Commenter Dunc pointed me to a long but fascinating article by Edward Zitron titled The Era Of The Business Idiot where he brutally analyzes how US businesses seem to have been taken over by owners and a managerial class that he calls Business Idiots who have become alienated from the actual manufacturing process of whatever their company produces, and make decisions that tend to work against actual productivity and quality in favor of things that advance their own careers and income. (The thrust of the article is similar to Cory Doctorow’s evisceration of the internet that he calls enshittification and the extension of that idea more broadly to American power.)
The Business Idiot thrives on alienation — on distancing themselves from the customer and the thing they consume, and in many ways from society itself. Mark Zuckerberg wants us to have fake friends, Sam Altman wants us to have fake colleagues, and an increasingly loud group of executives salivate at the idea of replacing us with a fake version of us that will make a shittier version of what we make for a customer that said executive doesn’t fucking care about.
They’re building products for other people that don’t interact with the real world. We are no longer their customers, and so, we’re worth even less than before — which, as is the case in a world dominated by shareholder supremacy, not all that much.
They do not exist to make us better — the Business Idiot doesn’t really care about the real world, or what you do, or who you are, or anything other than your contribution to their power and wealth. This is why so many squealing little middle managers look up to the Musks and Altmans of the world, because they see in them the same kind of specious corporate authoritarian, someone above work, and thinking, and knowledge.
He lays much of the blame on the late economist Milton Friedman who said that a company’s only responsibility is to increase shareholder value and that any other consideration, such as the well-being of its employees or the community or the environment in which it is based is a dereliction of its duties. This has led to the intense focus on raising short-term stock values at the expense of any long-term benefits, even to the company.
He gives many, many, many examples of which one is Tesla.
Let’s be honest, when you remove all the money, our current tech industry is a disgrace.
Our economy is held up by NVIDIA, a company that makes most of its money selling GPUs to other companies primarily so that they can start losing the money selling software that might eventually make them money, just not today. NVIDIA is defined by massive peaks and valleys, as it jumps on trends and bandwagons at the right time, despite knowing that these bandwagons always come to an abrupt halt.
The other companies feature Tesla, a meme stock car company with a deteriorating brand and a chief executive famous for his divorces from both reality and multiple women along with a flagrant racism that may cost the company its life. A company that we are watching die in real time, with a stagnant line-up and actual fucking competition from companies that are spending big on innovation.
In Europe and elsewhere, BYD is eating Tesla’s lunch, offering better products for half the price — and far less stigma. And this is just the first big Chinese automotive brand to go global. Others — like Chery — are enjoying rapid growth outside of China, because these cars are actually quite good and affordable, even when you factor in the impact of things like tariffs.
Hey, remember when Tesla fired all the people in its charging network — despite that being one of the most profitable and valuable parts of the business? And then hired them back because it turns out they were actually useful?
This is a good example of managerial alienation — decisions made by non-workers who don’t understand their customers, their businesses, or the work their employees do. And let’s not forget about the Cybertruck, a monstrosity both in how it looks and how it’s sold, and that’s illegal in the majority of developed countries because it is a death-trap for drivers and pedestrians alike. Oh, and that nobody actually wants,
Tesla has become a meme stock, dependent on shareholders wanting to believe in it and Musk. This has enabled it to maintain shareholder value and allow its board to give Musk obscene pay packages.
This video by Martin Adan describes in detail how Musk is driving Tesla into the ground, with his ridiculous Cybertruck leading the way.
Interestingly, Musk seems to have a lot of cult-like fan followers who leap to his defense whenever anyone criticizes him or his Cybertruck. They claim that critics are irrational haters who ignore that he is a genius and that his Cybertruck is the shape of the future. So he does have a core group of customers who will buy whatever he sells. In my area there is one Cybertruck that I see driving around that has painted on the rear panel in large letters ‘TOYOTA’. I am not sure what message the driver is trying to send. Maybe he has buyer’s remorse and is saying that we should not take him to be a Musk fanboy, since Cybertrucks have been known to be vandalized.
I will give Musk this: until Tesla came along, the rest of the car industry was dragging its feet making the move to EVs. Tesla’s early successes convinced SOME of the car industry that this was a bandwagon they needed to jump on (although the makers of one of the best selling cars in history -- Toyota -- have been notably more circumspect than most about jumping all the way on…). And when they didn’t jump hard enough, governments around the world started forcing them to by threatening huge fines if they didn’t.
