I’ve been having a drawn out debate with a Russian expat communist, who never lost his ‘religion’. Like most debates, a large portion of the bounty produced stems from challenging one’s own priors. I thought I was embarked upon an exercise of defending Capitalism and critiquing Communism, but in reality I was sleepwalking towards my belief that virtue is to be found in the small, at the level of personal and reciprocal, where all human trust and loyalty resides. Anyway, here are the results.
I’m actually quite warm towards Russians, but not the Soviet system. Look it’s not a problem unique to communism. I’ve looked extensively at foreign aid as an issue, and what I can tell you is that when an ‘engineered’ approach is taken from thousands of miles away, the result is almost always failure- but when the problem-solving occurs on a local level, from the ground up, the result is much more often success, though obviously results are variable depending upon the players.
It’s also a problem with large corporations, when the management is unwilling to adopt a ground-up, instead of top-down approach- I’ve seen both approaches in action and there really is no comparison. Here is the problem- the inherent complacency of intellectuals. Basically, intelligence can be an absolute gift to the world if it is humble, if it draws upon real world data and observation with a view to challenging the internal model we’ve constructed of the world, with a view to excitement to the prospect of often painful correction, as we are stripped of our illusions. But all too often hubris sets in and the intellectual tries to make the events and information fit the worldview he or she has constructed in their mind.
You may think I sing the praises of capitalism- but this is far from true, and it too possesses its own ideology, most notably incorrect in its belief that most people pursue their own self-interest to the exclusion of all else. If I do often express scorn and derision at most attempts to critique capitalism is that often the people making the criticisms are woefully short on knowledge, and fail to recognise capitalisms successes. Personally, where I see capitalism as lacking in its glaring inability to engage in self-critique, to take into account how we are geared towards status and yearn for reciprocity. The view of man as a primarily self-interested being, pursuing his own interest, is a woefully inadequate understanding of our complex drives and needs, our desire for psychic profits as well as real ones. In particular, stating this somewhat true axiom out loud can have a detrimental effect, as it gives the cognoscenti an excuse for amoral action, ignoring the deeper and more reciprocal aspects of our nature.
In practice, the fact that few capitalists have read Adam Smith’s first book, means that for the most part they are incapable of harnessing most human potential through reciprocity and high morale. With front end selection, method study, modest capital expenditure and high morale it is quite possible to hit productively figures around 400% of industry standards (barring machine imposed capacity limits, although even these can be worked around), but most managers leave a large portion of this figure on the table, because they refuse to work to the rule of valuing trust, consistency and reciprocity above all else- imposing arbitrary limits which lose at least a third of the 400% limit.
An interesting titbit of history- when the Japanese were brought into German car manufacturing as consultants, to introduce the unparalleled levels of success and productivity they had developed in places like Toyota, they became highly irate that German managers had a habit of resoling their work shoes. Apparently, this was one of the ways they used to determine whether a particular manager was going to the root of the problem to create solutions and consulting the workforce. And, of course, it goes without saying that at the same time the Japanese had created one of the most loyal worker, manager and business owner systems in history, in which trust and reciprocity were practically encoded at a cultural level. They even had to hire in the gaijin when many made mistakes in investments (based upon faulty assumptions which didn’t see the perils of a lack of population replacement and an aging workforce), and were forced to violate this trust- Japanese owners and managers simply couldn’t do it culturally because it would have been too shameful, so they bought in the Westerners.
My point would be this- the communist system elevates the lazy intellectual or pseudo-intellectual by allowing them the ability to make changes to the system- and all too often when things failed the failure was blamed upon external factors of human opposition. In the worst cases it resulted in situations like the Kulaks, the gulags or the Cultural Revolution in China. What the unconstrained view of the ideologue fails to recognise is the lack of malleability of people- yes people are malleable to a certain extent, but its an organic malleability rather than a mechanistic one- and one which is most successfully undertaken through the Pavlov’s dog of learned trust and reciprocity, with people often working harder for praise and esteem than they will for token material gain.
