82,853
edits
LegalHub: theory: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
||
| Line 17: | Line 17: | ||
This should not be a surprise. The invention of the word-processor did not ''shorten'' legal discourse. The arrival of email did not truncate the nature or volume of our communication. Andy gaveth, but it was not Bill, but our ''innate gift for verbal diarrhoea'' that tooketh away. | This should not be a surprise. The invention of the word-processor did not ''shorten'' legal discourse. The arrival of email did not truncate the nature or volume of our communication. Andy gaveth, but it was not Bill, but our ''innate gift for verbal diarrhoea'' that tooketh away. | ||
Note the misalignment of interests here: those providing the “cure” have a direct incentive — in fact, a ''need'' — to ''continue'' helping, because that is how they get paid. They design their disintermediating machines to only disintermediate ''so far'': users must remain sufficiently dependent on their code, their systems | Note the misalignment of interests here: those providing the “cure” have a direct incentive — in fact, a ''need'' — to ''continue'' helping, because that is how they get paid. They design their disintermediating machines to only disintermediate ''so far'': users must remain sufficiently dependent on their code, their systems and their expertise, that they are obliged to pay an annuity for it. To pay ''[[rent]]''.<ref>I have lost count of the times that that a tech provider has told me users cannot have edit or configuration rights on a simple piece of configuration. There are two explanations for this, and neither is edifying: one is that the software is so fragile or poorly designed that allowing a user to tinker with it will make it break; another is that it is so basic that allowing users to tinker with it will reveal how simple it is.</ref> | ||
===The fault in our stars=== | ===The fault in our stars=== | ||
Our friends in the [[management consulting]] profession (also [[rent-seeker]]s, needless to say) encourage this disposition through the dogma of [[outsourcing]]. Here the gist is: if you have a convoluted process that is costing you time and money, [[Outsourcing|outsource]] it, to someone better specialised, incentivised and remunerated to do it, who can do it cheaper, better and — thanks the magic of {{author|Adam Smith}}’s invisible hand — at the optimal cost. In this way do we ''entrench'' [[rent-seeker]]s, by building an entire ([[rent-seeking]]) infrastructure around this newly articulated [[process]] — with its own [[middle management]], [[operations]], [[compliance]], [[internal audit]], [[procurement]], you name it — without ever asking whether the process was that important in the first place. | Our friends in the [[management consulting]] profession (also [[rent-seeker]]s, needless to say) encourage this disposition through the dogma of [[outsourcing]]. Here the gist is: if you have a convoluted process that is costing you time and money, [[Outsourcing|outsource]] it, to someone better specialised, incentivised and remunerated to do it, who can do it cheaper, better and — thanks the magic of {{author|Adam Smith}}’s invisible hand — at the optimal cost. In this way do we ''entrench'' [[rent-seeker]]s, by building an entire ([[rent-seeking]]) infrastructure around this newly articulated [[process]] — with its own [[middle management]], [[operations]], [[compliance]], [[internal audit]], [[procurement]], you name it — without ever asking whether the process was that important in the first place. | ||