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from the promote-them-to-where-they-can-do-the-least-damage dept.
Geert Hofstede's "Culture's Consequences" is one of the most influential management books of the 20th century. With well over 80,000 citations, Hofstede argues that 50 percent of managers' differences in their reactions to various situations are explained by cultural differences. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has determined that culture plays little or no part in leaders' management of their employees; this finding could impact how managers are trained and evaluated globally.
"We all want a higher quality of life, a desirable workplace environment and meaningful work -- no matter our home country," said Arthur Jago, professor of management in the Robert J. Trulaske College of Business at MU. "In management theory, we focus more on leaders' differences rather than their similarities. By analyzing the data in a new way, I found that managers across country borders and across cultures are more alike than different."
Crud. Does this mean you can't get away from PHB's no matter where you go?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 25 2016, @05:33AM
You know very well what I'm getting at here: economic activity is subordinate to human flourishing.
Do you mean here "should be subordinate"? Because we already know of cases, like economic activity which produces particularly harmful pollution where there is a distinct move in a direction counter to many humans flourishing.
Your worldview glorifies objects and commodifies people; it sacrifices untold numbers of lives, whether slowly or quickly, in the red-hot hands of your Moloch idol, "The Free Market."
As I've noted before, asserting something doesn't make it true. Markets have their limits. The most fundamental flaw is that they can't trade what doesn't appear on the market. Externalities are the most common example, but there are also maxims such as "You can't buy happiness" which imply intangible things of value that can't be purchased on a market.
The well-known flaw comes with well-known solutions, such as regulation or pricing the externality into the transaction or for the intangibles, don't bother with the market at all and just find a better way. But in the case of the former we don't magically know what should be appropriate regulation or externality pricing. That's the problem that shows up when you speak of purpose of economic activities. For a transaction with an externality, everyone has a different viewpoint on the proper cost of the externality and they most certainly will not agree on that.
Further, it is common for those who are the subject of externalities to have chosen to increase their vulnerability to the externality. For example, "chasing the nuisance" is a traditional mitigating circumstance where say someone moves into a home by an asphalt plant (the traditional US example) and then sues for externalities (odor, noise pollution) that wouldn't have been incurred, if they hadn't moved.
Or someone chooses to live or act in a way that increases the cost of the externality to themselves. Why should we curb green house gases emissions now for people who a century or two in the future choose to live in dangerous places? (obviously, there are more costs than that, but it remains a very significant alleged cost of global warming and sea level rise). Especially given that they would make that choice no matter what the actual sea level was. Where is my right to live a meter above sea level or the right that my home remain at that elevation a century hence? Where is some future dude's right to live a meter above sea level and why is that relevant to us today?
So when we speak of the "purpose" of economic activity, we immediately run into a morass of conflicting interests and behaviors. There is no obvious common purpose to this and I think it is foolish to try.
Moving on, a previous example (more accurately, the only previous example) you gave was Flint, Michigan [soylentnews.org] where water sources were changed without consideration of the consequence of releasing lead into the water supply (aside from covering the problem up illegally, that is). This was not part of a market, but rather a strictly government action. Nor was it due to an absence of regulation. The actions taken were against regulations and were illegal even to the extent of tests being falsified. And finally, the perpetrators were caught [soylentnews.org]. What could be done to make that better? And who's going to pay for it?
It's worth noting, for example, that the state agency in charge of environmental protection, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality already run their own tests. Two of the people charged above, were with that organization. So we see right away that there was a considerable bypass of regulation that reached into one of the oversight agencies (actually two since the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services was similarly duped). Nor was the matter obscure. The change in pH was obvious as were the consequences (the effects on lead plumbing were well known). So proposing that say, we increase the rate or extent of testing wouldn't have helped in this case since the testers were corrupted in the first place.
They could have also ripped out the lead pipes. That apparently is well outside the budget of not just Flint, but a huge portion of the Midwest which has similar plumbing issues. So they came up with this alternate approach of testing and pH control. And as long as the water provider keeps the pH of the water appropriately alkaline, it is a non-problem as well.
Finally, how could the response be better? The crime was found and dealt with in about two years, which is pretty good considering the circumstances and done by someone who decided to test their own water supply.
