> Is this a genie that can be bottled back up? Lets say you enact these magical regulations. Will the corporations stick around or will they focus on other countries where they have more clout? Similarly, will they use international levers of pressure to "fix" the issues any one country poses?
If you try to bottle the genie back up, you'll have to work all those levers simultaneously or you'll have the problems you describe. The new set of regulations would also need to curtail the ability of corporations to move to avoid regulations and limit the kinds of political pressure they can apply, for instance. Otherwise it'll be like closing one barn door while leaving the other wide open.
We've gone so far down the road in one direction that we may have to turn around with a shock. It it's probably too late for some kinds of small, incrementalist course corrections to be effective.
> I agree with this analysis, and find it overall reasonable, but it seems to need a little more evidence, e.g. do we have any data that shows companies who put "generic managers" on top on regular fail more than those who put engineers on top.
That could be hard data to gather systematically. It's not like businesses fail immediately when you put a "generic manager" in change. A company can coast for decades before problems become obvious, and generic management confusing things even further by focusing on manipulating the most visible metrics (e.g. stock price) while taking actions that damage long term prospects.
> If customers don’t want this stuff, why isn’t there a competing company offering non-DRM tractors?
Because modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs, despite propaganda to the contrary. The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers). The other stakeholders are often forced to accept minimally acceptable deals, as long as the capital-holders are able to maintain barriers to entry (like large investments in capital).
A new market entrant will likely be tempted (eventually, if not immediately) to implement DRM just like Deere has. And Deere can always drop DRM temporarily if it will let them fend off a competitive threat.
> The way the system actually works is that the wants/needs of the capital-holders take priority over the wants/needs of other stakeholders (e.g. customers and workers).
The capital-holders did not (in most cases) get a "you are now free to hose your customers" card. The cases where they are free to do so are cases where there is a lack of competition. So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition". But if there is actual competition, and the wants of the capital-holders take priority over the wants of the customers, that's not going to work out well for the capital-holders.
> So "modern capitalism is not a system that will magically fulfill customer needs in the absence of competition".
But modern capitalism, at least in the American context, is a system being drained of competition. Competitors conspire to destroy it by merging and acquiring each other, and the deregulatory economic zeitgeist that's been in force for 40 years means the government has done little to foster it.
Markets tend towards equilibrium, and bitter competition is a kind of disequilibrium.
> But modern capitalism, at least in the American context, is a system being drained of competition.
I agree, and I agree that it's a problem. But it's the "being drained of competition" that's the problem, not capitalism itself. (Well, capitalism itself is something that would prefer to drain itself of competition - even Adam Smith knew that - but for capitalism to work properly, there has to be competition.)
There seem to be two kinds of "draining of competition". First, there's the "just too good" kind. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and (the subject at hand) John Deere may all be of this kind (though Microsoft did plenty of dirty tricks to get there). Economics of scale and network effects create positive feedback loops where one competitor can win it all. I don't really know what to do about that.
The second kind is government-caused (or at least -allowed) monopoly. There's only one electric company here, because the government thought it made sense for there to be. Some other monopolies are less directly government caused, but heavy regulations can make it so that only the largest firms have the resources to comply, and all the smaller firms die.
Government-allowed is when the government approves a merger of firms that are big enough that the merger significantly decreases (or eliminates) competition.
With the government we've had for the last 40 years, I don't know what to do about this kind, either.
> Or create a new NATO that does not repeatedly exclude the Russians[1].
It seems like accepting Soviet/Russian proposal would have had the effect of 1) limiting the criticism of Soviet human rights abuses and 2) weakening the ability of democratic western countries to resist aggression by the authoritarian Soviets.
I think it was the right call for NATO to reject this proposal. If it had been accepted, maybe we'd still have the Soviet Union around in 2020.
From your link:
> Molotov wrote. “The USSR joining the North Atlantic Pact simultaneously with the conclusion of a General European Agreement on Collective Security in Europe would also undermine plans for the creation of the European Defense Community and the remilitarization of West Germany.”
> But Molotov did foresee problems in the event the Soviet Union became a NATO member. NATO would likely insist on democratic institutions while the Soviet Union considered the Westphalian concept of sovereignty sacrosanct. “If the question of the USSR joining it became a practical proposition, it would be necessary to raise the issue of all participants in the agreement undertaking a commitment (in the form of a joint declaration, for example) on the inadmissibility of interference in the internal affairs of states and respect for the principles of state independence and sovereignty,” Molotov wrote.
Microsoft's Surface has the perfect aspect ratio for screens (3:2), imo. Wide screen devices just look wrong. 16:10 is fine, but it still isn't quite right (this is also what Apple uses.)
I very reluctantly gave up my Thinkpad Yoga 2 for a new Surfacebook instead of sticking with Lenovo but I have no regretted the switch yet. Any chance you can recommend a USB C hub that retains a USB-C plug on it that will do DisplayPort out? I have a nice Anker USB-C hub but it only gives me HDMI out and even though it retains a USB-C plug on it it downgrades it to USB 3.0.
There's two Lenovo docks that do this. One has an integrated GPU that I guess you can use if you have thunderbolt, one doesn't. Both provide plenty of displayport/hdmi out.
