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Benevolent Paternalism

ViolentPanda said:
If you operate a simple production process, it's possible - for example, if your factory produces wooden chair legs for the export "handmade furniture" market, then a simple management/oversight platform is all you need. As soon as your process becomes more complicated, oversight needs to be stratified.
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Which modern successful businesses still do things this way? I've not worked in many factories but they've always involved the usual 'team leaders' and stratified structures you get in any office.
 
Ultimate said:
I agree with the first part, but not the second. But the key word is 'should'. Yes, ideally it should, but if we want to maintain our high living standards we need a complicated organisational and managerial structure, which means some decisions have to be made by people further from the people affected (i.e. higher up the hierarchy) than would be ideal. Economy of scale, in management as well as production, is essential for high living standards, although I hasten to add that the current economic system is very wasteful with both material and human resources. But I'm not here to defend it.
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I'm sorry, but that management style is incredibly inefficient. Why pay someone 30 times the average workers compensation to make decisions for today's highly educated workers when they're fully qualified to make the necessary decisions? Left alone most small groups of workers will find the most efficient manner of doing their work. In addition, whenever you expand scale, a business becomes less efficient, not more. It becomes less able to change course and more issues that used to be observed and repaired are lost instead. Even an inveterate Capitalist such as Warren Buffett acknowledges this. It's been in his shareholder letters for the last few years. He's of the opinion that Berkshire Hathaway is so large it can no longer be efficient.
 
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8ball said:
Which modern successful businesses still do things this way? I've not worked in many factories but they've always involved the usual 'team leaders' and stratified structures you get in any office.
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That's kind of my point - unless your product or practice is simple, then you're always going to require some degree of management stratification. It's a necessary concomitant to any degree of complexity in your production or your business practice.

While I'm sure that "economies of scale" with regard to management may be achievable in terms of getting rid of some of those who are mere box-tickers and bean-counters, filing reports about whether or not the business is achieving its' "core mission", actual management (of personnel and of practice) isn't particularly amenable unless you're massively over-staffed in some levels of management.
 
Yuwipi Woman said:
I'm sorry, but that management style is incredibly inefficient. Why pay someone 30 times the average workers compensation to make decisions for today's highly educated workers when they're fully qualified to make the necessary decisions? Left alone most small groups of workers will find the most efficient manner of doing their work. In addition, whenever you expand scale, a business becomes less inefficient, not more. Even an inveterate Capitalist such as Warren Buffett acknowledges this. It's been in his shareholder letters for the last few years. He's of the opinion that Berkshire Hathaway is so large it can no longer be as efficient as it used to be.
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Also, the practice of "total management" that some MBAs are taught (basically a polar opposite to delegation) is a breeding ground for inefficiency that actively disincentivises workers from doing anything but "their job", whereas a lighter touch and a little worker autonomy often pays dividends to workers and management.
 
8ball said:
Assuming your workers are not able to self-manage for whatever reason...
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Most workers can, but frankly there tends (in modern businesses) to be lots of tedious administrative functions best left to someone who actually enjoys them! :)
 
ViolentPanda said:
Which speaks loudly of your prejudices about anarchists, and about your narrowmindedness, but says little to actually support your contentions about economies of scale.
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You've got it all completely mixed up. It was Silas Loom who talked about the anarchists, not me. My comment was about Silas's bad English.
 
butchersapron said:
Did you vote lib dem ultimate?
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How I vote is my business. But if you're interested, I've voted Lib-Dem before, but I'm not commited to any particular party. I once voted Tory, just for fun. However, fascist groups like the BNP and the EDL are dangerous, and opposition to them must be taken seriously.

The party who's ideas come closest to my own are the Green Party, but I have no illusions in them. Whatever good intentions a party might start out with, once they get into power they're all the same. So it doesn't matter which party is in power.
 
I can anticipate this thread coming to an end soon. It will have to anyway, otherwise, at this rate, I'll be keeping the undertakers waiting.
Undertaker: The meter on your hearse is ticking away, sir.
Me: Hang on, let me just finish this last post - oh, bugger! There's another alert!

I'm Daniel in the lions' den, and I'm reluctant to get out of the den because I don't want the lions to think I'm afraid of them. Even though some of them seem to want to tear me to pieces for the heinous crime of suggesting that centralised leadership might be good thing after all.
 
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Ultimate said:
I can anticipate this thread coming to an end soon. It will have to anyway, otherwise, at this rate, I'll be keeping the undertakers waiting.
Undertaker: The meter on your hearse is ticking away, sir.
Me: Hang on, let me just finish this last post - oh, bugger! There's another alert!

I'm Daniel in the lions' den, and I'm reluctant to get out of the den because I don't want the lions to think I'm afraid of them. Even though some of them seem to want to tear me to pieces for the heinous crime of suggesting that centralised leadership might be good thing after all.
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Ultimate said:
Well, I do consider government and a social hierarchy necessary, so I think we might have to just agree to disagree about that.

Social inequality isn't a political stance, it's a fact. People aren't and never can be equal. There are always going to be strong and weak people, and people with more dominant personalities than others, and most of them will inevitably achieve the higher social positions. It applies as much to humans as it applies to animals, where the stronger ones dominate the weaker ones.
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I was all about to jump in and defend you and your hypothetical thought bubble, and then you came out with this? FUCK man, I swear this is the last time I put my faith in a benevolent dictator. I mean, I'm well up for the idea. Honestly. I hate choices. THIS ISN'T SARCASM.

But then you ruined it by letting on that we won't all be equal and I'll be all lowly in the social hierarchy. Listen, if you're gonna be our benovolent dictator, I want you to dictate some good shit. First off, no inequality, no suffering, no poverty, no pain, obvs. Also, I don't mind working but more than two hours a day is excessive. Also, regular holidays to Caribbean islands please, every few weeks at least. Oh, and I want to be woken up with fresh coffee and a blowjob every day. MAKE IT HAPPEN, Benevolency. If you fail to dictate to me in the benevolent way I am expecting, I will fucking end you.

Ultimate said:
just an ideas person with a lot of imagination.
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PS sorry I haven't really read any of this thread but at a guess I'd say anarcho types lecturing the "ideas person" on reality.
 
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