I’ve said the following before, but it’s true so I’m going to repeat it:
We all remember, don’t we, when the government had to threaten makers of standard mobile phones with huge fines if they didn’t stop making them, to force consumers to migrate to Android and iPhones.
We all remember, don’t we, when the government had to threaten makers of cassette players with huge fines if they didn’t stop making them, to force consumers to adopt CDs.
We all remember, don’t we, when the government had to threaten makers of CD players with huge fines if they didn’t stop making them, to force consumers to adopt mp3 players.
We all remember, don’t we, when the government had to threaten makers of mp3 players with huge fines if they didn’t stop making them, to force consumers to adopt streaming for music.
We all remember, don’t we, when the government had to threaten makers of video tape players with huge fines if they didn’t stop making them, to force consumers to adopt DVDs.
We all remember, don’t we, when the government had to threaten makers of DVD players with huge fines if they didn’t stop making them, to force consumers to switch to streaming for movies and TV shows.
Oh, hang on, none of that ever happened. In every case, when something came along that was ACTUALLY better, consumers just started buying the new thing. No threats were needed.
One example of “force” was when we realised CFCs were bad… but manufacturers simply produced other products (aerosols and refrigerators) that were every bit as good as the ones that went before with downsides invisible to the consumer (unless you put a match to your deodorant spray, but y’know -- don’t do that, it’s not a hardship). And CFCs went away, and the hole in the ozone layer just…. stopped being an issue anyone talked about.
Tesla advanced the cause of EVs to a degree it’s hard to measure, but they definitely made it happen sooner than it would have otherwise. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on whether you’re the sort of person who (a) can afford one and (b) can charge it on the driveway of the home that you own, or whether you’re one of the majority of the population for whom those two things are an unattainable pipedream. Unfortunately, most of the finger-wagging articles about them are written by people who can afford them and do have a home with a driveway on which they can charge one.
Consider: HOW did Tesla capture the EV market? By not bothering trying to make an affordable car. They didn’t target the everyday consumer. Their first “volume” model was the original Roadster, an out-and-out sports car capable of “ludicrous speed”. It got people talking, people who’d previously dismissed EVs as milk floats not fit for people who actually like driving. That was what set them up. They’ve never been focused on what people actually use cars for, they’ve been focused on CHANGING what cars are, especially changing them from “things that you can drive a thousand miles in without having to stop for more than about ten minutes if you need to” into “things that make driving more than half that distance a royal pain in the nads”. (I’ve a mate who had Tesla who tried to drive it to Cornwall a few years back. He’s never trying it again, he tells me. He’s also got a petrol car now. This tells me all I need to know.)
Tesla’s core group have one thing in common -- by any normal measure they’re rich. Do you need to know more?
Well that’s evolution for you.
Capitalism is always moving and thrashing around, so… it could have become something benignly enmeshed in society, elevating its material conditions for the good of all.
Instead this particular iteration just favors making money by any means available. Producing crap? Who cares, it makes money. Bilking and deceiving customers? See above. Devastating the environment? Ditto. And so on.
Add a good percentage of society dumb enough to idolize these dregs, and you have a nice shotstorm brewing. I mean, just look how many bootlickers Trumpy and Musko can count on and you can measure the sheer dumbness of a good bit of the population.
Question is, how long can we hold up the house of cards before something drastic happens: societal/enviro collapse? War? I suppose we shall see, but not enjoy.
sonofrojblake @1, you make a lot of good points.
That said, can anyone truly say that enshittification and business idiocy has *not* been their recent experience?
I leave it to yourselves to determine.
garnetstar @3
In my experience it very much depends on the size of the business and how much you can afford to spend. Small businesses to small medium sized, usually still run by the founders, but with a few exceptions where there have been well considered succession plans, can be extremely good in terms of products, service, the treatment of their staff, environmental considerations and even price (for obvious reasons price can be a problem, although often not on a like for like basis). But the bigger a business gets, and I guess, the more slots that open up for business idiots the more enshittification happens.
