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-{{a|book review|{{image|Unaccountability Machine|}}}}The epic judicial processes of 2024 have been Tom Hayes appeal against [[LIBOR rigging]], about which we have had much to say elsewhere, and the [[Post Office Horizon IT scandal]].
+{{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>
+Whose ledger swells, or plucks, the seedy fruits of progress —<br>
+But mainly accident.<br>
+Lest thee with surety know aught else —<br>
+Withhold thy assignations.<br>
+:—{{otto}}, {{dsh}}
+}}
+{{quote|
+This review is sent from an unmonitored account. Please do not reply.
+:—''Anon''.}}
-Much of the engineering of corporate administration — you hardly need a doctorate in operations research to know there’s a lot of it — is there specifically to prevent [[bad apple]]s — or [[stupid apple]]s — subverting the system to ends for which it was not intended.
+==== Business administration is broken ====
+{{drop|T|he epic judicial}} processes of 2024 have been Tom Hayes’ appeal against [[LIBOR rigging]], about which we have had much to say [[LIBOR rigging part 2|elsewhere]], and the [[Post Office Horizon IT scandal]]. Both are resolving to the question: to what extent can we put this absolute shower down to the nefarious, or just bone-headed, interventions of [[Operator|individual operators]].
-Much of the discourse about modern business administration is a catalogue of its singular failure to achieve that basic end. Our [[roll of honour]] at the [[disaster café]] refers.
+Yet, much of the engineering of business administration — you hardly need an advanced degree in operations research to know these days, there’s a lot of it — exists specifically to prevent [[bad apple]]s, or [[stupid apple|''stupid'' apple]]s, subverting our complex modern organisations and systems.
-LIBOR rigging and the sub-postmasters débâcle are    pinnacle examples. With all that infrastructure, superstructure and supervision how were a band of relatively lowly trading staff able to run riot? ''Where were all the barking dogs?
+Much of modern business administration is a catalogue of a singular failure to achieve that basic end. Our [[roll of honour]] refers. LIBOR rigging and the sub-postmasters débâcle are but pinnacle examples. With all that infrastructure, superstructure and supervision how were a band of relatively lowly trading staff able to run riot?
-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’s theory of the situation? Just applying [[Otto’s razor]]?
+''Where were all the barking dogs? ''
-Either we have localised problems — rogue gangs of bad apples — or the prevailing business administrative paradigm is in crisis and we need another theory of the game.
+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 gangs of bad apples” is always the preferred diagnosis because it relieves executives of primary accountability for the system and leaves them only with the plausibly deniable responsibility for hiring the rogues in the first place.
+==== Rogue apples, middle England and the grace of God ====
+{{drop|E|ither these are}} peculiar, localised problems — rogue gangs of [[Bad apple|bad apples]] plague the innocent houses of commerce — or the prevailing business administrative paradigm is in crisis and we need another theory of the game.
-That the paradigm might be in crisis suggests we are paying too much for an administrative regime that takes credit for all the good stuff and slips through your fingers when things go tits up. Who in the C-Suite wants to believe that?
+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.
-Tom Hayes and his buddies fit the “rogues gallery” identikit nicely. By microscopic adjustments that no-one else would notice, they 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.
-Susan Crichton, Rodric Williams, Jarnail Singh and Gareth Jenkins, and even pantomime villain Paula Vennells, less so. If they had anything to gain personally from systematically oppressing these pillars of the community nationwide, it was indirect, and paled in comparison to the city bonuses on offer to the LIBOR submitters.
+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.
-And watching these individuals give evidence, two things occur: firstly, that things would not have to have been wildly different in the life stories of these witnesses and any of them might themselves have been sub-postmasters, on the other end of this outrage. None more so than Paula Vennells, an middle-English lay methodist.
+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.
-Secondly — ''there but for the grace of God go I''. Rodric Williams is a fifty-something expat New Zealander qqq
+Second — A montage of every utterance by every witness of the manifold variations 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, in vector if not altitude, is strikingly similar to mine. In the halogen glare of cross-examined hindsight, his ineffectual interventions in an epic miscarriage of justice over an extended period are regrettable, but none of them resonate as ''odd''. Williams was adept at the sort of pencil-pushing, risk-averse [[buttocractic oath|buttocracy]] that is drilled by bitter experience into every single inhouse lawyer in the land. ''This is what inhouse counsel do''. This is how we behave. We should ask ourselves: knowing what ''he'' knew ''then'', ''would we have done any differently''? We should not kid ourselves here.
+==== Modern corporation as an unaccountability machine ====
+{{Drop|W|hich brings us}}, finally, to Dan Davies’ fascinating new book. There is, he reports, a crisis of accountability in the modern commercial world: the relationship between “we” the general public and “we” the representatives and managers of the corporations which intermediate much of public life — many are on both sides of this equation, of course — his irreconcilably broken down. This is because modern corporations are designed to diffuse individual accountability for the actions a corporate legal entity takes, using what Davies calls “[[accountability sink]]s”. This is Davies’s example:
+{{quote|
+Someone — an airline gate attendant, for example — tells you some bad news; perhaps you’ve been bumped from the flight in favour of someone with more frequent flyer points. You start to complain and point out how much you paid for your ticket, but you’re brought up short by the undeniable fact that the gate attendant can’t do anything about it. You ask to speak to someone who can do something about it, but you’re told that’s not company policy.
+The unsettling thing about this conversation is that you progressively realise that the human being you are speaking to is only allowed to follow a set of processes and rules that pass on decisions made at a higher level of the corporate hierarchy. It’s often a frustrating experience; you want to get angry, but you can’t really blame the person you’re talking to. Somehow, the airline has constructed a state of affairs where it can speak to you with the anonymous voice of an amorphous corporation, but you have to talk back to it as if it were a person like yourself.}}
+One creates an accountability sink by delegating the administration of a human process to a [[playbook|rulebook]] and then not giving anyone direct power to override it. Airlines, banks and online retailers of course have no access to anyone whatsoever. But the crushing stasis that anyone who works in financial services will know is a variety of the same thing.