This is also the reason why large scale corporatism, with its crony capitalism and dark alliance between business and government is failing, to the extent that corporations are forced to increasingly rely upon exotic financial instruments and exploits to ensure business survival. To deny trust and reciprocity, by treating a workforce like economic serfs unworthy of tending to as human beings, creates circumstances very similar to the unaccountability witnessed with the pseudo-intellectual apparatchik. Gold is to be found in the small- if we treat those we work with like an extended family, many things are possible. It’s why the benefits of capitalism are most seen in SMEs (small and medium enterprises), and less so in large corporations.
In many ways Marx was right, diagnostically, but he failed by focusing exclusively on the might of large industrial operations and failed to recognise the unassailable power of the small. In the UK, SMEs account for 61% of all employment. Just over 20% of employment is government and the large corporations only account for a relatively small portion of the workforce, just under a fifth. Government on the other hand, is big. It may cloak itself in the veneer of altruism, but make no mistake, Pournelle’s Iron Rule of Bureaucracy applies at every level. Elon Musk was right- government really is a corporation at the limit.
So really, we are looking at a twin threat- with the rise of corporations on the one hand and the power of government on the other, and the most alarming thing of all is that in many countries and jurisdictions these twin threats are cooperating, entering into collusive and mutually supportive relationships and squeezing out the inherent virtue of the small. Think of it this way- it is far more difficult to make ruthless decisions when people are just names and numbers on a sheet of paper, one doesn’t see or feel the brutality of occasional necessity- these decisions are far more difficult when one knows the people one’s decision affect.
We should fear the scale of human endeavour more than the system which produces it- small is the place where humanity and humanism reside- at scale, all manner of causal atrocities are possible.
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered—one Brit fella Schumacher his name argued persuasively half a century back 😉
💬 Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
💬 That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of 'bread and circuses' can compensate for the damage done—these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence—because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.
Why not make it a party ↓ 😊
🗨 It is of course true that quality is much more difficult to 'handle' than quantity, just as the exercise of judgment is a higher function than the ability to count and calculate. Quantitative differences can be more easily grasped and certainly more easily defined than qualitative differences: their concreteness is beguiling and gives them the appearance of scientific precision, even when this precision has been purchased by the suppression of vital differences of quality. The great majority of economists are still pursuing the absurd ideal of making their 'science' as scientific and precise as physics, as if there were no qualitative difference between mindless atoms and men made in the image of God.
"Gold is to be found in the small- if we treat those we work with like an extended family, many things are possible. It’s why the benefits of capitalism are most seen in SMEs (small and medium enterprises), and less so in large corporations." You can often do it in large corporations IF you organize around mission rather than function, AND if you resist the siren call of "synergy."
I agree totally concerning SMEs and once again there's a lot of valuable insight here. One area which needs a bit more clarification is the comments on Japan. Outside Japan there is a - which can only be characterized as romantic - view that labour relations are more interactive. This does not fit the reality. The best way to characterize labour/management relationships is feudal and sexist. The company demands unconditional loyalty to itself. This is enforced by bullying and sanctions carried out by a management class that has elevated mediocrity to an art form. Hours are frequently brutally long with people still dying from overwork quite regularly. The Japanese are not encouraged to complain but to bear the bad conditions uncomplaningly (what is called the 'ganbarre' spirit). I could go on but I will just add that innovative thinking is not encouraged and in fact presenting a new idea can lead to punishment and sanction in a Japanese company.
Good to know- I was drawing from a documentary I had watched about the travails of a Japanese camera company I had watched, and the British senior manager they had brought in to fix the repercussions of a series of bad investments. I had no idea there was such a dark element to the other side of the loyalty coin.
I knew one guy who went to work for Thorn EMI (Japan) though. He was an accountant. They built him his own little office right slap bang in the middle of a huge open plan office!
That would be the Olympus scandal, wouldn't it? It's illustrative of how Japanese companies operate right down to the Yakuza links. Some of the scandals over safety take your breath away though.
If you can swing it though private offices are essential for productivity and your friend did very well. Almost certainly he got that because he was a foreigner.