The thing that frustrates me about this whole process is that while the good businesses I have encountered may be more expensive pound for pound, the quality for the price is always better and the price isn’t necessarily that much more expensive. I do know that on large numbers of transactions that adds up, but it is still deeply frustrating that those businesses are likely to end up going the same way as the larger ones or failing completely, meaning that people with even decent incomes are increasingly finding that just reasonable quality products are being priced out of their reach. It’s part of the whole class war thing where too many of those in power believe we peons should not be allowed to have nice things..
@sonofrojblake:
Honestly, anybody with any familiarity with the auto industry would have known this was coming, because this is a cycle that has been repeated a lot in the auto industry (it’s common in a lot of industries, but the constant churn in the auto industry makes it particularly obvious there):
-- Big companies make what they have always made and sold
-- Little company sees niche it can fill or invention ignored by the big companies
-- Little company starts making cars that fill that niche, and starts making significant sales
-- Little company either gets bought out by one of the big companies, or the big companies start filling the niche themselves now that they see there’s money there and drive the little company out of business through economies of scale and business connections
-- Wash, Rinse, Repeat
A number of inventions have become standards in cars in much the same way, down to and including things like variable intermittent windshield wipers (wipers that have adjustable delays between passes). This has been a known thing about the industry for decades. Anybody who understood the history knew that either somebody was going to buy out Tesla (and Musk has too much of an ego to be bought out with anything less than a high position in the new company, which they probably wouldn’t give an ‘upstart’) or that once every company started throwing money into making competitive EVs, Tesla was going to run into trouble because their customer list would simply stop growing. And that’s even before Musk became so publicly an asshole.
Tesla lasted as long as it did because, much like SpaceX, for a while there was a significant group of people inside the company whose job it was to keep Musk happy and away from micromanaging too badly while other people were allowed to get on with their work. Unfortunately for them, as Musk’s ego got worse and he started feeling the sting of criticism and had to ‘prove’ that he was really a genius, he’s become more of a micromanager and tended to get rid of anybody that tries to moderate him, and his proof has tended to show the opposite.
@OP:
Someone I know (physicist, amateur pilot, used to work with the Canadian Space Agency, and has spent much of his retirement doing talks on things ‘the physics of mecha’ at anime cons) had a rant that, when you get right down to it, you can trace the rise of the modern ‘Business Idiot’ back to WWII. Specifically, during the rush to get onto a war footing in WWII, the U.S. set up a bureaucracy specifically to deal with handing out government contracts. This pretty much necessitated the rapid hiring of people whose primary purpose was to understand how to interact with the procurers and fill out the appropriate forms, and who didn’t really need to understand what the company did so much as how to tell other people what they did. Because they were hired quickly there wasn’t really much chance for them to learn what the company actually did, and because they were being paid for their expertise they thought they actually were experts in general rather than just on that particular topic.
A lot of the MBA culture came from that start, of people whose primary job was to handle the ‘business’ side of things, dealing with the stock market and other businesses rather than dealing with any actual customers or equipment, and because they were usually rich people to start with being given degrees by expensive colleges, a certain level of entitlement and assumption of superiority got baked into the system. Since they mostly interacted with each other they never had it pushed into their faces how out of touch they were, and because they were ‘obviously’ important people they felt they should be running things, even when they tended to run things into the ground. Of course, for a lot of them that went on to be things like hedge fund managers, running things into the ground was often actively part of the job description so they could scrape the useful stuff off for another company and declare bankruptcy with the original business that now had only debts and no assets.
The modern Business Idiot is really just the distillation of the inherent entitlement of second-generation or later rich people with no real skills other than how to interact with other Business Idiots, and they have been gradually pulling their bubble closed around themselves for eighty years while they rampage through actual productive businesses like locusts.
The laws of the United States have always been such that the board of directors can cause the CEO to be fired if they do things that are a quality/safe product instead of a maximally profitable one. Friedman is an adjunct to the way that capitalism has been systematically applied here for a long long time.
The roots of this come from the time when the US was a third world country and whose government got it’s money from export taxes. Civilization was Europe who was buying our raw materials. Acquisition of raw materials is dangerous, or can very much be. Long long before it was known that cigarettes cause cancer it was proven that fine particles from mining cause lung damage. The case law that is in the US that says you have to prove you specifically were harmed by a specific thing a specific company was specifically doing was formed then.
