As a kid, my parents moved around a fair bit. I went to a lot of schools during my elementary years.
It was instructive.
From grade 3 to grade 6 1/2 I was at Emily Carr elementary school in Vancouver. The leaders on the male side were two boys: one red haired freckled Irish kid who wanted to be a football player and a tiny, but extremely fast and coordinated Chinese kid. The class had almost no bullying and it was because of them.
They accepted everyone into their group. You were always welcome to play with them. They were friendly, egalitarian in the way boys are (some are better at sports, but everyone gets to play) and they didn’t bully, and they didn’t tolerate it. Mostly they never had to do anything, other kids followed their example, but I remember one case, and only one, where the Irish kid told someone intimidating a weaker boy the age old “if you want to fight someone, fight someone your own size.”
The fight wasn’t necessary, the kid backed down and his behaviour changed. He wanted to fit in, to have the approval of the leaders.
Half way thru grade 6 my parents moved and I went to a new school in Coquitlam (can’t remember the name, don’t care enough to search.) The leader there was a big kid, only half decent at sports, but he led by constant threats and bullying. And so a lot of the other boys copied him: the pecking order was based on who could shove who around.
Entirely based on who the lead kids were. Entirely. (Teachers were not involved in this stuff back then unless it caused actual injury.)
I hated the boarding school I spent high school in. The kid leadership was… indifferent, not good like the Irish/Chinese pair, or bad like the bully, just self-involved. So there wasn’t much bullying, but there was some, and it could be moderately nasty. I knew one kid who got the “hung up in locker” treatment frequently. Personally I was just ostracized, partially deservingly, but mostly left alone.
But the leadership of the staff was good. The place had fair rules, fairly enforced. The Headmaster, Alan Brown, was on top of the teachers and the boarding house masters. He knew every kid’s name, in a place with about 500 students. And the reason the bullying didn’t get completely out of hand was that he tamped down the worse cases, and he was startlingly effective. Usually the last thing you wanted was teachers involved, but every case I saw him involve in he made better.
His emphasis was on truth. Not lying. Kids do bad shit sometimes, it’s not a big deal usually, but you damn well better not lie about it.
I didn’t like him much, and he didn’t like me: I was sullen, under-performed in most classes and didn’t like team sports. But I respected him and part of that was because he didn’t like me but he treated me fairly. That was the first time I saw an adult with power operate like that.
(That I so rarely saw adults not abuse or misuse their power is one of the reasons I turned into a good analyst. My default assumption is that people with power are scum, and in the current time period in most of the world, that’s the right default.)
As an adult, it was a few bosses who made an impression on me. Once again, if the boss was good, the place was good to work at. If they weren’t, it was always shit. The fish always rotted from the head. Whenever I run into bad service at a corporation regularly (as opposed to one bad apple or someone having a bad day) I know it’s a management issue, and in those cases where I’ve investigated, it always was.
Working at the megacorp was particularly instructive. My first job was to help it go public (yup, bad sign) and my boss (also named Ian) was probably the best boss I ever had. It was a small team, and he trusted us. The strongest memory I have of him is when he gave me an extra task near the end of the job, and I said to him “I’m already working 60 hour weeks. I can do this. But if you give me one more thing, you need to tell me what other task you’ve given me not to do.”
He nodded and agreed. I think I’ve had three bosses total who would have reacted that way.
He also let us take time off when things were slow, which they sometimes were. He was 100% focused on getting the actual job done (given there was a deadline and billions of dollars at stake this made sense, but it still rare). If you were getting it done, what you did in your spare time was up to you.
But what made the megacorp so instructive wasn’t one good boss, it was watching and working on different teams. They might as well have been different companies depending on the boss. Some were wonderful. Some sucked. It all flowed from the boss.
