Fine lets argue his core point, the corporation as currently conceived is not meeting human needs. Financial "innovation" and debt culture is strangling the worker.
Sorry bruh I've got just as much knowledge about the software industry as you do. I'm not on here to drop personal info but bottom line I'm not bowing down on that topic. I DO know what I'm talking about
Have you ever run a software company? Are you a programmer? Be honest. If you haven't or you aren't a programmer, you don't. People(some) here know my history and can vouch on it over PM. The fact of the matter is that you've supposed wrong on the motivations of most programmers. If you aren't in the industry, I can understand why. Also, judging by the fact that you've never commented substantially in any tech-related threads here, I know your just posturing now Malaki. People have seen posts about my work on sites like techcrunch, mashable, etc.
More to the point the startup structure is more fun and rewarding because people are doing interesting work, they have some form of democratic choice in terms of what they do, and they're not buried under a corporate bureaucracy. Thats the thing, firms where workers have free will about what they work on and how they do it tend to be move innovative. Everyone knows large corporations are soul-crushing almost inevitably.
And your point is? This is common knowledge, for the most part.This doesn't support ANYTHING in that video. He tried to say this is indicative of COMMUNISM. I mean give me a break. He claimed this is an attribute of communism. This is indicative of almost any large company or entity in general..no matter the social-economic system in place in terms of the bureaucracy inherent in large entities.
Lets be real here, Google is an outlier. Google is insanely rich and tries incredibly hard to replicate the startup experience to the extent it can. It pampers its workers like almost nobody else can afford to. Its not realistic.
Google isn't the only company that uses this principle. I told you they borrowed it from 3M and is actually more common in the tech industry that people really understand. Google popularized the concept because of their overall success...which really has very little to do with this principle because none of those innovation that has come out of the 20 percent rule has produced much in terms of bottom line profits..though it has produced some "successful" projects like Orkut.com
THIS is the example your economist in that video gave as his example. He never said the word GOOGLE but it wasn't hard to know whom was implied...
In the real world most big companies are incredibly boring and tedious to work for, and people are buried in layers of bureaucracy that encourage them to be 9 to 5ers. The benefits accrue to upper management and stockholders (less so than management
) and its bascially, as Chomsky always says, a fascist organizational structure. Wolff's key point is that this model is not sustainable. People need to be closer to the metal so to speak. Extreme separation of capital and labor has gone too far.
The abuses in the Fortune 500 hundred by overpaying execs who don't perform has gone to far. The rest of the 99.9 percent of the business world, this is not a problem.. 90 percent of people are employed by small businesses and they don't make that much more than their average employees.. certainly not on the levels of the looting that is done at publicly traded firms..especially in the fortune 500.
People working in industries that aren't as lucrative as software need some "soft" rewards such as satifaction in their job, the ability to make decisions about what they do and how, and the large firm model has been a failure. You may not be able to see the failures of this system but I've been all over corporate America and its incredibly apparent. Further, the whole system is just too profit-maximization focused and not concerned enough with human needs. Examples are endless in any industry you care to name.
Malaki. My company has done work for companies all over the world.. including the U.S. This is nothing new to me. You don't like the system. That doesn't equate to it being a "failure" unless you are trying to redefine what the purpose of a corporation is. I tend to use the definition of the person who truly defines the corporation and the discipline of management: Peter Drucker.. but that's for another thread. The large firm model has NOT been a failure..on what capacity... and human "needs" are extremely subjective and have very little use in an conservation about companies... It's nice when companies go the extra mile.. it gives them a competitive advantage in the hiring market.. but it's providing for the type of human "needs" you are talking about (and I know the ones you are talking about because I've read your posts) are not the RESPONSIBILITY of a corporate. However, it's the environment I tried to provide my employees.
Yes, agreed. And the large firm model fails at that satisfaction metric. Google is the exception that proves the rule and frankly most of the rank and file google people who were in pre-IPO moved on once they vested. And most did what? created startups.
Depends on the the large company. I can name a 100 large firms that a majority of their employees LOVE working for.. google is not #1 and there are lists put out every year.
a VERY small percentage of them have created startups and you know what happened with some?.. the sold them back to Google and remained at the company... that is why google really began to more aggressively promote the 20 percent rule in the first place so they wouldn't have to leave in the first place. ALL the big wigs are pretty much still at google..almost ALL of them.. they've had very few departures by high ranking executives that hold a lot of stock... a rare one like the head of U.S. sales moving to AOL was a big story because it rarely happens..and he went to a large company... Facebook has really been the only company that has plucked a few notable heads, they hardly qualify at the normal startups and they end up losing most of them anyway because Zuckerberg is an asshole.
Also, the idea of startups producing innovation is not the problem
The problem with his statement is that he tried to claim this as a win for COMMUNISM. That is the problem
China's rate of development and growth over the last few decades has been the fastest BY FAR in world history.
I've already told you this wasn't true. It hasn't been the last FEW decades.
China's economic growth didn't really begin to take hold into the early 1990s and 20 years of sharp economic growth hardly compares to the example that your video gave over well over a 150 years.
Also, the growth is also a bit deception when you look at the relative puny size of their GDP in 1990.. The reality of the matter is that soon they will begin to run into the "law of large numbers" when applied to economies..and we need to need to see what happens the next 20 years in China... don't forget..for much of the talk of their manufacturing sector.. the U.S. manufacturing sector is still 3 times as large.. much less other sectors..
