Curt Doolittle

Theme: Institution

  • In The Us, Is It Realistic To Try To Achieve Labor/progressive Goals In Businesses Through More Active Shareholder Participation Rather Than Government Regulation?

    Being a shareholder is like being a voter. It’s more symbolic than meaningful. Companies of any size are affected either by a) threats to the brand perception by customers or b) threats at regulation.  These two are more effectives strategies than minority share ownership.

    IMHO there is a trending body of thought that suggests shareholders are not owners but speculative lenders. The recent Apple dividend distribution was caused by economists blogging and publicly decrying the company’s hoard.  This caused the company to issue dividends defensively.  And the powerlessness (and frankly, lack of utility) of shareholders was part of that discussion.  Lynn Stout has written a book “The Shareholder Value Myth” and I think it accurately represents the mythology around shareholder ownership.

    https://www.quora.com/In-the-US-is-it-realistic-to-try-to-achieve-labor-progressive-goals-in-businesses-through-more-active-shareholder-participation-rather-than-government-regulation

  • Political Rhetoric: What Subjects Should Not Be Politicized?

    Politics is the process of creating and using institutions to issue orders, codified as laws, to commit organized violence to coerce others to alter their behavior, and to separate them from their property.  There is no subject that is free from political criticism. Because there are no limits to human desires to alter the behavior of others, or to take property from them.

    If we wish instead, to be free people, we must define the term freedom in both the negative forms in which we forbid actions and thefts and the positive forms, in which we mandate actions and thefts. Once possessed of that definition we can construct a constitution consisting of rules that we are forbidden to circumvent. 

    In doing so we outlaw political action within a particular system.

    Unfortunately, our system of laws and institutions were not strong enough to resist the attacks on them by the left. And our constitution has been rendered meaningless.  Hence why our people begin to abandon it.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Rhetoric-What-subjects-should-not-be-politicized

  • Political Rhetoric: What Subjects Should Not Be Politicized?

    Politics is the process of creating and using institutions to issue orders, codified as laws, to commit organized violence to coerce others to alter their behavior, and to separate them from their property.  There is no subject that is free from political criticism. Because there are no limits to human desires to alter the behavior of others, or to take property from them.

    If we wish instead, to be free people, we must define the term freedom in both the negative forms in which we forbid actions and thefts and the positive forms, in which we mandate actions and thefts. Once possessed of that definition we can construct a constitution consisting of rules that we are forbidden to circumvent. 

    In doing so we outlaw political action within a particular system.

    Unfortunately, our system of laws and institutions were not strong enough to resist the attacks on them by the left. And our constitution has been rendered meaningless.  Hence why our people begin to abandon it.

    https://www.quora.com/Political-Rhetoric-What-subjects-should-not-be-politicized

  • Can Scrum/agile Project Management Be Used Effectively In A Digital Agency?

    I agree with Dave, despite being an advocate of Scrum in most circumstances.

    A controversial argument:

    Scrum was developed for:
    1) Small teams of  talented people.
    2) Strong buy in from the client(s) who are effectively members of the team.
    3) To compensate for the evolutionary accumulation of knowledge as development progresses.

    HOWEVER
    1) It is less contractually defensible without extraordinary change control – the causal relationship between goal, budget and what is accomplished is often open to greater risk of litigation or loss.
    2) Clients are often comprised of different factions attempting to undermine each other, and conflicts not resolved in contracts are often impossible to avoid, leaving the agency exposed to failure, caused by the client discord.
    3) There are a lot of people in the industry who lack the discipline to work in this manner, and the addition of contractors often exacerbates the problem.
    4) It used to be more difficult for agencies to attract top technical talent.  This is declining but is still, to some degree, true.

    INFORMED OPINION
    Is that it is better suited to teams who work together all the time, and in particular for product development, and less comforting to use in high risk environments with a significant amount of customer management.

    Given the tendency of the major agencies to have less trusting delivery relationships with their clients I would have to approach any question extremely cautiously less one or two major failures a year remove all perceived benefit from the broader financial and relationship questions.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-scrum-agile-project-management-be-used-effectively-in-a-digital-agency

  • Why Do Libertarians Treat Social Order And Civil Society As Free Goods?

    They don’t. While it costs nothing to abstain from theft, fraud and violence, it costs something to administer defense and disputes.  The libertarian argument is that these things can be produced by private organizations. They have produced a great deal of work that demonstrates how and why that private production of defense is both possible and preferable.