Over time good bosses became rarer, though, because the big boss was now a scumbag standard executive whose primary goal was to make bigger quarterly results so that he could have higher bonuses. The ethics and morality and kindness which had been fairly common slowly went away as the good bosses left, because every slice of heaven had been some boss protecting their workers from upper management, unlike pre-going public when the upper management were basically decent people who expected to get wealthy but not rich.
One visit to the US, to help in a company my employer had taken over, was particularly instructive. I was senior operations, but not management. First day I noticed they were doing something counter-productive: actively harmful, but easy to stop. I went to the manager and told her, she replied (paraphrased and in the condescending tone possible) “that’s a management decision and I don’t want you to ever involve yourself in such decisions again. Just do your job.”
Of course her staff, and indeed the entire company’s staff, were completely demoralized, never accepted ownership of or solved any problem, and always said “I did what you and the rules told me to do. I don’t do anything else.”
Then I got involved in politics, and I can count the number of politicians I’ve met who I’d trust to walk my dog on one hand.
But what all this taught me is that leaders really, really do matter and nothing matters more to how well anything functions than who leads it. Nothing matters more than how we select our leaders.
We, of course, select them badly. But what was interesting to me was watching, over decades, as the number of good leaders declined and as the niches where they could operate were reduced in number. Every year, just a little. Over decades: massive.
Good groups are possible. Better societies are possible. But it all starts with who leads us and figuring how to select the right people.
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spud
once bad leadership gets in, you have just a few chances to reverse it. but in most cases, it gets worse, till one completely destroys any chances at reform.
most U.S. companies are zombies, years of leave your brain at the door, conform to milton freidman has left these companies on socialist life support.
same goes with most countries. just look at the west. how can you dismantle a first world nation, into a third world nation in just over 30 years, with little or no pushback.
the west is rotten to its core, from top to bottom, in the private sector as well as the public sector.
if someone does attain some power, regardless if its public, or private, they will be sidelined, neutered, or removed.
best just to hunker down and stay safe once the bullets start to fly.
bruce wilder
I have about a decade on Ian and so I saw the prescriptive culture of bureaucracy with 10 years less of accumulated crud. There was a whole layer of rationalizing language and ethics that went with it, reinforcing how a role was played or how a new program or policy could be designed and justified.
I think lowering marginal rates of income tax was corrosive to that whole culture and deregulation was fatal.
I was just starting at a business school when the Iran-Contra Scandal broke and we discussed it in class. Roughly half the class couldn’t understand how it was wrong. It wasn’t that they didn’t think what North and others were doing to circumvent Congress (or common sense! overcharging the “terrorist” Iranians for spare parts and skimming the profit to finance the Contras — what could go wrong?!) was legally and morally wrong, they could not work out for themselves how the mesh of human and institutional relationships was being shredded by the lying and ill-considered expediency.
Probably Iran-Contra doesn’t mean anything to most here. And, it would seem remote from the mundane workings of ordinary business, but I remember it as an aspect of an extensive moral fabric fraying. The norms of daily business life were founded on reciprocal expectations that were based on a presumably rational design — one that one could expect would be enforced on *some* dimensions.
Some really important dimensions had no enforcement — as we all learned. There was sexual abuse for example, made to be invisible in service to bureaucracy.
I remember that the son of a close friend was an an entry-level auditor with the Big Four (five?) firm that audited Enron. He (the son) was upset that the firm was adversely affected. He may have lost his job with the auditing firm when the firm was slammed with the consequences of the bad audits. The son couldn’t understand why the firm was being held responsible.
I am, in my highly indirect way, trying to draw a connection between the gradual deterioration of bureaucracy into performative nonsense and passive-aggressive behavior, on the one hand, and away from focus “on getting the actual job done” within systems of rules meant to actually do the job, as understand in rational social good terms.
different clue
Sometimes human nature among non-leaders is to stealth-rebel with non-traceable sabotage.
