The Hive Mentality
Posted: December 11, 2010 Filed under: just because | Tags: Charles Stross, Corporations are not People, Paul Krugman 42 Comments
Wow, I get to cross reference Paul Krugman and Charles Stross in one blog post. It’s a nerd’s delight!! I also get to speak out on I why opted out of corporate life and married life despite the obvious financial benefits of both. That would be the “Hive Mentality”. I hated working in large corporations. I gradually couldn’t stand my husband more and more because he wasn’t the sweet kid that I married who adored John Lennon and Science Fiction. He is how I come to know writers like Charles Stross. The ex turned into a soldier bee that I couldn’t stand to be around. If you love your freedom and your identity more than money and power, you will die a slow, painful, agonizing spiritual death as a corporate minion. They will get to you one way or another.
Stross talks about why our politics, our society, and our people are so frigging messed up these days. He also looks at why we feel–like my neighbor Antwoine–like we vote people into office that come from various backgrounds and they invariably turn on us. Tell me truthfully, when is the last time you felt like your vote did any good?
Stross argues that the “The rot set in back in the 19th century, when the US legal system began recognizing corporations as de facto people“. I’ve actually had similar thoughts. That and I believe the recent Supreme Court decision giving them Constitutional rights essentially assigns us all to a form of serfdom. Here’s the quote that Krugman lifted from Stross’ blog that caught my attention too.
Corporations do not share our priorities. They are hive organisms constructed out of teeming workers who join or leave the collective: those who participate within it subordinate their goals to that of the collective, which pursues the three corporate objectives of growth, profitability, and pain avoidance. (The sources of pain a corporate organism seeks to avoid are lawsuits, prosecution, and a drop in shareholder value.)
Corporations have a mean life expectancy of around 30 years, but are potentially immortal; they live only in the present, having little regard for past or (thanks to short term accounting regulations) the deep future: and they generally exhibit a sociopathic lack of empathy.
I do think that my exhusband’s 20 year stint as an investment officer at Mutual of Omaha turned him into something of a Pod Person. He became part of that collective hive and its goals became his goals. He would forget to replace the milk in the refrigerator for our two small children. This would force me into the minivan–yes I had a MAZDA minivan–with hungry, whiny kids needing bundling up and buckling where I would drive miles to replace it. At they same time, he would risk life and limb to get to the Hive Collective Office that’s eaten most of historic, central Omaha in blizzards and 6 foot snow drifts. What started out as my panicked young parent self, thinking, sheesh he could die doing that eventually became, wow, he could die, I’d get the life insurance, and I’d move me and my kids to London where I could get a doctorate from the London School of Economics and they’d attend pre-school with the future kings of England. I might even wind up in Oxford with some nice Hugh Grant type tottie and a title. You can see how he eventually got on the losing side of that what-if exercise.
Even worse, however, was being part of a Hive itself. I thought–because that’s how every one thought in the 1980s–that being in my suited skirt, carrying a brief case, and being in a field surrounded with men that I would become the uberWoman role model and change the world. (Yeah, you know how THAT worked out.) What I found was a situation akin to either being oppressed or being rewarded for being the oppressor. I couldn’t take either. In my years in a corporate Hive, and then later as a consultant in Dr. Deming’s methods to some of the biggest of them (e.g. AT&T and Ford) and then state and government agencies, I found that corporations suppress innovation, data, and the human spirit in search of more power, more market, and more profit. Believe me, between my consulting and Katrina experiences, I’d turn my life over to the US Air Force or any set of government workers any day over ANY private corporation. Hence, I totally agree with Stross on this final point.
We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don’t bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist.
In short, we are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion.
My question to you is how do we humans defeat this particularly nasty form of aliens?
Note: I’ve been over to Memorandum where they’ve featured this post and I seem to be outnumbered among those bloggers who to a man don’t agree with Stross. Typically enough of the naysayers, one is a corporate attorney, one is a Hayek fetishist, and then there’s Krugman who blames greedy individuals like the Koch brothers. Frankly, I wonder if my response is a from a mother/woman viewpoint unlike the others. Go read them. I don’t think corporations have contributed much. I think individuals contributed much until their contributions become corporations themselves. (i.e. G.E. isn’t the contributor to society; Thomas Alva Edison was) OR maybe it is JUST me.
