More on gain-maximization

[Glenn Bacon <gcbacon@roadrunner.com>]

Roberto Verzola wrote:

>  >I agree that corporations, as well as most other entities, gain-max.
>  >But just the term gain-max. does not adequately characterize a
>  >decision process.
>
> I suggest that it does for corporations, for which return on
> investment is eventually the final arbiter among various options.
> Because corporations are pure gain-maximizers, they belong to a
> different class of persons altogether compared to most real people
> like us. On the Y2K problem, corporate gain-max. was a context under
> which programmers and programming team leaders were generally
> constrained.
>

My understanding of how I managed corporate programmers in the 70s and
80s and your insistance on how you think corporations are motivated
and behave differ widely.  I suggest we agree to disagree.

Corporations are gain-max. under constraint, they are not "pure."  A
key constraint is continued survival and the notion of discounted
future value/cost.  Both of these issues provide a context to deal
with Y2K in a balanced way.  You seem not to buy my point that denial
and lack of credibility of the programming staff were important in
delaying remediation.

>  >social stability issues.  I find it hard to reduce this to a few
>  >"rule-sets."  Terms like, awareness, connectedness, compassion and
>  >responsibility seem more relevant.
>
> In fact, rulesets have been very useful, not for the purpose of
> reducing human behavior to a few options, but for illustrating the
> ideal, presumably based on the wisdom of past experience. The Ten
> Commandments, for instance, served its purpose admirably for centuries
> and for many, they still do. So do the Eight-Fold Path and similar
> rulesets among the great religions and cultures. Even contemporary
> writers have proposed them (like Robert Fulghum's "Everything I Needed
> to Know I Learned in Kindergarten"). They consist of a few rules,
> instead of thousands, presumably for didactic purposes and probably in
> recognition of the limits of short-term human memory.
>
> I expect that the communities which are today reorganizing themselves
> to confront the Y2K crisis will be adopting new rulesets, to replace
> those which brought us the Y2K and other looming ecological and
> economic crises. By trying to identify flawed rulesets (like the
> gain-max. corporate ruleset) and formulate more carefully fine-tuned
> ones (if we can...), I see our efforts on this list as complementary
> to the efforts of these emerging self-sufficient communities.

You really need to make the point that that rulesets are maleable
short of long-term therapy.  You can pronounce them, but unless people
are forced to change because of long-term or permanent environmental
change, not much will happen.  I remember similar admonations during
the Arab oil embargo of the early 70s.  Except for more efficient
refrigerators, there has been little permanent change at either the
physical or mental level.

Who "finely-tunes" rule sets?  Orwell examined the issue and Mao had
the Red Guard.  You need to advance a political mechnaism that is not
noxious to democracies.

Glenn Bacon