Conversation

Replying to
Owning things is a skill. Inventory management is a skill. Inventory is not rotting, depreciating, work-in-progress tied to a single use or market. It’s a kind of complex potential that can be more or less fungible than money in certain conditions.
1
53
We all got a shock lesson last year that under certain rare but foreseeable scenarios, toilet paper. PPE, and sanitizer have higher fungibility than cash. I bet Wall Street quants are brilliant at modeling scenarios and identifying things *worth* holding. But they stop there.
1
25
Nobody wants to actually acquire the skills of holding things. Just the skills of betting on representations and passing on the actual things as quickly as possible. Preferably not touching them at all. So we buy oil futures with nowhere to put the oil if forced to take delivery.
2
52
There’s a broader economic-philosophical point here. Lean is a natural expression of growthism, which is growth-for-the-sake-of-growth *as measured by money* because in a time-averaged sense, under low-uncertainty conditions, money is the most fungible asset *on average*
3
26
Replying to
Isn’t this what bureaucracy is for? Bureaucrats are like fat cells in this metaphor. They divert energy from more efficient flows and store it so it will be available later. Thinking of all the career government wonks that ran, eg. the CDC, FDA, etc. Michael Lewis 5th Risk types.
1
Replying to
Kinda but at macro-national scale for base commodities in huge amounts. I’m thinking we all need to become a bit more bureaucratic all the way down.
1
Replying to
Agreed! But there’s a knowledge equivalent too. Lewis tells the story of deep technical expertise stored in government agencies where it was not fully optimized and actually used to slow down optimization in order to hedge against risk.
2
3
Replying to
Yeah I include the knowledge in my definition. It’s linked to the soecif8c resource being stewarded. Maybe stewardship is a better term than bureaucracy. Bureaucracy too often ends up as robotic rules-knowledge, not appreciative understanding.
2
1
Replying to and
Most actual middle+ bureaucrats I’ve met are either low ambition checked-out shallow proceduralists out for an easy life, or rules-autocrats on a power trip. The “dedicated, sacrificing public servant” is mostly a myth.
You’re unable to view this Tweet because this account owner limits who can view their Tweets. Learn more
Replying to and
I’ll admit I’m fairly contemptuous of that. Virtues without knowledge and skill reminds me of a line my dad likes: “he has to be good at heart because he’s good at nothing else.” Deeply compassionate, high-virtue incompetent stupidity is a thing. Moral genius, moron at all else.
3
Show replies
Replying to
I think it depends on the institution. In pure rules application (eg. DMV) I agree. applies to equivalent parts of companies too: everyone hates HR. But not so in bureaucracy dedicated to specific technocratic domains: CDC, FDA, etc. Middle+ there are closer to academics.