Yes, apparently they asked him whether he wanted 200, 300 or 400K sterling. Difficult question. Mind you the living costs were high, but it was the early nineties.
That isn't a difficult question to answer unless the lower salaries come as part of a package and the higher ones are 'package lite'. I've seen that happen in Japan and the UK.
I completely agree. I've often said that as individuals humans can be sublime, kind, wise, intelligent and any other positive human trait you can care to name, but stick them in a group and their horrible and brutal, petty and small-minded- basically insane.
Indeed, and not always, but far too often to not be a marker. Heck, I noted this when we were teens, the things we did on our own versus that which we did in groups.
Of course, like-minded people do work together on most of the good things we enjoy in life today, but these operations often are altered by the forces of the most powerful (crony capitalists, corrupted politicians, careless voters who say things like free-dumb).
Ultimately, I think it a war between our competing urges- on the one hand there is reciprocity which is the angel sitting on one shoulder, on the other its status seeking, which in moderation might be bad, but driven to excess is a whispering Imp.
Excellent point. A group can quickly become a mob and any ideology that has no place for individual rights can justify the worst crimes against humanity by appealing to “the greater good of the collective.”
I kept thinking while reading this that you’re a neocon and just don’t know it yet. I know I’ve said that before. I don’t mean in the pejorative way that word is used today. The original neoconservatism had nothing to do with foreign policy. I haven’t actually read Irving Kristol, but I could see him making essentially the same arguments you’re making here. Neocons were “liberals who were mugged by reality,” not proponents of interventionism abroad (as they did become in later years but that’s complicated).
Have you read Tocqueville? Essentially the two dark futures he envisions for America are 1. Bureaucratic/administrative despotism and 2. Corporate oligarchs who develop outsized power. (That’s a gross simplification but you get the idea.) I share your distrust of both and your concern of “corporatism” which is a marrying of the two.
Also I appreciate your shoutout to The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I’ve read more of that than I ever have of The Wealth of Nations.
I hadn't heard that particular version of the word 'neocon' and that respect I would probably fit the bill. It's not that I'm against government per se (although I consider myself a civic libertarian)- it's more that I would want to see a great more care exercised in the expenditure of this precious resource, and a good deal less waste.
To give an example of this, the Black British demographic in the UK now outperforms the white demographic by 0.2% in our national exams at 16, but when one digs down into the data, one finds that the improvement is almost entirely dependent upon an drastic improvement in London.
Part of this stems from free schools, our equivalent of charters- but there was a substantial investment which played a role, but it largely specifically related to concentrating resources on improving classroom practice- as well as a more professional attitude towards data management and accountability specifically aimed at continuous improvement in the classroom.
I think it's pretty much a no brainer that Western governments will be forced to increasingly rely on cannibalising their own waste in order to meet future spending needs. Government needs to start mimicking the market in its ability to reallocate labour.
Go down to the section on his ideas and you’ll see a bit of what I’m talking about, including the “mugged by reality” point. Neoconservatism was distinct from libertarians and Buckleyites in that they tended to support the New Deal but not Great Society. And that they supported Civil Rights but got turned off by the welfare state’s destruction of the black family, as well as the radicalism of the 1960s hard left.
Wow, that's bang on the money- especially the last bit. It's only been in the last few years that I've become acquainted with Viktor Frankl's work on man's search for meaning, but it really did ring true. I've always associated neocons with the Forever Wars, which I've largely been critical of because of America's tendency towards post-war occupations in order to rebuild- which ultimately leads to far more civilian deaths.
But take this element out of the equation and you're probably right. That being said, I'm not really going to go around broadcasting the label- I think in the contemporary setting it has too many negative connotations- and I prefer the term heterodox, but it conveys the fact that on most issues I don't subscribe to the views of either political tribe, but that being said it's useful to have the reference and as a frame. Thanks for that!
I also didn't know much of the history of the movement, which was fascinating. On the Great Society, the West should have gone with the Friedman suggestion of a negative income tax which slowly phased out as people works and earned, with a 25% to 33% tax on the benefit. It would have removed many of the harms of welfare, in particular the disincentive to work and fatherhood.
