Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Lagayascienza]

I would not interfere with an alien civilisation. If I had absolute power here on earth, I'd do as chewybrian said. I would:

tell people to do good things, make useful things, create a just world, protect the world for future generations... you know, just the simple stuff.

I'd try to be the change I'd like to see in the world. I hope I'd be able to take a back seat for the most part. I'd enjoy my garden and not interfere too much in people's lives. But, if I had absolute power, the temptation to put people like Trump in their place would be hard to resist.

[Sy Borg]

How much entropic force do you suppress in the search for justice and order? The idea lies somewhere between two destructive extremes - anarchy and totalitarianism - and it is dynamic, always needing to be steered, and it depends on the place/environment and culture/history.

Lagaya, you might put bullies in their place and cause larger, unexpected problems. I am always reminded of Mao deciding that sparrows in China must be killed off because they ate some of the crops. So the sparrow population was eliminated, allowing locusts to proliferate without one of their major predators. The resultant decimation of Chinese agriculture resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Or in Australia, sugar farmers combated sugar cane beetles by importing cane toads. The can toads found the local wildlife more to their taste, so they failed to address the cane beetle problem and resulting in a feral pest that has severely damaged ecosystems.

Chaos is needed for things to work, eg. some crop losses to sparrows in China is the lesser of two evils. How much chaos is ideal to lubricate the wheels of society? To what extent should agents of chaos be suppressed?

I don't know. So I potter.

[Lagayascienza]

True. Entropy and chaos are unavoidable and necessary for variation and the development of new forms. When we interfere with complex natural systems it's hard to predict the results, and they are often bad as your sparrow and cane toad examples show. That's why I said I wouldn't interfere in an alien civilisation and why I would try not to interfere in people's lives here on earth, even if I had total power.

Society needs a bit of chaos so that variation and innovation can develop. I don't know how much is ideal. As you say, somewhere between two destructive extremes of anarchy and totalitarianism seems right. A middle course with some chaos at the edges but not enough to destabilise the whole show.

Even things which I consider potentially destructive agents of chaos - for example far right-wing or left-wing political parties who operate at the fringes of politics play a role in society, even if it's just keeping those in power on their toes and awake to new ideas.

[Sy Borg]

Even things which I consider potentially destructive agents of chaos - for example far right-wing or left-wing political parties who operate at the fringes of politics play a role in society, even if it's just keeping those in power on their toes and awake to new ideas.

Yep, predators, parasites and destructive forces like storms, volcanoes ... and extremists clearly play a role in creation. I like the concept of the Shiva, the Hindu deity of destruction and renewal.

Still, if I was to intervene, I might just deal with particular issues that struck me as particularly hare-brained. If I had advisors, I'd like to have some people from all political persuasions and different cultures so I could weigh up their collective assessments of situations.

[Good_Egg]

There is a school of thought which says that the leader's job is to recruit the best possible team for the task and then let them get on with it. Management as HR...

[Pattern-chaser]

There's another school of thought which suggests that managerial, supervisory, 'leaders' contribute little or nothing to the efforts of those who do the actual work... Management as taking credit for the work of others — the traditional art of management?

[Sy Borg]

No, that is absurd. A good leader can make all the difference. That's why companies pay them the big money. It's worth it to them. Not all decisions have the same import. There's no sense pointing to some bad managers and then deciding that all managers are unnecessary.

A manager does not just manage workers under their direction, but they manage their relationships with those senior to them, whose support is relied on by the organisation, and they manage relationships with peers and rivals, plus they have to internally handle the pressure and juggling involved.

Consider the value of hierarchies. Why did nation states out-compete tribal societies? Why did nationalism defeat feudalism?

If we effectively turn an organisation into competing feudal mini-states, how will that aid it coordination? How would such an organisation compete and justify its existence against organisations with clear leadership and direction, whose inherent internal conflicts of interest are mediated and managed in favour of their inherent mutual benefits?

I am not defending management to suit myself. I cannot even manage my own errant body, let alone other humans or an organisation.

Soon, most decisions will come down to AI. As a former analyst, my work was, in part, directing the activities of my organisation. I was replaced by AI over a decade ago. As AI analytics improve, organisations will have more information available on which to base their decisions. Logically, it won't be too long before AI is as indispensable to management as the internet is to operations.

I like to think that this will lead to more rational decision-making in the corporate arena. The fear is that their decisions will become too rational, naked pragmatism and opportunism untempered by morality.