    The European monarchies were private governments, and there were political parties and labor unions and a great deal of diversity, with many cities having different neighborhoods for each ethnic group.  The monarchies were less warlike, taxed people much less, provided public services and had active civil societies.   Not that we should return to monarchies but the point is that these things can, and have worked.

    The problem with government is a bureaucracy. If you were to privatize everything, you would come close the the libertarian idea.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-libertarians-treat-social-order-and-civil-society-as-free-goods

  • Is Charity “a Capitalist And Conservative Project”?

    There are plenty of treatments of the subject that discuss the decline of the ‘civic society’ and decline of ‘civic participation’ in society, because the state has destroyed the motivation for, and the ability of people to engage in civic behavior.  The ‘corporatization and bureaucratization’ of charity. The reason is ostensibly that conservatism provides charity in exchagne for adherence to established norms, and progressives reject adherence to established norms, and requrie that charity require no action in exchange.

    So in that sense, yes, it is a conservative project to create a CIVIC, menaing, voluntary, society. And a progressive project to create a STATIST, meaning ‘managed’ society.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-charity-a-capitalist-and-conservative-project

  • Can Scrum/agile Project Management Be Used Effectively In A Digital Agency?

    I agree with Dave, despite being an advocate of Scrum in most circumstances.

    A controversial argument:

    Scrum was developed for:
    1) Small teams of  talented people.
    2) Strong buy in from the client(s) who are effectively members of the team.
    3) To compensate for the evolutionary accumulation of knowledge as development progresses.

    HOWEVER
    1) It is less contractually defensible without extraordinary change control – the causal relationship between goal, budget and what is accomplished is often open to greater risk of litigation or loss.
    2) Clients are often comprised of different factions attempting to undermine each other, and conflicts not resolved in contracts are often impossible to avoid, leaving the agency exposed to failure, caused by the client discord.
    3) There are a lot of people in the industry who lack the discipline to work in this manner, and the addition of contractors often exacerbates the problem.
    4) It used to be more difficult for agencies to attract top technical talent.  This is declining but is still, to some degree, true.

    INFORMED OPINION
    Is that it is better suited to teams who work together all the time, and in particular for product development, and less comforting to use in high risk environments with a significant amount of customer management.

    Given the tendency of the major agencies to have less trusting delivery relationships with their clients I would have to approach any question extremely cautiously less one or two major failures a year remove all perceived benefit from the broader financial and relationship questions.

    https://www.quora.com/Can-scrum-agile-project-management-be-used-effectively-in-a-digital-agency

  • Why Do Libertarians Treat Social Order And Civil Society As Free Goods?

    They don’t. While it costs nothing to abstain from theft, fraud and violence, it costs something to administer defense and disputes.  The libertarian argument is that these things can be produced by private organizations. They have produced a great deal of work that demonstrates how and why that private production of defense is both possible and preferable.

    The European monarchies were private governments, and there were political parties and labor unions and a great deal of diversity, with many cities having different neighborhoods for each ethnic group.  The monarchies were less warlike, taxed people much less, provided public services and had active civil societies.   Not that we should return to monarchies but the point is that these things can, and have worked.

    The problem with government is a bureaucracy. If you were to privatize everything, you would come close the the libertarian idea.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-do-libertarians-treat-social-order-and-civil-society-as-free-goods

  • Is Charity “a Capitalist And Conservative Project”?

    There are plenty of treatments of the subject that discuss the decline of the ‘civic society’ and decline of ‘civic participation’ in society, because the state has destroyed the motivation for, and the ability of people to engage in civic behavior.  The ‘corporatization and bureaucratization’ of charity. The reason is ostensibly that conservatism provides charity in exchagne for adherence to established norms, and progressives reject adherence to established norms, and requrie that charity require no action in exchange.

    So in that sense, yes, it is a conservative project to create a CIVIC, menaing, voluntary, society. And a progressive project to create a STATIST, meaning ‘managed’ society.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-charity-a-capitalist-and-conservative-project

  • The Left Right Divide Is Meaningful Because Our Institutions Reinforce it

    The Left Right Divide Is Meaningful Because Our Institutions Reinforce it http://www.capitalismv3.com/2012/05/18/the-left-right-divide-is-meaningful-because-our-institutions-reinforce-it/

    Source date (UTC): 2012-05-18 16:46:33 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/203527002102304769