So let's summarize, the Flint lead in water supply situation was not market-related, was already adequately regulated, the culprits got caught, and got caught due to a private citizen acting independently of the regulatory apparatus. This not a case for your original assertion that "Unregulated or improperly-regulated capitalism does dehumanize people" or the original poster's assertion that "capitalism dehumanize human work, it requires the same everywhere". Nor is it a case for your later assertion that regulation is necessary since the regulation was already present.
Moving on, my view on current regulation is that we're well beyond diminishing returns and solidly in negative returns from additional regulation. There is an enormous amount of regulation piled on every year in the US, more than can be read by a single person. We're not making US-flavored capitalism more humane or humanized, we're making it more scoliotic and crippling its ability to help us.
So my view is that just continuing to pile on regulation isn't helping humanity flourish, but rather the opposite effect. And the antagonistic models that have cropped up in this thread, such as aristarchus's Marxist bunk or merely asserting without a reason for caring that "capitalism dehumanizes human work" don't help us understand how capitalism actually works, much less improve capitalism to be a better tool for humans flourishing.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 25 2016, @06:51AM
I actually do agree we should, as i'm sure some corporate hack who will fry in the abyss would put it, "regulate smarter, not harder."
That said, you spend a dozen or so paragraphs to say very nearly nothing, though. Except "well fuck everyone else, especially those future-living fucks, fuck 'em all to hell, I don't give a fuck, where's MY right to be as stupid as them, derk-a-duhhhr?!" (Yes I am going to keep comparing you to the "they terk erh jehrbz!" guys every time you say something stupid and evil).
Do you ever stop and preview your own posts before you send them? Not for grammar or spelling issues, but moral content? All you got out of this was "chasing the nuisance?" Jesus, every time you post I lose more and more respect for you.
Here's your main moral failure: "For a transaction with an externality, everyone has a different viewpoint on the proper cost of the externality and they most certainly will not agree on that." Yes, this is tautologically true, because every individual necessarily has a different set of viewpoints, experience, etc.
What you're deliberately glossing over, though, is that these "externalities" as you so glibly refer to them can consist of ruining entire cities or segments of the economy, and different actors have vastly different capabilities to mitigate the damage said externalities do to them...not to mention, these externalities very often affect third parties who had little or nothing to do with whichever hypothetical trade you're thinking of in the first place.
This isn't, when you get right down to it, really about any specific system of economics. In theory, *any* economic system from utter hive-minded collectivism to absolute anarchy could work, and work equally well. In practice, we know certain things about human behavior, and we know those things are awful matches for specific systems of economic organization in the real world no matter what theory would have us believe. You want to elide this for some benefit to yourself, whether monetary or some twisted kind of ideological purity.
And I. Won't. Let. You.
You're not as clever as you think, and you can't gaslight me...or anyone else who reads your posts with a critical eye. Everything you say here condenses down to "fuck you, I got mine, might makes right," and I will continue to point this out in excruciating anatomical detail for all and sundry to see so everyone knows exactly what you and yours are trying to do.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 25 2016, @12:09PM
Here's your main moral failure: "For a transaction with an externality, everyone has a different viewpoint on the proper cost of the externality and they most certainly will not agree on that." Yes, this is tautologically true, because every individual necessarily has a different set of viewpoints, experience, etc.
It's a truism not a tautology. And I shouldn't have had to remind you of it.
What you're deliberately glossing over, though, is that these "externalities" as you so glibly refer to them can consist of ruining entire cities or segments of the economy, and different actors have vastly different capabilities to mitigate the damage said externalities do to them...not to mention, these externalities very often affect third parties who had little or nothing to do with whichever hypothetical trade you're thinking of in the first place.
Well, yes, affecting third parties is the definition of externality. And seriously, what externalities of that scale are still left in the developed world? Regulation is one of the few areas left that can still create and grow externalities to the appropriate scale. Government corruption undermining that regulation is another. Capitalism was tamed decades ago. It's the controlling apparatus that generates the problems today.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday December 25 2016, @04:26PM
Okay, we're done. You've made it quite clear you don't give a damn about anyone and anything but yourself, and you'll bend the entire world around your delusions if allowed. This is willful ignorance. There's no saving you.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...