. Sounds like they're doing precisely what their owners want them to do.
Yes, but, it might be that a corporation makes more money for its owners by centralising and systematising and reducing the local autonomy of business units. It's a lot easier to manage a thousand identical stores than a hundred unique ones. So from "Tyler Durden's"'s POV there might be more responsiveness from an independent store than a chain.
Though like you said, that doesn't seem to apply to books. Might to food though.
I doubt it applies to food, either. If my local grocery store runs low on "Spam," say, they will order more. This is why they track items with POS terminals and UPC labels (largely replacing the inventory people who used to be seen in the aisles counting items and entering them into a small computer or, earlier, onto an inventory log sheet). It makes no sense to "lump" or "consolidate" all of the stores into one lump calculation and then issue order to "send more Spam in this amount to each store." Not only does it not make sense, but clearly this would cause pileups at _some_ stores (too much Spam) and shortages at _other_ stores (still not enough Spam, even with the latest "send more Spam to all stores" order. The fact that neither shortages nor pileups (that I can see) are apparent at any of the stores I visit, and that all of them use UPC and POS methods for _all_ sales of ordered products, is consistent with the reorder method described earlier. I repeat: the "despised by anti-capitalists" Borders store has a deeper and broader inventory of books than the "cherished by Greens and locals" locall-owned bookstore. And they also use UPC and POS and reorder books dynamically. (For another list I've been discussing lazy evaluation languages, like Miranda and Haskell, and like Scheme can be "forced" to do, and the similarities between demand-driven evaluation of partial results and the obviously demand-driven inventory practices of modern businesses is striking. There's an essay here for some political thinker, along the lines of Phil Salin's "Wealth of Kitchens" essay drawing parallels between free markets and object-oriented systems.) --Tim May
Corporations have sales tracking software out the wazoo. If it sells, they buy more and sell them. Sounds like they're doing precisely what their owners want them to do.
Sales tracking software relevant quote from Risks Digest 22.05: ------------------------------
participants (4)
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ken -
Thomas Shaddack -
Tim May -
Tyler Durden