[Good_Egg]

There's another school of thought which suggests that managerial, supervisory, 'leaders' contribute little or nothing to the efforts of those who do the actual work...

I think this particular wrong idea has its roots in Marx's discredited Labour Theory of Value.

If the value of a widget is the cost of the labour that goes into making it, then the person who contributes that labour - who does the "actual work" - has created all of its value. And thus has a moral claim to receive for his labour the full value of the widget.

We know where that leads - nationalised industries producing overpriced shoddy goods that consumers have to be induced to buy by means of import controls and artificial monopoly. Don't think it hasn't been tried...

[Pattern-chaser]

There's another school of thought which suggests that managerial, supervisory, 'leaders' contribute little or nothing to the efforts of those who do the actual work...

I think this particular wrong idea has its roots in Marx's discredited Labour Theory of Value.

If the value of a widget is the cost of the labour that goes into making it, then the person who contributes that labour - who does the "actual work" - has created all of its value. And thus has a moral claim to receive for his labour the full value of the widget.

Perhaps, but I would suggest that this is too absolute a view to be useful or usable. The widget has to be designed, and then built, and it takes a whole team of people — workers — to do that. But the contribution of managers is often minimal, IMO.

[Lagayascienza]

Marx did not say that the value of a manufactured item was all down to the labor that went into it. He wasn't stupid. Of course he understood that there were costs associated with raw materials, of machinery, intellectual capital, the cost of capital, etcetera, which all had to be taken into account. What he argued was that the value in an item, once these costs had been deducted, was value brought about by labor. And since labor was paid less than this residual value, the capitalist owner of the means of production, that is, the owner of the factory, its plant etc, skimmed this surplus labor value off as profit.

BTW, I'm not arguing that Marx was entirely right in this way of accounting for value.

[Lagayascienza]

And also, BTW, managers (as opposed to the capitalist owners of the means of production) are workers whose non-manual labour is a cost to the capitalist owners just like that of manual laborers. How much managers at different levels actually contribute to the value of the final manufactured products is separate but interesting question touched on above by Sy Borg et al.

[Good_Egg]

And also, BTW, managers (as opposed to the capitalist owners of the means of production) are workers whose non-manual labour is a cost to the capitalist owners just like that of manual laborers.

That 's very true.

Typically businesses start out small with a single owner/manager/entrepreneur. Anyone whom that owner hires to work as a junior manager can be seen as just another labourer, who contributes a different set of skills from those who physically make the widgets.

Not sure whether those who talk about "actual work" see it that way....

If the business is successful, the original owner may sell it to someone else (in order to retire or pursue other business ideas). A new owner is more likely to put in a new hireling manager with a brief to increase the value of the revenue stream from the business. But equally the original owner might do that. Such a transaction does not seem to change anything regarding the rights and wrongs of who gets the profit ?

[Pattern-chaser]

Anyone whom that owner hires to work as a junior manager can be seen as just another labourer, who contributes a different set of skills from those who physically make the widgets.

Not sure whether those who talk about "actual work" see it that way....

If the function of any worker — even a manager — can be shown to make a clear and actual contribution to the "actual work" — even an indirect one, as long as it's a genuine contribution — then they are workers, as opposed to spongers or time-wasters.

Some managerial positions exist solely to allow that individual to be paid a salary, often an enormous salary. It is the latter that give managers and management a bad name.

But having said that, the need for management, valuable and contributory management, is minimal. It only becomes necessary at all if the workforce exceeds the size which can be efficiently self-directing. IMO, of course.

[Good_Egg]

Pattern-chaser I'm aware that this is a tangent that maybe says little about power over aliens, so I don't want to prolong it unduly.

But my sense is that maybe you and I are privileged to have had interesting technical careers. To have been the sort of talented, experienced and committed worker who needs little managing. At one end of the spectrum (because there's always a spectrum).

So just as there are idiots who cry "defund the police" when they perceive a need for police reform, there may be a temptation to think "defund management" when the extent of management seems excessive. Such a thought should be resisted. As should the anarcho-libertarian call to "defund government" as a response to state over-reach.

So now I'm wondering if the nature of power is that any functional group - workers in any industry, managers, police, civil servants etc - always feel that they are under-resourced and over-regulated. So that such claims need to be taken with a grain of salt....

[Pattern-chaser]

Pattern-chaser I'm aware that this is a tangent that maybe says little about power over aliens, so I don't want to prolong it unduly.

OK.