However, this still says nothing to support the original argument by the economist in your video,
Anyway the US has had massive intervention into its economy by the state. Your free market fundamentalism has nothing to do with the realities of how industrialization works. Trade and commerce predates capitalism and its silly to take the position that the specific set of institutions and practices that constitute anglo style capitalism are irreplaceable and no other approach is possible.
This is another straw man. Who ever said no other approach is possible? The argument is not about the possibility of another approach. This is about how the current models stand up against one another with empirical evidence. And capitalism hands down wins against other forms of statism..and even statist admit that.. by they try to say because the purist form of their form of statist hasn't never been accepted into full practice
Again, I've probably read my about industrialization from all angles ...i mean actual books that most people here have read articles.. so believe me.. I'm not worried about that.
No absolutely I will use Stalin because thats hte problem with the way most economist speak. They are stalinist. The corporation is a fascist institution. Economic growth means nothing if human welfare is not advanced. You hear people speak about "the economy" as if it were a living being. Its not. The US economy has been "strong" and "growing" for decades now while actual workers' welfare has gotten worse and worse. Like Wolff says, all it takes is a trip to Europe to realize how dumb Americans are, for working so hard and allowing the financial elites to treat them like slaves.
I've been to multiple countries on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. I've probably been to 10 countries in Europe.. many multiple times... You do know there are MANY places in Europe that are even more difficult to live in than their counterparts in the U.S... Paris and London are too easy cities to name. Though the Swedes are often on the top of the "happiest' people list. But europeans don't reap anymore financial wealth from their "jobs" than Americans.
You can certainly use Stalin.. but Stalin's economy directly led to the death of 20 million of his citizens.. so it just wouldn't be a good choice...
Ah come off it. The Fed is a huge part of it but its too reductionist to say that the corporations aren't a part too. Monsanto and Cargill don't "serve" the Fed. Wal-Mart doesn't "serve" the Fed. These are huge mega-corporations that aggregate economic power to benefit themselves and their executives and shareholders. Wolff is critiquing this model directly.
and these types of companies don't exist in non-capitalistic societies?
I KNOW you aren't making that argument that abusive corporations originate with capitalism...
and mega corporations started with capitalism.. be serious man? Do we need to do a history lesson?
You've still not ..nor has your video illustrated why the problem is with capitalism...because you can't... it's nothing simplistic analysis confusing correlation with causation..
Oh I dunno, I'd say Paul Graham would agree with a lot of what he said. Matter of fact it could have come straight from Paul Graham's mouth.
The video didn't say "anything" and that's the problem. He just ranted. Paul Graham has no credibility when discussing "silicon valley" ..absolutely none..
Why is it that when a startup gets bought its innovation ceases? Why are startups so much more productive and innovative than large software companies? Theres the nut of what he is talking about.
He didn't give one concrete example stating as to the real reasons... much less as to why his "solution" is even relevant to startups.
I've given examples with Parc. I've posted on this very board. You should read some posts I made about books like "blue ocean strategy" or books by Collins.
His "solution" doesn't solve the bureaucracy problem (like the numerous purchased by Google that have gone stagnant as the rewrite the entire software over to confirm to their coding standards ... Dodgeball is one example), or the loss of the startup team (eventually, like what happened with Ebay purchased skype), ...and innovative is not the best word... commercializing and taken to market is better.. Microsoft has more innovation in terms of patentable technology and I gave the example of Parc... the problem is that all the bureaucratic layers often prevents this promising technology from getting to the market faster... startups are typically just faster because they need to be..just to survive in the first place... it's more difficult to move large ships.. it's just the reality.
Well more people are realizing this system isn't working for them and are looking for new answers. I think this guy Wolff has some good insights. The problem here is you are far too dogmatic and stuck in analyzing business using terminology and concepts that have been fed to you for ideological reasons
Be serious man. Nothing has been "fed" to me. I seek information independently.
if I were "stuck", I wouldn't have even taken the time to watch the video when I knew he was a marxist. I gave the video a chance.. but it was garbage... plain and simple man... it was just a weak video with very little substance. I like to hear alternatives.. this particular video just didn't provide anything solid.
. I just think you need to be a little less ideological and focus in on what arguments a guy like Wolff is really making.
The irony is that you are the one guilty about being ideological. I broke down his argument based on what he said. I even posted the specific times in the video.
YOUR response was to argue MARXISM vs CAPITALISM.... come on man..be real... his argument was shitty regardless of his ideology.
His core proposition is for a reimagining of the firm to be more worker-centric. He's saying if you spend most of your week at a job you should feel rewarded, and should have some amount of democratic control. The large corporate command and control model is basically a fascist entity that prevents that human touch.
His argument was that communist was the real reason for all the innovation of the last 50 years and if we applied it to large corporations we would solve the problem. He said it with his own fucking mouth man... it needs know interpretation.. he actually said it... The only proposition he gave (unless I watched the wrong video) was to make the workers apart of the board of directors and that is hardly innovation or substantive as his hypothesis.. that is nothing new.
I even gave an example SEMCO that implements these amazingly "democratic workplace" ideas and does great with it and I admire the company.... again.. the economist in this particular video just didn't say anything substantive.. it was more of a rant than anything..
