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The Unaccountability Machine: Difference between revisions
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{{a|book review|{{image|Unaccountability Machine|jpg|}}}}{{quote| | {{a|book review|{{image|Unaccountability Machine|jpg|{{small|80}}{{br|The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost Its Mind}} — {{author|Dan Davies}}, 2024.</div>}}}}{{quote| | ||
’Tis neither malice, spite, nor virtue <br> | ’Tis neither malice, spite, nor virtue <br> | ||
Whose ledger swells, or plucks, the seedy fruits of progress —<br> | Whose ledger swells, or plucks, the seedy fruits of progress —<br> | ||
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:—{{otto}}, {{dsh}} | :—{{otto}}, {{dsh}} | ||
}} | }} | ||
==== Business administration is broken ==== | ==== Business administration is broken ==== | ||
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With all its infrastructure, internal and external legal advice, consultancy, and, er, second sight, how did ''no-one'' stop to think something must be wildly, catastrophically, wrong with the [[Post Office Horizon IT scandal|Post Office]]’s theory of the situation? How did no-one, even once, applying [[Otto’s razor]]? | With all its infrastructure, internal and external legal advice, consultancy, and, er, second sight, how did ''no-one'' stop to think something must be wildly, catastrophically, wrong with the [[Post Office Horizon IT scandal|Post Office]]’s theory of the situation? How did no-one, even once, applying [[Otto’s razor]]? | ||
==== | ==== Rogue apples, middle England and the grace of God ==== | ||
{{drop|E|ither these are}} peculiar, localised problems — rogue gangs of [[Bad apple|bad apples]] — or the prevailing business administrative paradigm is in crisis and we need another theory of the game. | |||
Because it relieves executives of accountability and leaves only a deniable residue of responsibility for hiring them in the first place, “bad apples” is always the preferred diagnosis. The paradigm being in crisis, by contrast, suggests senior executives take credit for all the good stuff, dodge the rap when things go tits up and live a charmed life never being honestly marked to measure for anything. They are a waste of money, in other words. | Because it relieves executives of accountability and leaves only a deniable residue of responsibility for hiring them in the first place, “bad apples” is always the preferred diagnosis. The paradigm being in crisis, by contrast, suggests senior executives take credit for all the good stuff, dodge the rap when things go tits up and live a charmed life never being honestly marked to measure for anything. They are a waste of money, in other words. | ||
LIBOR submitters fit the “rogues gallery” identikit nicely. By making microscopic adjustments that no-one else would notice, they (allegedly) stood to make multimillion pound bonuses for themselves. It was almost a victimless crime. | LIBOR submitters fit the “rogues gallery” identikit nicely. By making microscopic adjustments that no-one else would notice, they (allegedly) stood to make multimillion-pound bonuses for themselves. It was almost a victimless crime. | ||
The post office middle managers do not. If they had anything to gain personally from vilifying | The post office middle managers do not. If they had anything to gain personally from vilifying pillars of the community up and down the country, it was indirect and paled in comparison to the city bonuses on offer to the [[LIBOR]] submitters. These people do not seem psychopathic. Their motivations are not base. They do ''not'' resemble “bad apples”. They seem unremarkable, familiar, ''mediocre'' middle managers. | ||
Watching | Watching their excruciating evidence, three things occur: first — The weave of life’s tapestry wouldn’t have needed to be that different for these witnesses ''themselves'' to have been sub-postmasters on the other end of this outrage. None more so than CEO Paula Vennells, a middle-English lay Methodist, who even ''looks'' like a sub-postmaster. | ||
Second — A montage of every utterance by every witness of “I don’t remember” would go for ''hours''. | |||
Third — ''There but for the grace of God go I''. Post Office [[Inhouse counsel|in-house legal]] head Rodric Williams is a fifty-something expat New Zealander, whose career trajectory — vector, not altitude — is strikingly similar to mine. In the halogen glare of cross-examined hindsight, his actions seem regrettable, but none of them resonated as ''odd''. Williams seemed adept at the sort of pencil-pushing, [[buttocractic oath|buttocractic]] that every single inhouse lawyer learns we should ask ourselves: knowing what he knew then, ''would we have done any differently''? We should not kid ourselves here. For W | |||