Comment by drones | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drones | Hacker News Reader

Seven signs of ethical collapse:

1. Pressure to maintain numbers 2. Fear and silence 3. Young ‘uns and a bigger-than-life CEO 4. Weak board of directors 5. Conflicts of interest overlooked or unaddressed 6. Innovation like no other company 7. Goodness in some areas atones for evil in others

Umberto Eco's 14 signs of fascism:

1. The cult of tradition. 2. The rejection of modernism. 3. The cult of action for action's sake. 4. Disagreement is treason. 5. Fear of difference. 6. Appeal to social frustration. 7. The obsession with a plot. 8. The humiliation by the wealth and force of their enemies. 9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. 10. Contempt for the weak. 11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. 12. Machismo and weaponry. 13. Selective populism. 14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Each list contains symptoms of some degenerating organisation. However, I can easily find counterexamples of successful organisations which demonstrate one or more of these qualities. In fact, these organisations may be successful because they exhibit one or more of these qualities. This way of understanding the world is entirely juvenile and unfit as an evaluative framework.

I cannot agree. It is not a juvenile way of understanding, it is the only sensible way of understanding. Or rather it is not a way of understanding, it is one of the tools that can speed up understanding.

Social systems are very complex, you cannot write an algorithm of evaluation in terms of "measure this and that, then use this formula". It never works. You need to understand how the system works and it takes some research.

To do the research these 7 signs can be very helpful at first. They allow you to form you hypotheses fast on a data that not completely irrelevant. Just one more thing: these 7 signs are not just a measure procedure giving you one number, each one is a facet of an organisation that should be studied.

To be sure you'd better find some another evaluation framework, and study facets of an organization that it deems to be the most important.

It is like psychological tests: they do not diagnose the problems, but they allow to see a client from different perspectives. Tests are relatively cheap and they give you some threads to unravel.

> I can easily find counterexamples of successful organisations which demonstrate one or more of these qualities

1. No one said that these signs are signs of an unsuccessful organisations. You can be completely unethical and pretty successful at the same time. To my mind, the question does ethics correlate with a success or not is an ideological one. Theoretically speaking you can study it in a relatively objective way, but ideologies will win at the end. Either your indoctrination will take the upper hand, or indoctrination of others will force you to argue in a favor of "our sin will be punished inevitable" or something like. It is hard to find thinkers who are immune to that, there is a lot of wishful thinking goes on.

2. 1-2 signs is not a verdict, but an invitation to look deeper at the matters. Likewise 0 signs is not a verdict but very suspicious situation: how so? I will be very surprised if I find no these signs in any mildly successful organisation.

Unethical and successful are not mutually exclusive. Nor is fascism and success.

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