Another interesting point is that the system outsources the bad stuff to individual humans because they have no way to communicate back to the system that things are bad. This brings me back to the discussion of funding open source maintenance at #OW2con. Software engineers in general are burned out because we have to do jobs that require maintenance work but are not allowed to do maintenance work on company time because of the short-sighted quarter-at-a-time planning horizon of business
Much of this is represented in the catch phrase of cybernetics:
"The Purpose of the System is What It Does"
If you try to look inside the system, you will see a lot of people who think their job is about producing petroleum products. On the outside, you will see an entire industry hell-bent on making the earth unlivable. This is the result of the overall economic system that focuses on this quarter's share price to the exclusion of nearly all else.
But the maintenance work must be done or we will lose our jobs, one way or another. So the software engineers with internal motivation and the ability to work unpaid end up doing the maintenance work - in addition to a full time job. The system has succeeded in blocking the signal that would prevent the focus on generating short-term profits by forcing the negatives onto individual humans. This, but for the entirety of humanity - and that's the polycrisis
Hopefully this analysis makes it really clear why "why don't people just individually suddenly decide to do the 'right thing'" is never never the answer, in open source funding or supporting the arts or fighting climate change...
A general problem is wealth concentration, and there are many solutions to that, starting from the nicest one (a global wealth tax) to runaway inflation to massive destruction of capital to guillotines and assassinations and wars. It's been nice to see that a global wealth tax has recently become thinkable in many circles. But ultimately no one really knows what will emerge from the polycrisis
One specific recommendation from _The Unaccountability Machine_ is very simple: if a company does a leveraged buyout of another company (buys the company with a little of their own money and puts a lot of debt on the company to pay the rest) then the buyer should have to guarantee the purchased company's debts - no more limited liability for you. This is one element of Elizabeth Warren's plan to rein in private equity - and the only one Davies thinks is necessary for that
Oh hey! If you are an EU citizen, you can show support for a global wealth tax by signing the EU Citizens' Initiative to establish an EU-wide wealth tax:
He also argues for not attempting to understand the inner workings of systems but to observe their behavior (a key element of cybernetics) and suggesting we may have to give up on explaining why things happen or holding individual people accountable for things they neither control nor understand. "Accountability sinks" are a useful concept: the customer service agent who can do nothing to help yet must receive the signal from the customer that something is wrong
The author structures this using the theory of cybernetics, approximately that there are a series of systems that regulate each other at higher and higher levels, using feedback that reduces complex information into simpler signals. When too much signal is lost or the regulating system is too simple to manage a more complex system, the system goes awry. Capitalism and markets are effective simplifiers in that everything has a price, a fungible easily compared signal. This has many downsides
He argues quite convincingly that one of the types of systems that regulate business, System 3, or "what to do here-and-now" is running amok with little input from System 4, "what to do in the future," which is pretty hard to argue with. The current financial system, shaped by private equity and leveraged buyouts, forces most companies to behave as if they must make a huge debt payment this month or else face extinction. Which matches exactly what we see: Google devouring search for AI, etc.
I read _The Unaccountability Machine_ by Dan Davies on the train yesterday and wow. Attempted summary: society is in crisis because our current systems of governance and feedback are unable to hear the signal that is the vast majority of people screaming, "My life is intolerable." This signal gets routed into any channel available: Brexit referendum, far-right parties, protests against masks or wind turbines or housing - anything to signal rebellion
Really cool to learn about Tchap, the French government's encrypted messaging app. Instead of saying "government employees can't use messaging apps" they made their own messaging app that is actually more convenient for government employees because it includes a built-in directory and location services for the departments that need it
Remember that blog post "I got robbed of my first kernel contribution" where a maintainer slightly rewrote a patch and took credit for it? Well, I decided to do something about it.
I co-authored a guide with Maria Matějka and some other folks on documenting how your project gives credit and otherwise handles contributions. If your project's policy is to lightly rewrite contributions and take credit for them, say so! Subscriber link (free) to the LWN article:
I cannot wait for the US to stop being the unipolar world power. It turns out internal US politics generally tips in favor of funding the mass military bombing of civilians across the world, not preventing it. At least I am no longer personally paying taxes to support this
@ryanc I know that I'm not the median caller but I'm like, if I could do this without talking to a human, I would!!!! Trust me!!! They should have like a special cheat code that only people who love automation will find so they can immediately shunt you into the hard questions queue
My take on the xz supply chain attack is that modern software ecosystems are too complex and have too many individual people involved. The solution is obviously to start a small business employing just enough people to implement an ecosystem from scratch. Everyone at the business should be related by blood or marriage. Quitting or betraying it is punished severely. This is a new idea and no one has ever tried to run a business this way before and it will definitely work
Paying retainers for reciprocal access/expertise is also incredibly low risk for the company paying
“Hey, this person has been successfully maintaining this project for N years no matter who their manager or employer was, you know it’s good because you use it, how about paying them 1/5 of the cost of a full-time engineer and you can cancel any time?”
Systems consultant, writer, cat appreciatorI post about computers, nuclear stuff, science fiction, and science fact. I have ADHD so I'm into things that are Novel, Interesting, Challenging, and Urgent.