It also would have been a prime opportunity to shift to PAYE and redirect all that suddenly surplus labour at the IRS into systemically auditing government for waste on an ongoing basis.
Haha! Yes I agree it wouldn’t be useful to go around calling yourself a neocon today. That term has become associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Somewhat unfairly but somewhat based on real reasons. Most people who would call themselves neocons today would advocate interventionist foreign policy.
Heterodox is perhaps a good terms. But that just means different. Maybe that’s what you want and you don’t want to try to define/subscribe to any new ideology. That term, too, has some negative connotations but perhaps not too many yet.
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered—one Brit fella Schumacher his name argued persuasively half a century back 😉
💬 Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
💬 That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of 'bread and circuses' can compensate for the damage done—these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence—because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.
Why not make it a party ↓ 😊
🗨 It is of course true that quality is much more difficult to 'handle' than quantity, just as the exercise of judgment is a higher function than the ability to count and calculate. Quantitative differences can be more easily grasped and certainly more easily defined than qualitative differences: their concreteness is beguiling and gives them the appearance of scientific precision, even when this precision has been purchased by the suppression of vital differences of quality. The great majority of economists are still pursuing the absurd ideal of making their 'science' as scientific and precise as physics, as if there were no qualitative difference between mindless atoms and men made in the image of God.
Great source, thanks for that, mate!
"Gold is to be found in the small- if we treat those we work with like an extended family, many things are possible. It’s why the benefits of capitalism are most seen in SMEs (small and medium enterprises), and less so in large corporations." You can often do it in large corporations IF you organize around mission rather than function, AND if you resist the siren call of "synergy."
Is this similar to Jonathan Haidt's hive switch? Are mission orientated companies more likely to be hiveish?
I agree totally concerning SMEs and once again there's a lot of valuable insight here. One area which needs a bit more clarification is the comments on Japan. Outside Japan there is a - which can only be characterized as romantic - view that labour relations are more interactive. This does not fit the reality. The best way to characterize labour/management relationships is feudal and sexist. The company demands unconditional loyalty to itself. This is enforced by bullying and sanctions carried out by a management class that has elevated mediocrity to an art form. Hours are frequently brutally long with people still dying from overwork quite regularly. The Japanese are not encouraged to complain but to bear the bad conditions uncomplaningly (what is called the 'ganbarre' spirit). I could go on but I will just add that innovative thinking is not encouraged and in fact presenting a new idea can lead to punishment and sanction in a Japanese company.
Good to know- I was drawing from a documentary I had watched about the travails of a Japanese camera company I had watched, and the British senior manager they had brought in to fix the repercussions of a series of bad investments. I had no idea there was such a dark element to the other side of the loyalty coin.
I knew one guy who went to work for Thorn EMI (Japan) though. He was an accountant. They built him his own little office right slap bang in the middle of a huge open plan office!
That would be the Olympus scandal, wouldn't it? It's illustrative of how Japanese companies operate right down to the Yakuza links. Some of the scandals over safety take your breath away though.
If you can swing it though private offices are essential for productivity and your friend did very well. Almost certainly he got that because he was a foreigner.
Yes, apparently they asked him whether he wanted 200, 300 or 400K sterling. Difficult question. Mind you the living costs were high, but it was the early nineties.
That isn't a difficult question to answer unless the lower salaries come as part of a package and the higher ones are 'package lite'. I've seen that happen in Japan and the UK.
Groups are where many of the trouble begins. Groups of people simply do not act like individuals do.
This is the gift of inventing individual liberty as a right to be preserved by limited government powers. It is a gift being taken for granted today.
I completely agree. I've often said that as individuals humans can be sublime, kind, wise, intelligent and any other positive human trait you can care to name, but stick them in a group and their horrible and brutal, petty and small-minded- basically insane.
Indeed, and not always, but far too often to not be a marker. Heck, I noted this when we were teens, the things we did on our own versus that which we did in groups.