Flock said they were only using the cameras for license plates. Cat is out of the bag now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1vo9lr9/flock_said_they_were_only_using_the_cameras_for/
And this little video shows how the sabotage was done. So simple that anyone can do it. I suppose the next step for Flock would be to hide cameras watching the Flock cameras to see if the saboteurs can be caught that way. Maybe people, expecting that response, will rush to sabotage all the Flock cameras they can reach before Flock can install its security-camera cameras to watch the Flock cameras. ( If you are going to buy expanding spray-foam, pay in cash and if they demand your name, give a plausibly false one).
mago
I can count the number of political leaders I would trust to walk my dog on one hand.
I wouldn’t count beyond my thumb. The measure of a caring being is how he/she relates to the feeding and exercise of the animals in their care.
I’ll always remember that rich and stupid Utah Mormon politician who strapped his dog to the roof rack and roared down the highway. These people are reckless and dangerous, not to mention disgusting, but it goes without saying, so I’ll say no more beyond mentioning that my encounters with authority, which I’ve chronicled here before have left me with a healthy distaste.
StewartM
Just a couple of observations.
In my public schools, bully was rare, and if one bigger kid tried to pick on a little kid, bigger kids than he would come around and say “Pick on someone your own size”. I can’t help to think that’s because the US was far more egalitarian society economically, at least, back then. My anthropological take is that egalitarian societies tend to be kind and polite societies, whereas very unequal societies where the people at the top don’t feel they need the ones below them it’s mostly ‘if you got it [wealth, power], strut it. Dominate others and make them grovel before you.”
I have also seen the decline in good managers. Good managers seek to promote excellence in their organizations, and kindness and consideration is often part of that. Bad managers are just using their positions as stepping-stones on their climb up the managerial ladder. They want the organizations they lead to look good but don’t actually care if they actually ARE good. Bad managers (Jack Welch anyone?) in the end destroy entire companies.
different clue
I remember Iran-Contra a little. (For a brief while it was being called Iranamok-Contragate, but it got shortened to Iran-Contra.)
Mr. Walsh, an old-school Republican, whose formal title in this mission I forget, did a government-called-for report on it. All the in-office Republicans sneered and jeered and President George Opium Poppy Bush handed out pardons all around. ( And now I suddenly remember that Roger(?) Walsh was either a Special Prosecutor or an Independent Council or some such thing).
The New York Review of Books ran many learned articles about what the shredding and decay of the gossamer webwork of Constitutional Laws and Norms would eventually lead to.
Such is my decades-old memory.
Bob
Sure. On a small scale that’s probably correct. There’s a load of anarchist indigenous surviving in Asia that could provide meaningful models for consensus based societies.
bruce wilder
I don’t know about “gossamer webwork” as such (nice metaphor!), but the fine division of labor in a complex, managed hierarchy requires a lot of rules and norms, the design and maintenance of which becomes itself a specialized job.
Politics — sometimes called “office politics” — drives the evolution of rulemaking and enforcement in a chaotic, humanly irrational struggle of opposed interests and half-baked ideas, slogans, parables, loosely contained within an artificial financial ecology of competing and cooperating hierarchies, some feeding and/or dominating others.
Enveloped in that massive, incomprehensibly complex cultural accumulation of artifacts and stories and language and customs and half-ruined institutions are millions and millions of wiggling human creatures, struggling to navigate lives, never really understanding half of it.
That last part — never really understanding half of it — is the fundamental reality of where everyone is, today, with regard to politics.
Maybe, it was always this way, though I will point out that the sheer weight or volume of conflicting abstract claims has multiplied. Certainly, in history, rhetoric and insight that promised to clarify and bring order can be shown to have been politically powerful. Principles of math and science that compressed and ordered bodies of knowledge found analogues in principles of law.
We still disagree, we talking apes. Even “sacred principles” do not themselves maintain conformity, so much as they cleave ambivalence, dividing the idealist from the pragmatic and the earnest from the cynical, giving space to empty piety and the silent dissent of hypocrisy or employment to sly cunning and disguised violence.
I digress. My apologies.
