Template:M intro systems financialisation
The desire for digital certainty
James C. Scott’s observation that a top-down organisation can only operate by what it sees, which necessarily misses nuance.
Robert Michels’ iron law of oligopoly, that at scale all organisations concentrate “power” and become top-down
The madness of crowds and our interconnectedness: if it was hard to be exceptional before the internet, it is so much harder now. Yet we kid ourselves that we are all exceptional. If we are all competing at the same thing, we have almost no chance of excelling. These are the Bayesian priors. But everyone of us is different.
The Peter Principle that we rise to our own level of incompetence so will be dispositionally bad at the hard parts of our job. The basic narcissism or Dunning Krugerism of those prepared to do what it takes to climb the greasy pole required to want to be a chief executive officer or politician - those who want the job enough to get it
Data modernism and the conviction that everything now can be solved, and mankind is something to be overcome.
Fundamental ineffability
Stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.
- —Anon.
It is there but we really have to want it - and stand up for it.
The long tail: there really are doom metal merchants lecturing insightfully on Nietzsche. But are they dying out like local bookstores? We need to nurture them
The informal and formal lines of information in any organisation - in this take Jane Jacobs, desire lines