I like the point about the principal-agent problem. I disagree only slightly, and think it would be worth distinguishing between individuals and automatons on one side, and a collective bureaucracy on the other: this is because the bureaucracy is in fact a chain of principal-agent links. It seems to me a big reason that any kind of organizational management is hard is because whatever anyone tries to do, it will be mediated by many principal-agent steps, with the predictably accumulated error.
I have just realized I never considered the possibility of an automaton (software, say) as an independent link in the chain. I don’t know how correct it is, but it sure makes a lot of the problems I encounter on a daily basis more understandable.
I like the point about the principal-agent problem. I disagree only slightly, and think it would be worth distinguishing between individuals and automatons on one side, and a collective bureaucracy on the other: this is because the bureaucracy is in fact a chain of principal-agent links. It seems to me a big reason that any kind of organizational management is hard is because whatever anyone tries to do, it will be mediated by many principal-agent steps, with the predictably accumulated error.
I have just realized I never considered the possibility of an automaton (software, say) as an independent link in the chain. I don’t know how correct it is, but it sure makes a lot of the problems I encounter on a daily basis more understandable.