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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32047 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Anyone have any examples of an employee union that improves business for both employees and employer?

The most salient feature of unions that I know about is that they prevent the employer from firing bad employees, or promoting good employees over ones with seniority. This makes sense to me because unions get their power/support from employees that need the union more than the employer needs them i.e. bad ones. A prototypical example of the leftist high-low alliance.

But there's no reason it has to be this way. It's technically possible for a union to say "fire bad employees, promote some faster than others, but pay us more". Is there any examples of this sort of thing working well?

First of all, unions don't prevent employers from firing bad employees or making promotion decisions based on seniority; rather, contracts do that, and only some contracts do so. Moreover, the general rule is the US is that workers can be fired at any time without cause -- i.e., at the whim of the employer. Union contracts, in contrast, permit firing only for cause. What constitutes "cause" varies, but still, here is one benefit: Those contracts not only make it more difficult to fire bad employees; they also makes it more difficult to fire a good employee who happens to get on the wrong side of a bad supervisor, or who doesn't "get with the program," even when the program is a poor one.

Let me explain in more detail.

First, it is well established that managers of companies do not always act in the best interests of the companies themselves. For that reason, giving employees the power to push back against managers can often be in the best interests of the company. See, eg, Dilbert.

Second, let's analogize with tenure in K-12 schools (which, contrary to popular belief, means only that teachers can be fired only with cause, as opposed to, as CA courts put it re teachers before they get tenure, being fired "for any reason, or for no reason.") When I taught high school, I had tenure, and hence I (and other teachers) were able to push back on all sorts of proposals by administrators which were unlikely to inure to the benefit of students (newsflash: teachers know more about their students than administrators do). Sometimes that was about budgeting -- federal law requires decisions about spending money to be made by a committee composed of administrators, teachers, and parents. Teacher representation would be pointless if teachers on the committee have to fear getting on the wrong side of the principal). Sometimes it was about the administration pushing teachers to teach how to game multiple choice tests rather than teaching real curriculum. The list goes on and on.

Now, this is not to say that teachers always act in the best interests of their students, nor that administrators never do. Ditto re the analogous positions in private companies. Nevertheless, a system in which those in supervisory roles have unfettered power is unlikely to yield anything close to optimal results.

a system in which those in supervisory roles have unfettered power is unlikely to yield anything close to optimal results

Disagree, for counterexamples see every military and small business ever

Well, re small businesses, where is your evidence that small businesses are particularly effective? Anyhow, truly small businesses don't have principal-agent problem that I mentioned, so they are irrelevant to my argument.

As for every military, again, where is your evidence that militaries are particularly effective at what they do? Or that militaries which give have those types of power structures are more successful than those which don't? Because all the evidence I have ever seen implies the opposite. See eg this US Army manual on leadership, which repeatedly emphasizes that effective leaders need to exercise humility and to encourage candid input from subordinates.

Historic kings needed to consider and encourage candid input from their advisors too! That didn't mean they didn't have 'absolute power'.

Hierarchical organization does not exclude using feedback from subordinates or delegating decisions.

The most efficient organizations are small businesses on their way to becoming large businesses. Founders of unicorns always talk wistfully about how awesome the company was before it got too big. The least efficient organizations are the ones that have that reputation, e.g. the Toronto Transit Commission.

The common feature of organizations that suck is that they dilute accountability, both for success and failure. Within a hierarchical organization, this is not the case. Here's another example: sports teams. The best players have the most authority, and the coach has ultimate authority. It works, because if something else worked better, everyone would do that instead.

The most efficient organizations are small businesses on their way to becoming large businesses.

Are they? Correct or not, "small businesses growing into large businesses" is a subset of small businesses, and a fairly small one at that.

The common feature of organizations that suck is that they dilute accountability, both for success and failure. Within a hierarchical organization, this is not the case.

Again, is this true? A lot of small businesses (where all the responsibility is on the owner-manager) suck quite badly despite concentrating accountability. Moreover, hierarchical organizations are great at diluting responsibility. This is true in both the public and private sector, though it is especially apparent the public sector. You can have a massive fuckup where everyone involved can - sincerely - say "I was just following instructions/official guidelines".

Subset of small businesses, that includes all large businesses.

The ones that suck do because their principal sucks. This does not say anything about the quality of the organizational structure.

hierarchical organizations are great at diluting responsibility...especially apparent the public sector.

