“The failure mode of most political projects sincerely focused on the interests of ordinary people is the starting assumption that they are somehow saintlier than more powerful people. That it is power, or the aptitude for acquiring it, that corrupts. Nope. Human nature regresses to a mean of baseness and venality regardless of power or lack thereof. Apparent nobility can always be traced to surplus resources or acute transience of problems.“

- #VenkateshRao

Let's mean "Losers in the economic sense: those who have […] traded freedom for a paycheck in short. […] Losers have two ways out, which we’ll get to later: turning Sociopath or turning into bare-minimum performers. The Losers destined for cluelessness do not have a choice."

Venkatesh Rao: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

#workCollectives #workPlace #office #managementTheory #sociality #organisations #management #organizations #firms #workCulture #power #negotiating #VenkateshRao #Rao #quotes #Losers

“The narrative as a whole is based on a telling of the story of #capitalism on two time scales: the decade of the 00’s (which spanned three significant financial scandals: the 2000 bubble collapse, the 2005 options backdating scandal and the subprime crisis) and the post World War II half-century, which spanned a watershed shift in 1976 towards #shareholder returns becoming the dominant performance metric for businesses.”

#VenkateshRao

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/09/08/fixing-the-game-by-roger-l-martin/

Holy shit.

#ThaddeusRussell spoke with #VenkateshRao in the Before Times™

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unregistered-with-thaddeus-russell/id1227060738?i=1000463180797

#engineering #ScienceFiction #bookstodon #temporality #writing #narratives #time #GodsOfTime #aeon