One of the parts I enjoyed most about being a business owner is that, by the simple expedient of showing up in a suit or even *asserting that I owned a suit*, I was not only immune to many genres of horsepuckey, some functionaries assumed that I had authority w/r/t it for others.
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e.g. Someone who worked with me had a medical issue once. Insurance coverage was triggered, but the insurance company refused to pay part of the claim (*) until they had proof of how much income was lost. A four link chain developed asking me for it. * "We didn't!", they'd say.
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Whereupon I emailed saying "The information you've received from
$PERSON is correct." and they sent me an email saying they appreciated my email but I had not given them sufficient information to calculate lost income and would I please have someone important fill out form.Show this thread -
Upon which I released the eldritch capitalist rituals invoking authority vested in me by the state of Nevada to upgrade things I had written to Books And Records Kept In The Ordinary Course Of Business and napkin math to Calculations Performed By The Owner. It worked. Of course.
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And here's where I part company with the "bullshit job" discourse: There's an actual reason why an insurance adjuster wants to see paperwork and not just "Hey insured, pick a number and we pay you that number."
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And the ritual, the capitalism magicks by which I said, effectively, "Math is math" has a real purpose: it decreases the perceived risk of insurance fraud by forcing me to produce evidence that, if fraud existed, I'm a) in on it and b) unambiguously liable for the consequences.
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And yeah, in the instant instance, that's transactional friction... but it's not entirely the waste heat that is claimed by the "bullshit jobs" discourse. The world would benefit from decreasing the friction (*cough* web app *cough*) but the presence of it enabled the policy!
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Townsend had the right of it in 1970 http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/09/up-the-organization-a-timeless-classic.html …
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Functional Stupidity explains a lot http://images.transcontinentalmedia.com/LAF/lacom/stupidite_fonctionnelle.pdf … pdf
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