I disagree. The public sector is the counterexample of hierarchy. If a superior can't fire his subordinates, it is not a hierarchical organization.

I disagree. The public sector is the counterexample of hierarchy. If a superior can't fire his subordinates, it is not a hierarchical organization.

I worked in the public sector for most of my career and I fired a good number of people. Again you are using far too wide a brush. The public sector of the whole world is far too broad a category for you to be making these statements which are then trivially disproved.

A large business is by definition not a small business.

The ones that suck do because their principal sucks. This does not say anything about the quality of the organizational structure.

What does this mean?

The public sector is the counterexample of hierarchy. If a superior can't fire his subordinates, it is not a hierarchical organization.

You're going to lay out what you mean by 'hierarchical' then, because it clearly has some disjunction from the common usage. In particular, the above would exclude militaries, which you previously praised.

Disobeying orders in the military is called insubordination. The penalty ranges from death (historically, maybe still in some places) to a court-martial. This is functionally the same as firing.

In America, sports teams are vanity projects ultimately run by billionaires who want a boost in name recognition. Their teams are exempted from anti-trust and artificially scarce, so the owners feel relatively secure they can flip their team if they run into financial problems, elsewhere, or pass it on to their children where it will retain some value. And, if those owners are bad at hiring general mangers, it’s not too much of a problem. They just need to be liked, or at least not disliked, by the other owners in their league. (Think Donald Sterling, who all the other NBA owners hated, versus Robert Sarver who just got a one year suspension and a fine, for pretty much the same offense. Not that Sarver is everyone’s favorite.)

The Sacramento Kings, New York Jets and Buffalo Sabres are all sitting on 10+ year playoff droughts in leagues with a salary cap. They and their owners will not be removed if things don’t improve.

Also, bad GMs love churning through multiple head coaches before ownership stops letting them pass the buck.

Sports teams in America are franchises of multibillion-dollar corporations.

You must be thinking of Europe. In America, sports teams make money and several are owned by large companies.

None of your complaints about how the leagues are run has anything to do with how a team operates on the field/court/ice. The coach is the sole authority, but must delegate all of the actual playing. Players are given leeway in proportion to how good they are (e.g. Auston Matthews faces less consequence for a lazy giveaway than Aston-Reese). Players are also criticized in proportion to how good they are. Everyone on the team buys into the system, they win and lose together. When the coach starts to lose the players respect or the good players start to not care about the outcome, it's a problem that needs to be fixed ASAP.

Do you think any other model could win games? If so, why hasn't it been done? How does this example not apply more generally to every organization?

Do you think any other model could win games? If so, why hasn't it been done? How does this example not apply more generally to every organization?

We’re talking about the economy, not some game where a higher power tells every firm they’re only allowed to have the exact same number of employees and set a salary cap on their wages and restrict which company employees can sign with when entering the industry and can extract concessions or prevent an employee from changing firms if an opposing firm doesn’t offer a higher guaranteed salary. It’s apples to oranges.

A team sport is "given this number of people and this equipment, do this thing better than the other team". In addition to each player being good, the team itself has to have a certain structure. Why is the right-wing hierarchical structure the only one that's ever used?

It's the most effective, and not a coincidence that rightism and affinity for team sports are linked.

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Case study: Jerry Jones.

He's fascinating because he's so good at running the team as a business (his strategic decisions on marketing the Cowboys as America's team and separating their merchandizing rights have made them the most valuable team by far even though their market, Dallas is far from the top), but he's almost equally as bad at managing the team's on the field success. It seems like the more hands on he is the more mediocre they become, even with the luck of an undrafted All-Pro QB (that should have been an enormous advantage in his first few contracts).

Dallas is a pretty good market, to be fair. It’s the fourth-largest metro in the U.S. and the top two house a pair of teams, each, where the Bears and Cowboys have nos. 3 and 4 to themselves. Also, culturally, Texas is football mad. But 💯 on your point about Jones being a savvy businessman and bungling sportsman.

At least as regards the military, this is incredibly wrong. Not sure about the present day, but there's LOADS of scholarship out there about how the empowerment of individual soldiers to exercise discretion in how to achieve set objectives has been exceedingly important throughout the conflicts of the 20th century (auftragstaktik, British/Indian "Chindit" tactics, U.S. Marine "Distributed Operations"/"Combined Action Program", USN "Command by Negation," etc.)

