@Archivist @sun @threalist i'm probably in one of those places where i'm just speaking nonsense idk. there used to be a societal understanding that to own a working group genuinely meant entitling the authority of that group to the officer. once that writ is made those are the officer's men now, they no longer belong to the crown (though the officer does), with the requisite "deal with your own house" issues that ensue from this.

we don't really have that anymore which is another problem of the whole thing. we have pedagogues whos job is to just whip the line men on behalf of deciders at the top, without a genuine delegation of authority and ownership of the hierarchy.

the human hierarchy seems inevitable really. attempts to deviate from it are ending poorly, though it does not itself have to be cruel. but this is a whole unrelated topic and i should probably drink cofe and stop filling up inboxes about pseudofeudalism