My intention was to highlight the consequence of cognitive overload in the absence of an effective shared theory. We, collectively as a society, don’t understand the politics of the office, that is, the politics of bureaucracies, even though bureaucracies are the pervasive institution of production, distribution and employment, as well as economic regulation of business.
I suppose the problem of all popular politics is how to find someone to guard the guardians. How can we find a way to tame, select or constrain the powerful to respect and nurture the common people?
Ian’s effort here to recollect the beneficent effects of a Paladin in office politics is appreciated as a reminder that better is possible. But, is calling forth paladins politically possible? Does it lead in the direction of a reform program? How did the business culture that allowed paladins to prosper come into being?
Maybe that question is just more impotent New Deal nostalgia — unanswerable without the experienced cultural context that preceded it. Lots of books and articles have been written about the decline of liberalism and the liberal order. I admire Chris Hedges’ Death of the Liberal Class. Ironically, my search to get his book title right called forth an eloquently verbose AI summary of that whole literature. Maybe, that’s where we are: on the verge of “machine learning” displacing thought — machines reading and summarizing so the humans, no longer needed to staff the office, can just go away, leaving the incompetent tyrants to preside over the machines of loving grace presiding over the shrinking biomass of remaining humanity.
spud
i love it, steve keen,
star trek vs hunger games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BbF-S-2Ghw
The Future Is Chinese – Here’s Why | Steve Keen
It’s no secret that the West is in terminal decline, while China continues to grow and is currently on the verge of overtaking the US as the biggest economy on the planet.
Mainstream economics tells us that’s impossible, since we supposedly live in the best system that was ever created.
Which means something doesn’t add up. Economist Steve Keen has an answer – our economic models are irreparably broken…
In this sobering conversation Prof. Keen, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, explains why America remains a hopeless case, why China will continue to dominate world trade and finally, why the AI bubble is about to burst…
——–
also he states the obvious, imports are a detriment and a cost, they are not a advantage.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:08 The study of economy is broken
03:10 Why did America dominate after WW2?
08:36 Why did the USSR fail?
15:30 The reason prosperity was maintained after WW2
19:35 The beginning of the ‘Chinese miracle’
23:15 Is the Chinese economy really different from ours?
25:49 China keeps its billionaires in check
29:02 Lifting 800 million people out of poverty
34:31 Debates with PBD and Kevin O’Leary
38:47 US vs China prediction
42:28 China dominating Europe
45:20 China’s birth rate crisis
49:26 The AI bubble is bursting soon
58:29 China’s AI policy
01:00:54 Pessimism about climate change
StewartM
He nodded and agreed. I think I’ve had three bosses total who would have reacted that way.
He also let us take time off when things were slow, which they sometimes were. He was 100% focused on getting the actual job done (given there was a deadline and billions of dollars at stake this made sense, but it still rare). If you were getting it done, what you did in your spare time was up to you.
I had a boss who was talking to their boss about a fellow high-ranking employee, who had seven goals ‘to-do’ on their yearly employee development/ranking scorecard. My boss asked their boss to rank these and set priority among these top projects, and he replied “sure” and promptly took the list and numbered them 1 to 7.
Then my boss said, “Ok, so if this employee doesn’t get # 7 done, that’s ok?” The higher-ranking boss said “Oh NO, NOT OK”. So yeah, most people in power really don’t understand what “priority” means. The ranking was meaningless otherwise.
(My boss of mine had a reputation of being something of a dragon lady, but it was with purpose. Yes, she had high accountability standards, BUT she was a straight-shooter; just do as she said and you were fine (as opposed to having bosses that no matter what you did, you were a ‘problem’). Moreover, her being a ‘dragon lady’ was to keep her “children” in line, she once confided to me that one of her proudest achievements was “I’ve never lost anyone in a layoff” because when she saw someone doing something that might get them into trouble, she stepped in and stopped it pronto. I told the techs “Don’t worry about her, she’s not persecuting you, she’s PROTECTING you”.
