6502.org

A huge part of the explanation for the very strange behavior of modern first-world economies is that we've entered the terminal phase of a long spiral where every business of consequential size is run by decision-makers with no actual knowledge of the line of work, whose only accountability is to the shareholders, whose only concern is that Number Goes Up. The sane, logical way to solve that equation would be for the decision-makers to learn about the business and conduct it such that Number Goes Up in a rational and sustainable fashion - but that runs up against the fact that A. learning is hard^H^H^H^H work and B. rational and sustainable business has significant operating costs and practical limits on growth.

And progressively - starting a shockingly long time ago but really ramping up to an insane degree in the last 20 years - the management caste has discovered that irrational and unsustainable business, conducted with the right cocktail of chicanery and play-acting at being a genuine operation, can produce spurts where Number Goes Up way faster than it otherwise would, which shareholders love.

Of course, the downside is that this turns a real business into a steroid-addled mutant freak that ultimately collapses in smouldering ruin - but when you're a CEO with an eleventy-zillion-dollar golden parachute, it's a lot easier to weather that, and when you move on to the next mark, it's amazing how often being The CEO of a disastrous failure still counts as qualification for hire, because none of the people hiring know anything about their business, either, and you were The CEO so you must know your stuff, right? (The part where your only actual job skills are chicanery and play-acting probably helps.)

And so we've arrived at the present day, where we have almost entirely a business culture where the higher up you rank and the larger your company is, the more you're perversely incentivized to do strange, insane, things in pursuit of Number Going Up, even if those things are ultimately ruinous to your company, your industry, or, heck, the entire global economy. Ed Zitron has a nice write-up on this: https://www.wheresyoured.at/tss/

Just quickly dipping in to report that I am reading a job vacancy advert that says:

...new startup in the exciting new field of subsurface CO2 storage.... A PhD in a relevant field and at least 3 years’ experience in the industry is the background we require....

head->desk