Unfortunately no, and I'm surprised that Microsoft hasn't upgraded their dock to have USB-C ports. I have been holding out on upgrading my dock for this reason.
Agreed. I got very used to 16:10 when I bought my monitors as a teenager. A couple of years ago I finally decided the 19" screens weren't cutting it anymore after 10 years of service and wanted to move to 24". Spent some time looking for 16:10 but ended up with 16:9 unfortunately. 16:10 monitors were way less common and way more expensive. And 144hz 16:10 monitors just don't even seem to exist. 16:9 feels so much more cramped than it should given the screen size.
To make a screen with any ratios other than 16:9 seems to be very expensive nowadays though. I personally would rather a laptop be cheaper than to have a 16:10 or 3:2 monitor.
Then again, it would probably be only visible in greater margin for the manufacturer :/.
It's probably not that they're much more expensive to make, but there are much better economies of scale with a 16:9 ratio... the same panels work for TVs too
There isn't a market for 13-inch TVs... But mathematics support your reasoning about economies of scale: with constant, 13.3 inch diagonal, higher the aspect ratio, lower the screen area,thus less raw materials used, cheaper to produce.
> The LF hasn't been about tools and software for quite a while. It's disappointing. I wish they'd change the name at this point. At least it would be honest.
>> 100% of donations received go towards funding diversity programs.
Are there any organizations that use their donations to focus on supporting developers of actual open-source projects?
Diversity is great an all, but it makes more sense to focus on the people who are actually doing the work rather than the ones you hope might do the work.
> I wonder if they would perform better if they routinely fired the top 10% of their employees (by org chart, not by performance ratings) and let talented new blood bubble upward.
IIRC, the US military follows something like that practice. It's called "up or out":
> ...the 1980 Defense Officer Personnel Management Act mandates that officers passed over twice for promotion are required to be discharged from the military.
IIRC, the idea is to prevent people who lack greater potential from hogging the intermediate positions that others need to advance.
I think it's slightly different in that it would only apply to the top 10% of the org chart. A first-level manager passed over for promotion wouldn't be dismissed; only VP or C-level executives would, and they would be regardless of whether they were recently promoted. (In fact, because the positions are periodically vacated, they are guaranteed to have been recently promoted.)
It's much closer to term limits and the elected-office/civil-servant split in a democratic government. That has its own set of problems, but is generally fairly good at discouraging empire-building. It also differs in that civil servants generally can't transition to being elected officials (despite their qualifications, they face a lot of obstacles to winning elections), while here executives would generally be drawn from the ranks of ordinary management, keeping the ranks under them dynamic.
Why not apply this to first-level managers, too? I've seen more than one first-level manager who wanted to build an empire. I think all of the issues mentioned here about VPs also apply to managers.
Why would anyone move to management then? At Google a lot of L6 swes are put in the position of TL/M due to their ability to guide technically. This would probably vanish.
> A first-level manager passed over for promotion wouldn't be dismissed
This system will encourage first-level managers to do everything in their power to be "passed over" every single time. I can imagine the ridiculous shenanigans they'd pull, walking the fine line between not being too competent lest you get promoted, without being too incompetent that you get fired outright. Sounds like the making of a truly middling culture: questionably competent-ish, but not ambitious.
I think I'd watch a Office Space/Silicon-Valley-type show based on this premise. The overachiever character perennially delegated to bug triage, doing endless interviews for a perpetually open position on the team and being sabotaged when they manage to put some real work in after-hours (for comic relief. In real life, they'd get fired)
Why would you prefer to do this rather than not up-and-out. Your original reasoning seems well-met by up-and-out. Fresh blood comes in, Peter-principle people get kicked out. Looks pretty good.
When you reach term limits, you don't get kicked out of the country. It would create a powerful disincentive for people to move up at all, unless they wanted to leave the company soon anyway.
> the US military follows something like that practice. It's called "up or out"
During my time as a DoD contractor, I saw this happen.
One particular case was a mid-range officer [I'm never good with ranks so don't bother asking] who was up for promotion; it was an open secret that if he didn't get it he'd retire into civilian [and presumably commercial//industry] life. He didn't get the promotion, retired from military, and was duly replaced.
> Just look at our voting count machines. You think something like that would be treated with extreme priority and would have a lot more security around it than it does.
If the priority was to build a good system. However, powerful government factions think that all government development must be farmed wholesale to private business, because of a twisted ideological belief in the market. Those private businesses are ruled by the ideology that shareholder value is the ultimate and only good, so they slap their products together as cheaply as possible.
The result of that toxic stew is that we can't have nice things.
So, is this rumor true, exaggerated, or just the authorities trying to cover their own asses by "discovering" evil agents for the public to blame instead?
If you try to bottle the genie back up, you'll have to work all those levers simultaneously or you'll have the problems you describe. The new set of regulations would also need to curtail the ability of corporations to move to avoid regulations and limit the kinds of political pressure they can apply, for instance. Otherwise it'll be like closing one barn door while leaving the other wide open.
We've gone so far down the road in one direction that we may have to turn around with a shock. It it's probably too late for some kinds of small, incrementalist course corrections to be effective.