488 karma · joined March 15, 2021
A company that loses money but has plenty of DEI is a failure.
DEI is not the factor that determines success or failure.
It is a tool that you can use but it makes no sense as a goal or target in itself. If your customer base has some attributes that aren't reflected in the staff, maybe hiring some will help you relate. The idea that your company must match the 'diversity' of the general public (in one country) is all backward.
The idea that competition is the holy grail of progress is a similar situation. Cooperation is far superior. When two lions compete, both get covered in scratches and bites and they die of infection. When they work together they can hunt and raise a family. We are always expecting companies to compete when one look at an actual megacorp will show you how much effort they spend on avoiding competition. It's all mergers and acquisitions. Buy your competitors before they are a challenge and add them to your empire (cooperation). Why does every industry merge into a monopoly? Because its far easier to cooperate as a single unit than as separate entities sniping at each other
The pursuit of the ideal free market forces us to adopt such unnatural beliefs and behaviors, and we have to pretend they are just fine.
I feel like modern presidential campaigns are just two team captains assembling as many billionaires as they can on their team. Biggest net worth team wins
It's way too easy for hostile shareholders to force companies to do things that the workers, even CEO level workers, don't want to do.
I'm just saying that you can link certain zones to specific outcomes. If we move into a new zone we haven't crossed the boundary (which feels final and irreversible), we are in a new zone with new consequences. We can leave that zone as well and change the outcome.
Obviously I'm in favour of fixing the problems but I'm not the majority of elected officials or their climate denying donors. You need to frame it in a way that they can act on it hence the choice.
Sure AI could do this on a personal level but communities are built around shared experiences so we might see some major labelled variants emerge that shape new communities.
Each could even have an internal product owner trying to beat the others. Its a simulation of competition which might drive some innovation from Google once again (assuming no real competition is breaking through that market domination anytime soon)
The internet is the way it is largely because of Google's algorithm and people shaping their content to appease it. If they allowed several to exist, we could have several internets also existing without the need for a new walled garden.
I've been on the receiving end of one of those projects and once you dive in without the person who pitched it, you see how hollow and nonsensical it really is. But by then its too late. The consultants who wrote it are all paid and the executives who attached their names to it as sponsors keep it limping along for years, draining everyone's will to live.
The other guy meanwhile is doing the same thing again at a bigger company having a great time.
Companies need to be able to fail and turnover with newer and better ones but the whole economy seems pegged to the biggest ones staying at the top, deserved or otherwise. Should we ban index funds? (spontaneous question, not suggestion)
It feels like you are being smart and critical but blindly rejecting and doubting everything is no different from blindly accepting or believing everything. Instead of observing each new idea and evaluating it on its merits, you've already determined what your response will be. It's a biased filter on everything you see.
We should aim to be openminded but also willing to reject things that don't make sense (looking at you, NFT bros)
If ownership could accrue in employees to a non trivial degree, they would have some power to push back when some bonehead exec tries to blow the whole place up. It's their livelihood as well as just the shareholders.
Right now when one of these giants at the top falls, they take out a lot of other people with them.
Repeat once per generation, to infinity
Lets make it into a normal job. 40 hrs per week, an expectation of privacy for those in the role and their families, and remove the cameras from the debating chambers so they can actually speak their minds instead of grandstanding for the home audience. Reduce the length of elections to 2 months max so that campaigning isn't a full time job in itself too
Their whole job is to 'represent' their constituents. A LLM can poll the sentiments of the people far more effectively than they can. I'm sure it could be programmed to accept bribes too to weigh rich people's opinions higher. I'd love to see votes done by 100 different LLMs instead of Senators (a hyperbolic, non literal statement but interesting as a thought experiment I hope)
Politicians should still propose new and altered legislation but actually voting, and being informed to vote, could be massively improved.
Tesla and SpaceX are massive achievements. The space industry was basically dead for years and electric cars were considered a joke or toy.
Elon doesn't do everything, and he often unfairly overshadows his team, but he is great at getting attention (from investors and customers) and he's gifted at optimizing manufacturing processes. I'm really impressed with how he speaks about assembly lines in particular and the relentless drive for simplicity. I'm less impressed by the empty promises, but he does inspire many with his vision.
The problem is when he leaves his lane and assumes his success in one domain translates to all domains. He's hardly the first successful person to lose their mind when they reach the top. We often talk about how inequality is bad for the average person but for me, it's shocking to see what it does to the people at the top too. Soaring at that height they leave reality far below.
The growing jobless rate would be a cause for celebration. People who automate industries would be heroes instead of being cursed by the poor who are now out on the street.
Our values got messed up somewhere. (I'm not from a work obsessed culture though, so I expect I will be told why work is actually the greatest and noblest thing on Earth, and I will roll my eyes)
Also as you say its in Tinder's interest to put everyone who swiped on you into a different queue and throttle the hell out of it. Drip feed matches into the stream of 'no's. As that liked queue gets bigger, your rejections grow and therefore your desperation/ willingness to pay rises. They can literally see who is already a yes and could prioritise those if they were pro-user. They do the opposite.
I've also noticed they will use this queue of people who liked you strategically. If you haven't been on in a while they will release some matches to build that reward expectation back up and then turn it down once you're doing what they want and engaging daily. (I can't prove this but it feels like the best way to get some matches is to wait for their 'we missed you' spam)
Everything else can be sacrificed as long as the line keeps going up (GDP, stock market, revenue, profit, share price - take your pick). No politician will risk doing anything that makes the line go down even if it boosts 'non line' metrics like happiness, health, social connections, free time, any environmental measures, home ownership, min wage)
We've gone from "there's no problem" to "ok maybe there's a problem but we can't do anything." Next step is "maybe we could have done something but the worst effects are already locked in so it's not worth the pain now."
The goal is always the same: do absolutely nothing
X is full of Xcrement
After all, what could be more efficient for shareholders than having no competition?