CEOs who either realized it was good business to treat their workers to a minimal amount of safety, or who were forced to, were fired.
I read a good analysis which said that Tesla’s product is no longer the cars, it’s the stock price.
Everyone knows Elon Musk is an incompetent racist liar… but if they remove him and the stock falls to normal valuations for an automaker, most Tesla investors will be wiped out. They put up with him because his constant stream of wild exaggerations and lies is the only thing that’ll keep the stock pumped up a little longer.
@sonofrojblake
I think you should use the FDA and capitalist’s voluntary removal of chalk from bread as an example. Or for a more automotive one; the voluntary removal of leaded petrol and embrace of catalytic converters
Also cars and driving would be safer if they had a fixed range of 200km and forced people to take an hour break to rest. The idea that you should drive a thousand miles with a 10 minute break is just fucking dangerous. But that won’t sell so we get cars with a 800km range and a nice comfy lounge seat to fall asleep in
(I’ve toured around most of the south east of Australia on sports motorcycles, so i’ve practiced what i’ve preached here)
Anyway, i think Ed is great and really enjoy his work
I blame the business idiots for a philosophical trend that came from the cold war -- that there is a possible “gamification” of various challenges, that allow de-skilled operators to succeed by understanding and following basic rules. That also brought us the field of “system analysis” and the veneration of business schools, the products of which are out there crapping all over everything.
There’s a problem, though, since “the old way” wasn’t particularly great. A business’ owner/founder would try to bring their male child up within the business. Sometimes that probably worked great, other times you get a short-lived dynasty like Kodak or Honeywell, that doesn’t navigate the future effectively. Having seen the damage that a plug-and-play business school graduate CEO can do to a start-up, I’m pretty sure they’re not a good idea. But having seen blockheaded sons who never filled their fathers’ shoes (shoulda tried the daughter!) I don’t think there’s a win.
People just suck at the stuff they do.
@sonofrojblake #1: I think your argument has some pretty serious flaws there.
Firstly, and by far the most importantly, none of the examples you list are cases where the previous technology has serious negative externalities. The fact that I continue to play vinyl LPs and CDs has no impact whatsoever on anybody else. If, on the other hand, my continued use of vinyl records was directly contributing to an issue resulting in 30,000 deaths and costing £27 billion per year in the UK alone, then I would expect the matter would be treated rather differently. We don’t want people to change to EVs because they’re “better” in some relatively abstract technological sense, we want people to change to EVs because ICEs are killing people and wrecking the climate.
Secondly, the various technological shifts you list are fundamentally different in that it is perfectly reasonable to run multiple different generations of these technologies in parallel. I still listen to vinyl records and CDs and MP3s and streaming, and switch between them as appropriate. Most people do not run a fleet of different vehicles for different purposes.
Thirdly, and closely related to the previous point, the replacement cycle for cars is different to that of consumer electronics or entertainment media. Cars are relatively big-ticket purchases, and so are purchased less often -- particularly if you consider the distinction between new purchases and second-hand, which means that replacing the entire vehicle fleet will take much longer than you might think if you just look at how often individuals change cars.
I think a better analogy would be the move away from domestic coal-burning for home heating, which was largely driven by legislation, despite the fact that almost everybody would agree that a modern central heating system is vastly preferable to getting up to a freezing cold house and having to deal with the coal fire first thing in the morning. Again, the key factors involved are the need to deal with negative externalities, the capital expenditure requirements, and the slow replacement cycle. It’s still not a perfect analogy though (analogies never are!), because the principle externalities people were concerned with in that case resulted from coal-burning in high-density urban settings, whereas one of the externalities we’re trying to deal with by phasing out ICEs is much more diffuse -- hence the need for a combination of measures to deal with local air quality in high-density areas in the short term and a wider phase out over a longer period.
@garnetstar, 3: I’ve asked a lot of people this, and most agree with my estimation that goes like this: for most of my life, which started before the moon landing, the technology available to the average person has just got better and better. Cars, radios, televisions, computers, phones, ovens, even toothbrushes. Everything has just got better and better, my whole life. Until about 2010. Since about 2010, EVERYTHING has got worse, and more to the point has got worse due to the deliberate choices of the people supplying the thing. EVs instead of actually suitable-for-my-use-case cars is just the latest and most expensive example. (Exception: televisions. My old 50″ plasma TV conked out in autumn. I groaned and bought a new one, a 55″ one. It’s 4K instead of HD, it weighs 8kg instead of 63kg, its interface is smooth and a pleasure to use and just works, and it costs about £230 instead of the £1300 I paid for the plasma screen in 2007ish. TVs have defininitely got better. I literally can’t think of a single other example though.)
