This is a great name for something I’ve been wanting a name for.
I’ve wanted it as a useful frame for thinking about politics, especially the power of elected officials (both legislators and the executive). It seems like most of the time, most of the decisions about how some regulation or project or whatever will actually go happen at a much lower level in the bureaucracy; leadership has neither the knowledge nor the processing bandwidth to exert any meaningful control. At best they can appoint people who they think are aligned with their goals, but this runs into the problem that recognizing real expertise itself requires some expertise in the area. Ultimately, the decrees they hand down end up doing entirely different things than what they advertised; the nominal leaders don’t really know how to make decrees which have the effects they say they do. (Not that this is necessarily a problem from the standpoint of elected officials—they’re largely selected for symbolism these days anyway. “Vote for me if you hate the outgroup” is not a platform which hinges on actually-effective policies.)
The previous analogy I had used was that elected officials are mostly “pretending to lead the parade”—i.e. they walk in front of the parade and pretend that it’s following them, rather than following a predetermined route. In some ways, I like the “playing the demo” analogy better—it doesn’t capture the symbolic aspects as much, but it better captures the idea that some complicated non-human logic is actually running the show.
The same frame applies to many other kinds of large organizations too, like big companies. To a large extent, leadership is symbolic, and has limited power to either observe or control what lower-level people are doing on a minute-to-minute basis. (In principle, incentive design is the main way one can actually exert control on a reasonably-granular level, but the sort of people who end up in most leadership positions usually don’t do that sort of thing. Mostly, to the extent that they do anything useful, they solve coordination problems between departments/teams/subunits.)
This is a great name for something I’ve been wanting a name for.
I’ve wanted it as a useful frame for thinking about politics, especially the power of elected officials (both legislators and the executive). It seems like most of the time, most of the decisions about how some regulation or project or whatever will actually go happen at a much lower level in the bureaucracy; leadership has neither the knowledge nor the processing bandwidth to exert any meaningful control. At best they can appoint people who they think are aligned with their goals, but this runs into the problem that recognizing real expertise itself requires some expertise in the area. Ultimately, the decrees they hand down end up doing entirely different things than what they advertised; the nominal leaders don’t really know how to make decrees which have the effects they say they do. (Not that this is necessarily a problem from the standpoint of elected officials—they’re largely selected for symbolism these days anyway. “Vote for me if you hate the outgroup” is not a platform which hinges on actually-effective policies.)
The previous analogy I had used was that elected officials are mostly “pretending to lead the parade”—i.e. they walk in front of the parade and pretend that it’s following them, rather than following a predetermined route. In some ways, I like the “playing the demo” analogy better—it doesn’t capture the symbolic aspects as much, but it better captures the idea that some complicated non-human logic is actually running the show.
The same frame applies to many other kinds of large organizations too, like big companies. To a large extent, leadership is symbolic, and has limited power to either observe or control what lower-level people are doing on a minute-to-minute basis. (In principle, incentive design is the main way one can actually exert control on a reasonably-granular level, but the sort of people who end up in most leadership positions usually don’t do that sort of thing. Mostly, to the extent that they do anything useful, they solve coordination problems between departments/teams/subunits.)
Also, the opening section was hysterical.
Thank you. :)