Delegation is not the same thing as insubordination. Good leaders know when to listen to their employees or let them do their own thing.

Does the military get optimal results? Given how many non-officers complain about the incompetence of their superiors this seems highly unlikely. Does the US military perform well due to unfettered power from officers? or does it perform well in spite of it?

"The military" as in the current ones, disputable. It is also arguable that it is run as a true hierarchy, or answerable to e.g. a king.

Every single military historically was run this way though, and yes they got results because they won. If an alternative organizational structure produced better results, we would know about it and every military would instead have been run that way.

The more obvious (and moldbug) example is startups / large companies and their CEOs - they can more or less direct company operations as they will, with only advisory input from the board, and these run the entire modern economy. You can deny the US military is relatively effective, but apple? google? semiconductors?

Every single military historically was run this way though, and yes they got results because they won. If an alternative organizational structure produced better results, we would know about it and every military would instead have been run that way.

I think you need some evidence on this. Otherwise every organization (including unions!) should follow the same logic. If there was a better organization for them we would know about it and every union would instead have been run this way. This is setting aside that many militaries do in fact lose.

For example militaries may be more efficient when divorced from civilian control. But it might not happen regardless due to other factors. We are not optimization machines. We often create and perpetuate inefficient organizations.

Otherwise every organization (including unions!) should follow the same logic

Well, the corporations that organize and deliver the work and economic output do follow that model - one leader (ceo).

As an organization grows, it becomes more challenging and then impossible for a single person to keep track of what's happening. Eventually they need to receive information and give orders without a way to verify whether the information is true or the orders were carried out. Add a few more layers of this, and this is why "all organizations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing."

Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot, which the managers extract from the productive parts of the organization using said loyalty. Every organization therefore experiences the same cycle: inception -> growth -> leftist takeover -> collapse.

Religion, nationalism, or any sort of ethos that unites people in service of some higher mission is social technology that prevents these last two parts.

Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot, which the managers extract from the productive parts of the organization using said loyalty. Every organization therefore experiences the same cycle: inception -> growth -> leftist takeover -> collapse.

This is pure "boo outgroup" without even a pretense at providing evidence for your claim.

Seriously, people, actually read the rules in the sidebar. They have not changed significantly since we moved.

Is boo outgroup allowed if it's true?

For example: the behaviour of the "experts", media, government during COVID re: vaccine/lockdown skeptics, lab leak theorists was fully insane. It's now being walked back completely. A sober assessment of all of these events is extremely "boo outgroup". Are we allowed to say this stuff anyway, as long as it's in a somewhat civil way?

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I’ll join in the calls for Citation Needed. Passing information does not make something left-wing. Arguably, your example suggests a more reactionary, feudal structure in which the benighted peasants contract with a sovereign. It’s not a good example, given that you don’t explain how the productive end up loyal, but what should I expect from a cheap drive-by?

Also: paging that guy who wanted to prove wokeness was a religion.

Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot, which the managers extract from the productive parts of the organization using said loyalty. Every organization therefore experiences the same cycle: inception -> growth -> leftist takeover -> collapse.

I think you will need to provide some evidence for your contention. That certainly isn't how I would define a left-wing organization, let alone "of course". There are many different organizational structures on the left from anarcho-communism through to hierarchal authoritarian communism to left-libertarianism through to neo-liberal progressive capitalism.

Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy.

Opposition to hierarchy is in the definition as per wikipedia. The force that drives these politics is a broker/manager class who profess the politics, supported by those who gain something from opposition to hierarchy i.e. those in the lower portion. Said alliance is easy to pick out in every leftist regime in history as well as on a smaller scale in organizations.

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Left-wing of course is an organizational structure where low performers pledge their loyalty to managers in exchange for loot

What makes any of that "left-wing"?

A lot, sadly. They spent over a century developing a whole ideology around it, no one else can compete

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Could you expand on this, because this seems contrary to my observation and intuition? The best militaries tend to be the ones that empower NCOs and enlisted and treat them well (conversely, the intensely hierarchical nature of militaries makes it easy for performance/morale-degrading abuses by leadership to go ignored/unnoticed/suppressed). Likewise, many (if not most) small businesses are terribly run, with leadership as a single point of failure.

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