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This feels so very true and depressing. I am a fan of capitalism. But man can it suck in some ways.
I remember seeing this process at the company I worked at between 2013 and 2020. Trips to visit coworkers in other offices became harder to justify. Nights out with co-workers used to be expensed or paid for by higher ups, and they did that less and less over time. Some of the fun co-workers that weren't necessarily as productive got kind of pushed out. The way per-diem worked shifted from a flat amount to having to submit all your receipts of meals. Amenities in the kitchen area became slimmer. It felt like the company was nickel and diming us constantly. Which was saving them a bit of money, but was mostly just making us miserable.
It led me to a big realization about politics and management at the time. That a good manager has two competing priorities. The first priority, which is their job, is to save the company money, or make sure that the company resources are being used efficiently. But the second priority, which is never spoken of by the company, is that the manager needs to save their people from the grinding destruction of all that is human and fun for the sake of the first priority. Managing that second priority is called "politics". Its a dirty word for the company and those who lose out by having a manager that sucks at it.
Politics is the desire to place the preferences of humans over the preferences of inhuman competitive forces.
The extent to how much an organization can get away with diverting resources to politics is a sign of how rich the organization is. An organization that is perfectly efficient with no waste or politics is probably a miserable place to work. I imagine Amazon warehouses are somewhat like this, where they have optimized things such as bathroom break frequency. An organization that is all politics can also be a miserable place to work, or an amazing place depending on whether you are on the winning side of the politics. Non-profits and some government organizations are both a bit closer to being 'all politics'.
Your point is taken and well-made, but I have to mention: Mises would disagree, but not Moloch!
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Great comment, and yeah reframes the way I see politics in my big organization. I agree though. I work in a Fortune 500 company and we got $1,000 for our holiday party this year, on a team of ~50 people in the U.S. That's pretty much the only event budget we got this year, outside of celebrating a 20 year work anniversary for someone on the team.
Apparently we used to have much more funding for these sorts of events, but they've been slowly cutting back. IMO it's crazy because I doubt it's even strictly efficient, given how important it is to keep talent. But I don't make those decisions.
I think the type of efficiency we have is efficiency at maximising what can be measured. The causality between e.g. a fun sociable office and employee retention is hard to measure. It's somewhat obvious that there is such a connection, so it gets a little funding. But there's not enough numerical evidence to put it where it should probably be to actually optimise for success.
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