Of course, like-minded people do work together on most of the good things we enjoy in life today, but these operations often are altered by the forces of the most powerful (crony capitalists, corrupted politicians, careless voters who say things like free-dumb).
Ultimately, I think it a war between our competing urges- on the one hand there is reciprocity which is the angel sitting on one shoulder, on the other its status seeking, which in moderation might be bad, but driven to excess is a whispering Imp.
Excellent point. A group can quickly become a mob and any ideology that has no place for individual rights can justify the worst crimes against humanity by appealing to “the greater good of the collective.”
Good piece!
I kept thinking while reading this that you’re a neocon and just don’t know it yet. I know I’ve said that before. I don’t mean in the pejorative way that word is used today. The original neoconservatism had nothing to do with foreign policy. I haven’t actually read Irving Kristol, but I could see him making essentially the same arguments you’re making here. Neocons were “liberals who were mugged by reality,” not proponents of interventionism abroad (as they did become in later years but that’s complicated).
Have you read Tocqueville? Essentially the two dark futures he envisions for America are 1. Bureaucratic/administrative despotism and 2. Corporate oligarchs who develop outsized power. (That’s a gross simplification but you get the idea.) I share your distrust of both and your concern of “corporatism” which is a marrying of the two.
Also I appreciate your shoutout to The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I’ve read more of that than I ever have of The Wealth of Nations.
I hadn't heard that particular version of the word 'neocon' and that respect I would probably fit the bill. It's not that I'm against government per se (although I consider myself a civic libertarian)- it's more that I would want to see a great more care exercised in the expenditure of this precious resource, and a good deal less waste.
To give an example of this, the Black British demographic in the UK now outperforms the white demographic by 0.2% in our national exams at 16, but when one digs down into the data, one finds that the improvement is almost entirely dependent upon an drastic improvement in London.
Part of this stems from free schools, our equivalent of charters- but there was a substantial investment which played a role, but it largely specifically related to concentrating resources on improving classroom practice- as well as a more professional attitude towards data management and accountability specifically aimed at continuous improvement in the classroom.
I think it's pretty much a no brainer that Western governments will be forced to increasingly rely on cannibalising their own waste in order to meet future spending needs. Government needs to start mimicking the market in its ability to reallocate labour.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Kristol
Go down to the section on his ideas and you’ll see a bit of what I’m talking about, including the “mugged by reality” point. Neoconservatism was distinct from libertarians and Buckleyites in that they tended to support the New Deal but not Great Society. And that they supported Civil Rights but got turned off by the welfare state’s destruction of the black family, as well as the radicalism of the 1960s hard left.
Wow, that's bang on the money- especially the last bit. It's only been in the last few years that I've become acquainted with Viktor Frankl's work on man's search for meaning, but it really did ring true. I've always associated neocons with the Forever Wars, which I've largely been critical of because of America's tendency towards post-war occupations in order to rebuild- which ultimately leads to far more civilian deaths.
But take this element out of the equation and you're probably right. That being said, I'm not really going to go around broadcasting the label- I think in the contemporary setting it has too many negative connotations- and I prefer the term heterodox, but it conveys the fact that on most issues I don't subscribe to the views of either political tribe, but that being said it's useful to have the reference and as a frame. Thanks for that!
I also didn't know much of the history of the movement, which was fascinating. On the Great Society, the West should have gone with the Friedman suggestion of a negative income tax which slowly phased out as people works and earned, with a 25% to 33% tax on the benefit. It would have removed many of the harms of welfare, in particular the disincentive to work and fatherhood.
It also would have been a prime opportunity to shift to PAYE and redirect all that suddenly surplus labour at the IRS into systemically auditing government for waste on an ongoing basis.
Haha! Yes I agree it wouldn’t be useful to go around calling yourself a neocon today. That term has become associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Somewhat unfairly but somewhat based on real reasons. Most people who would call themselves neocons today would advocate interventionist foreign policy.
Heterodox is perhaps a good terms. But that just means different. Maybe that’s what you want and you don’t want to try to define/subscribe to any new ideology. That term, too, has some negative connotations but perhaps not too many yet.