@jenorafeuer: agreed -- my point was simply that you can “credit” Tesla with having brought forward the moment the legacy car companies started throwing money at development by probably a decade at least. My own opinion as an engineer is that this was a BAD thing because the technology, even WITH that level of development cash thrown at it, is NOT ready for mass adoption yet despite the fact it’s being forced onto the market, but that’s just me.
@dangerousbeans, 8: I don’t know anything about chalk in bread, and I can’t be bothered doing the googling now, but I vaguely remember that leaded petrol and catalyic converters absolutely were not voluntarily adopted by a grateful public but were, like EVs, forced onto a public that didn’t give a shit due to governmental interference in the market. IIRC, California mandated catalytic converters, and the industry had to fit them because Cali is a big market in the US, and that had a snowball effect. Of course, again, the difference is a car running on unleaded and with a cat is exactly as useful as a car running on leaded without a cat, which is where they’re very different from EVs.
It’s a good job EVs don’t need large quantities of steel or plastic or foam or lithium for their manufacture, then. It’s a good job they don’t require those resources to be mined or drilled for or otherwise extracted, refined and manufactured. It’s a good job they’re made of soft, yielding material that doesn’t cause pedestrians or other vehicles harm when they hit them at the EV’s mandated maximum speed of 15mph.
You’ve fallen for what I call the “carbon footprint lie” -- the idea that we, the public, each individually bear personal responsibility for climate change and it’s on us to recycle our drinks bottles and cardboard and soda cans, buy locally sourced cheese and drive an EV to save the planet. That’s what BP want you to think, that’s the narrative they’ve been pushing since the 80s, that’s why they invented the phrase “carbon footprint”. Sure, knock yourself out, make your life less convenient and bearable by driving an EV (assuming you can afford it, see above), but just as an example the Vynova factory in Runcorn will still be using 1% of the entire electricity output of the whole UK, 24/7. You’re pissing in the wind. Do it if it makes you feel better, but please, don’t preach your hair-shirt mentality to others.
I appreciate most people don’t run a fleet of cars -- but the country does. There’s no reason why the government couldn’t simply butt the fuck out of the car businesses’ … er… business, and let the public decide when and whether they want EVs. There’s no reason why half the cars sold in 2035 couldn’t be ICEs -- the infrastructure for them is still there, after all, and there’s no reason why they couldn’t just carry on being sold until nobody wants them any more. That’s my point.
Again, with the replacement cycle, you’re making my point for me and seemingly not realising you’re in agreement. Yes, buying a car is a rare event. Then again, just how often do YOU buy a music player, or a TV? For me it’s a maybe once a decade thing (see above re: TV) -- actually LESS often than I buy a car. I’ve owned five cars while my plasma TV was working).
The move away from coal burning is a terrible example because in practically every way gas fired central heating is MASSIVELY BETTER than the old alternative.
You know what’s a good analogy? Heat pumps. They’re being pushed hard… but I’ve done the research, I’ve seen the installations, and costs, and benefits… and they’re WORSE. More expensive, louder, require a LOT of internal work to any normal house (to fit the larger radiators that are needed because they’re so much less thermally efficient), assume that you live in a house with plenty of accessible space outside that you don’t mind being taken up with a massive loud ugly box. The problem people have selling me one is that I’m a chemical engineer and the physics and economics of heat transfer is something I’ve dealt with a LOT in my career, so the absolute bullshit these charlatans trot out for the rubes doesn’t work on me. They’re not a terrible idea if they’re built into the fabric of the house in the first place, but as a retrofit they’re simply a non-starter for most people. But gas boilers are being phased out regardless… because of the bleating about the environment. And we’re back to the carbon-footprint lie. See above.
sonofrojblake, @ #11
Even if we set the climate issue aside (which I think is a mistake, but I’ll let it slide for now), did you completely miss that the principle argument I was making was actually about the direct health impacts of urban air pollution, of which personal vehicles are a significant component? I notice you haven’t addressed that at all. The climate bit was just an off-hand add-on at the end.