She actually was one of my best bosses, ever)
I would also add, that having worked in corporate R&D, and corporate manufacturing support, that the latter is far more rewarding. That’s because manufacturing support was all about real money, and getting the job done, while R&D was all about ‘speculative money’ and had a host of ‘fungible’ employee evaluation measures. Also, if a job needed to be done for manufacturing support, you’d get the resources to do it, whereas in R&D these resources might be withheld (and yet, still, at year’s end you’d get a black mark on the year from some managers for not accomplishing a task where you didn’t get what was needed to get accomplished).
The same with sick leave, my company had (on paper) very generous paid sick leave, but in R&D even missing 10-15 days due to two or three bouts of flu or upper respiratory illnesses could get you in trouble in R&D (again, with some managers, who expected all of their employees to have perfect health). By contrast, in manufacturing support the attitude was far wiser—“We don’t WANT you to come in an infect our 24/7/365 manufacturing work shifts!! STAY HOME!”
A big help on this matter at my company was the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA; signed by Bill Clinton, Spud) where if you went to a doctor and filled out the paperwork you would get any sick leave erased from your record. The “persecution” of employees for merely getting sick greatly eased up after that. In addition, for professional employees, the wide availability of laptop computers meant you could still do some stuff at home even when sick. Still, once I got employees to supervise I never made any big fuss over them being out sick, and I noticed that their careers never suffered for it. So I concluded that this facet of life at my company was definitely due to just some managers being assholes, and it was a problem because higher management didn’t rein these assholes in.
spud
i stand by my facts, that there is not one universal concrete material benefit from bill clinton, obama, nor biden.
the FLMA was designed to fail.
———————-
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) has been criticized for having stringent eligibility guidelines that make it inaccessible to many workers, particularly in rural areas. This has led to concerns that the law does not adequately support all employees who need time off for family or medical reasons.
Harvard Law Review bipartisanpolicy.org
Overview of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was enacted in 1993 to provide eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for specific family and medical reasons. However, the effectiveness of the FMLA has been questioned due to
its stringent eligibility requirements.
Eligibility Criteria
To qualify for FMLA leave, employees must meet the following criteria:
Employment Duration: Must have worked for the employer for at least 12 months.
Hours Worked: Must have completed at least 1,250 hours of work in the past 12 months.
Employer Size: The employer must have at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius.
Impact on Rural Workers
Many rural workers find it challenging to meet these eligibility requirements, which limits their access to necessary leave. This has raised concerns about the law’s ability to support all employees effectively.
Criticisms of the FMLA
The FMLA has faced criticism for several reasons:
Inaccessibility: Stringent eligibility guidelines exclude many workers, particularly in rural areas.
Unpaid Leave: The leave is unpaid, which can deter employees from taking time off.
Employer Compliance: Not all employers adhere to the FMLA regulations, leading to potential job insecurity for employees who take leave.
While the FMLA was designed to help employees balance work and family responsibilities, its stringent eligibility criteria and other limitations have led to significant criticism. Many argue that it fails to adequately support all workers, particularly those in rural communities.
Harvard Law Review dol.gov
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for eligible employees, but many workers find it difficult to access due to strict eligibility requirements and lack of employer compliance. Many low-wage workers, especially, face barriers such as not meeting the hours worked or employer size criteria, making it challenging to utilize this leave effectively.
Harvard Law Review dol.gov
Challenges in Accessing the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) offers essential protections for workers needing time off for family or medical reasons. However, many eligible employees face significant barriers that make it difficult to utilize this leave effectively.
Eligibility Requirements
To qualify for FMLA leave, employees must meet specific criteria:
Duration of Employment: Must have worked for a covered employer for at least 12 months.
Hours Worked: Must have completed at least 1,250 hours of service in the 12 months preceding the leave.
Employer Size: The employer must have at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius.
These stringent requirements exclude many workers, particularly those in low-wage jobs or part-time positions.
