politics

The Unaccountability Machine: Political Madness By The Numbers

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I just read “The Unaccountability Machine” by Dan Davies. If you know me and when I get obsessed, be aware I’m about to become insufferable for awhile.

The core of the book is that our institutions have seemed to go mad, and the author finds explanations in the oft-ignored realm of business cybernetics. This isn’t science fiction, it’s cybernetics in the feedbacks/system sense, and how it relates to organizations. A core element is that members and parts of organizations become unaccountable in ways that lead to bad and mad decisions.

The financial crash of 2008. Any number of organizational meltdown. And of course, politics.

One of his points – and believe me, I’ll be dissecting this book on and off for a time – is that when your goal is a single measurement, an organization will go insane. When “line go up” is your only goal, problems occur – if not for you, everyone in your path. People are held unaccountabile for bad choices when “line go up.”

You may be thinking about any number of corporations and stock prices. But also I thought about American politics in light of (checks his calendar) about seventy percent of my life. Now I have my own quite pronounced political beliefs, but I’m going to set them aside to discuss a number.

The amount of votes.

Votes are the goal of democratic politics. It elects people. It gets people power and benefits and determines policy. Everything is about getting someone, often anyone, into office. Politics is a team thing, so as long as one of “Your Team” is in office, you can reach your goals.

This means politics in modern times isn’t just the old repression/gotv routines and campaigning and winning people. It means calculations and triangulations, test-marketing, lawsuits, etc. Anything to Just Get Enough Votes.

Anything for Line Goes Up, sometimes just a bit. Even if it makes you do some crazy things.

I remarked once about a certain political activist organization that it was a “winning machine” – and that wasn’t a compliment. Said organization later got itself entangled almost suicidally in various legal troubles and scandals. I wasn’t sure that they didn’t get the mission, but that they got it too well.

Their goal was Line Goes Up, vote-wise, and they’d do anything.

But also let’s say that you’ve made certain decisions to get votes that, perhaps like this organization, aren’t legal or ethical. Then you want to win no matter what to cover your backside or to soothe your conscience or whatever. Line goes up becomes an imperative, and you’ll deal with the bad things later or maybe you just ignore them or hand-wave them away.

Or maybe your opponent(s) are bad people – or you’re told they are. You want to win to protect yourself! Also anyway telling people those folks are threats makes the voting Line Go Up. Keep telling, keep talking, keep escalating, what’ll go wrong.

Kinda seems like politics, if you’re not careful, doesn’t become about helpful results. It takes a lot of effort to make it meaningful not “what three things can I say to get 0.5% more votes?” It’s so much easier to find what buttons to push – and hey, you’re a good person, right? What could go wrong.

Lots of things. Like many of my columns I want to mention the Latest Thing, but each week is a new Latest Thing. All in the name of Line Go Up.

So as we look at the 2024 election where my prediction is that I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore (look at France and the UK in 2024), I wonder if we’re in the political equivalent of a financial meltdown like 2008. My own (obviously correct) political views aside, it seems like Line Go Up is so important, any and all fallout is ignored, and the most batshit things are tried – and sometimes work.

But the batshittery, the triangulation, all of that might be hitting a breaking point. I’m certainly seeing that as I write this in July 2024.

As for a solution, well we’d have to step back from Line Go Up and ask what we want as society, as people. We’d have to make the Line a tool, one of many. But in this current state, I’m not holding my breath.

Well managed to do that without leaning into my own beliefs. Perhaps those will come later, maybe in the rebuilding.

Steven Savage

How Deep Does the B.S. Go?

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Lately I was speculating on the role of B.S. in our economy, politics, and technology. I’d spell it out (and swear more probably) but I do have some discretion!

We’ve normalized the idea that some people are honestly, lying to us. We expect that we’re being lied to be marketing forces, by the latest trends, and by politicians. It’s honestly so normalized, it seems we can’t imagine a less deception-free world.

(It also makes me realize how people can get blaise about COVID.)

In turn, we’ve also normalized that people we like are lying. Yeah, that famous tech guy is hyping stuff, but we like his product. Sure the politician we voted for is spouting demented nonsense, but they’re our politician. We go to see a movie we know we’ve been sold on in the negative sense or a restaurant whos food is just “OK” but you know, advertising and familiarity.

What’s struck me lately, is that we are probably too used to lying as well.

When I’ve seen people rallying to the defense of people, media, and so on that they like you an hear them repeat talking points. You can tell with just a bit of empathy that many people don’t really or exactly believe what they say. But to defend what they like for whatever reason,

I even found myself tempted to do it (which tells me I do do it, I just didn’t catch myself).

I’m wondering how deep the B.S. in our media-saturated, pundit-heavy, social media culture goes by now. I mean yes humans have always lied to others and themselves, but it feels pretty amplified and survival-adverse in my experience. How much of our lives, as individuals, is just lying about stuff?

I think some of it is definitely internet and media culture. Say the right things, do the right things, and you get money, attention, and might even become some kind of Influencer or Pundit. You can lie for a living if you play your cards right! Whatever B.S. problems we had in the past, you can do it faster, giving less time for experience and other people to provide restraining feedback.

In a time of chaos and climate change, this is even more disturbing. We’ve got a lot of problems to solve, or at least survive, and if we’ve all internalized outright deception to an extent, it’s going to be much harder. When everyone is busy not telling the truth, it gets harder to tell the truth, and even when a bunch of people do, too many might not out of various motivations.

I know at least I’ll be watching myself closer. But this is going to haunt me.

Steven Savage

Evil Agile

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We wonder how people can get away with so much horrible stuff.  I’d like to talk Evil and Agile productivity, and yes, I am completely sober as far as you know.

For those of you who are in no way familiar with me, I’m a Project Manager, a professional help-stuff-get-done-guy.  While I’m being paid to be the most anal-retentive person in the room, I prefer to use Agile Methodologies, which are all about rapid, adaptable, approaches to getting things done.  It doesn’t sound Evil, but stick with whatever journey I’m soberly on because I think Evil people are actually pretty good at a kind of Agile.

Many Evil people have A Goal.  It may be (more) money and power, it may be dealing with their childhood traumas, and usually, it’s a dangerously pathetic combination of things like that.  Agile is all about Goals because when you set them, they direct your actions more than any single plan.  You gotta know where you want to go to get there.

Then, simply, Evil people set out to achieve their Goal by whatever means they can.  They don’t care if they lie, cheat, steal, burn books, burn people, and so on – the Goal is what matters.  Agile is also about making sure that your actions direct you toward your Goal so you’re focused and efficient – it just doesn’t involve Evil.

But what if Evil people hurt others, get caught, etc.?  Simple, they lie or do something else because they don’t care – they adapt.  Agile emphasizes constant adaptability and analysis as well, just with an emphasis on truth and honesty.  Evil people are pretty adaptable, even if that adaptability is staying the course and lying about it until others give up.

Agile emphasizes goals, directing yourself towards them, and adaptability.  Evil people do the exact same thing.  The only difference is that Agile emphasizes helping people and being honest, and Evil people are just Evil.

And this is why we’re so often confused by Evil people.

We expect elaborate plans from Evil people – and there may be some – but they’re focused on their Goals and how to get there.  We expect Evil people to be derailed by getting caught in lies or hurting people, but as we’ve seen they don’t care.  They want something and they’ll adapt no matter the price played by other people.

It’s the banality of Evil all over again.  Evil isn’t even interesting in how it gets things done.

Steven Savage