Also, there’s no point in you trying to make this an argument about my personal choices, as the only time I have ever owned a car was for 6 months around 35 years ago. I don’t own a TV either, and I built my (valve) hi-fi myself from discrete components, so I’m very much not representative of the typical punter. I suspect you may not be either.
My point about moving away from coal burning was that it still took legislation despite being “MASSIVELY BETTER than the old alternative”. You seem to have misunderstood me there.
You seem very angry about a lot of things recently. Are you OK?
@11 sonof…
Heat pumps? Really? Maybe they have weird heat pumps in the UK, but based on my experience, heat pumps are positively brilliant. As a now retired electrical engineering professor, I know a little about thermodynamics, too. But just as important, I’ve lived with multiple heating/cooling sources throughout my life here in the northeastern USA. Our winters can be harsh. The vast majority of our winter hours are spent below freezing. The record low temp here is around -25F (-32C). We get a lot of snow. Right now, we have about a foot and half on the ground, and I need to go out and clear the 4 or so inches we got overnight. My house was built in the early 90s and used oil heat. Very common around here. It’s dirty, loud, and can be expensive, plus it requires yearly maintenance. About 15 years ago we put on an addition. I did the heat load calcs and spec’d a Mitsubishi mini split heat pump. It worked so well that ten years later we dumped the oil furnace and put in two mini-splits for the main house. They are quiet, clean, and less expensive to run. On top of that, we get A/C for the summer. For new housing, they have the added benefit of not needing duct work, take up less room, and are easier to install. In my opinion, anyone who builds a new house here and who doesn’t use heat pumps is crazy (indeed, a new house just went up around the corner, and it’s now surprise they opted to use a heat pump). On top of that, the state has major incentives to offset the cost. They do the same for heat pump water heaters (we switched several years ago and the payback period was something like 2 years, and we get free dehumidification of our basement as a bonus).
jihf @13, I just had to put in my enthusiastic feelings: I love love love my heat pump mini-splits too, also here in the northeastern US.
I am trying to wholly get away from having to use heating oil at all (haven’t got the $$$ yet), but it’ll be great to have heat pumps for everything. I do think that even legislation about them would not be a bad idea, b/c they are so much better.
And, I didn’t do any calculations: to me, heat pumps are magic devices in which little elves take the heat out of a portion of air and put it in another portion. Works for me!
The ‘elves’ are known, we have the lore. They’re Maxwell’s Demons garnetstar.
Thanks, seachange! Now I know that it’s little demons doing the work.
They do it mighty well, so I’m happy with either demons or elves.
Regarding the math of heat pumps, see The future of low-carbon heating is heat pumps and Do heat pumps work in the cold?. The author, Hannah Ritchie, lives in the UK. The articles are from 2023 and 2024.
@ sonofrojblake
You do realize that there are huge economic differences between the electronics industry and automotive right?
As a percentage of income, what does replacing a CD player cost vs replacing a car?
What is the lifecycle of a cellular device compared to a car?
If you need to charge your MP3 player instead of a CD player, do you have to install new infrastructure in your house?
Not to mention the much higher barriers to new companies and lobbying by existing in the automotive vs electronics industries.
Not comparable at all.
As to the original article -- the financialization of all industry is a disaster for all except the wealthy brokers that skim profits while not actually contributing to production.
@sonofrojblake
Well that’s a wall of bullshit. All that has been refuted repeatedly by other people. I’m surprised you’re not denying that climate change is a thing
I’m out, I’m not playing gish gallop
As for the math of EVs: Electric cars are better for the climate than petrol or diesel. This is only about the climate impact, though it considers many different sources of electricity. Yes, there are other externalities in the manufacturing of EVs, some of which are unique to them (minerals for batteries), but then the ongoing production of oil also has externalities before it even gets burned for energy.
But EVs only help with some of the effects of cars. The true direction we should be aiming for is getting rid of private cars in cities and suburbs almost entirely. And that requires systemic change. In my area public transportation options have improved a lot in recent years, but still aren’t enough for most people to rely on them predominantly. So though we commute by bus we still own a car, mostly for errands involving a large bulk of stuff to haul.