Barriers Faced by Low-Wage Workers
Low-wage workers encounter several obstacles when trying to access FMLA leave:
Lack of Job Protection: Many low-wage workers do not qualify for job protection under FMLA due to their employer’s size or their own employment status.
Financial Constraints: Since FMLA leave is unpaid, many cannot afford to take time off without pay, leading to a reluctance to utilize the leave even when eligible.
Employer Non-Compliance: Some employers do not adhere to FMLA regulations, making it difficult for employees to claim their rights.
Impact of These Challenges
The inability to access FMLA leave can lead to:
Job Loss: Employees may feel compelled to work while ill or caring for a family member, risking their health and job security.
Financial Hardship: Loss of income during critical times can exacerbate economic instability for families.
Health Consequences: Lack of time to care for oneself or family members can lead to worsening health outcomes.
Addressing these barriers is crucial for ensuring that the FMLA serves its intended purpose of supporting workers during critical life events.
clasp.org Harvard Law Review
To be eligible for the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), you must have worked for your employer for at least 12 months, have at least 1,250 hours of service during the past 12 months, and work at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles.
dol.gov
Employers typically respond to Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requests by notifying employees of their eligibility for leave within five business days and providing them with information about their rights and responsibilities under the FMLA. They may also request medical certification to confirm the need for leave if applicable.
doraziopeterson.com dol.gov
StewartM
Well, Spud, all I can say is that at my company, which had excellent sick leave on paper, FMLA made a world of difference. If your condition was enough to warrant medical attention, and most were, a doctor would write the paperwork for you.
This was noticed by the medical staff at hospitals and clinics, who wondered “what on earth is going on at XXX? [my company] because people would show up with a chest cold or flu obviously worried that they may be blacklisted for “dependability” just because they got sick two or three times a year. (Yeah, being out for illnesses that were perfectly statistically normal could get you in trouble, if your manager was an asshole, and admittedly some weren’t and these types were genuinely perplexed when they heard such tales, because the official criteria wasn’t that severe. The assholes were the ones demanding perfect health).
There was even a story of a guy who continued to come into work with cancer, not telling anyone, and finally people noticed because he would take long bathroom breaks. When he was confronted about it by management he confessed. Two weeks later, he was dead.
Sure, you can criticize FMLA for its limitations, but all progressive legislation had its limitations. So did SS, and so did Medicare, and so did AFDC. It sure the hell was better than the nothingburger that we had before. So give Clinton his due on thisl.
Jan Wiklund
That is what rentierism has done to us. More about that, see Cory Doctorow at https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/16/lucky-orifices/ and https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/11/tragedy-of-the-commoners/.
For the classical CEO the matter was throughput and sales, for the rentierist CEO the matter is self-cannibalization. The shift was, according to Alfred Chandler, about 1968.
spud
StewartM;
but your job sounded like a job that fits more into the upper middle class professional. so of course that would mean you could meet the ridiculous stringent rules.
the average joe, as the evidence points to, cannot meet those rules.
and this is why its not a universal concrete material benefit. its the usual neo-liberal scheme like the ACA.
and schemes like that, are what has radicalized so many americans.
you have millions of people locked out of civil society.
so when so many in need, see a few chosen ones getting the benefit, don’t be surprised if they go against their own best interests.
it was designed to fail the many. and the clintonites knew it.
spud
StewartM:
“but all progressive legislation had its limitations. So did SS, and so did Medicare, and so did AFDC. It sure the hell was better than the nothingburger that we had before. So give Clinton his due on thisl.”
what you seem not to understand is, is that the programs you list, do not require money to use them.
the programs you list are expandable and require no money to use them, they can be contracted. but contraction is not easy to over come.
so the FLMA was designed on purpose, to lock out most americans, and is not a universal concrete material benefit that most americans qualify for.
the only credit i will give clinton is, that as usual, he helped to create another benefit for a small slice of people that are better off. its called neo-liberalism.