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My question to you is how do we humans defeat this particularly nasty form of aliens?
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We don’t. Global corporate structure will end within the lifetime of people living today. It, along with the exploding human population, are the result of cheap fossil fuels. This era of history, which began about 1800(?) is coming to an end. The question is “What comes next”?
ouch. mad max perhaps?
Don’t know but the massive redistribution of wealth over the past thirty years, combined with the deterioration of prospects for employment are fuel for social unrest. Combined that with the rising costs of energy and who knows…
“redistribution of wealth over the past thirty years” to the upper 1%…
yup, people have a lot to be upset about, but unfortunately, we’re turning into a police state with big black helicopters … remember that old Arnold movie about Mars and food riots?
Where did this post go? It’s not on the frontpage (on my end anyway).
hmmmm… it’s still here for me. WordPress might be hiccuping again?
okay, i”ve lost it now.
okay, I changed the picture and now it’s back …
wordpress is weird! Today when I used the timer on one of my crossposts, it said “Missed schedule” and didn’t actually post even though it said “published.” I had to go in and manually fix it.
Its not just you. All victims of con-men, (and I view most corporations as large scale con operations) vehemently defend the person conning them, as many whores defend their pimps. The victim desperately seeks to maintain a fantasy in which their participation in their own demise is somehow heroic and significant.
Corporations are hives, as are nations. A better term might be random emergent system. Just as genes care not for how their bearers live, corporations care nothing for their constituents or the systems in which they function, because they are not “conscious” entities. And because they are random emergent systems whose behaviour is governed by the simplistic math of survival and expansion, they should not be given “rights” as if they were human beings with consciences, but should be regulated as if they were powerful but extremely deadly tools.
I really wish we could figure out a way to overturn whatever it is piece of law that gives personhood and constitutional rights to corporations. It’s insane and dangerous.
Feel like you’re back to the mundane after that great French vacation? I saw those pictures and wished I was there !!!
Nola is many things, but certainly not mundane. Made some awesome gumbo tonight to take the sting off of missing French food.
Wow, that sounds good. Figured you be out gigging!!
This post here is exactly why I said Halla Tomasdottir reminds me of you, Kat.
lol, well thank you again!!! and I’m blushing!!
Okay, here’s today’s moment of surreality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zHoImNUHG0E#!
I’m tired and maybe missed it but I’m confused about where you think the individuals who make corporations what they are end, and corporations begin.
I mean, you and Stross seem to refer to corporations as if corporations make choices and decisions, and of course they don’t. People do. Corporations are only what the people who work, manage and direct them make them.
Well, in my studies in corporate finance, what I’ve found is that when a corporation is managed by the original owner, with their name, their vision, and their active involvement, there seems to be an entirely different result than when the corporation morphs into something beyond the original owner’s intent. Like take Sam Walton vs. what Walmart is today. I think once the corporation because the ends to the means instead of the means to the end, things really go awry.
At some point, it doesn’t become people actively engaging things but a group think that rules. A lot of time size has to do with it. A lot of it has to do when the original corporate people move on … Microsoft is really a mess now, as an example. Seems like Apple’s gone that way too. They also lose focus as they start going into things just for the money and not for the belief in what they’re actually selling or doing. Does that make sense? At some point, the group think overwhelms the people. If you read the refocusing literature and the corporate ownership/agency literature, you really can get a feel for that point at which they turn into some entity on their own and the people serve rather than manage the entity.
I see what you mean.
Reminds me of a made-for-the-firm documentary about the history of Goldman Sachs that they show to new employees. I was struck by what happened as the story went from Marcus Goldman and his son and sons-in-law to the next generation who were MBA graduates and started that Ponzi fund (can’t remember what it was named) in the 1920s that ruined the firm’s reputation during the crash.
And Goldman changed while I was there. Not that they were pure of goodness in the early 1990s but a pride in, and protection of, the firm’s reputation of integrity was highly valued and prevailed in disputes. That eroded during the 90s and by the time I left in 1999 it was because I was disgusted at losing virtually every battle to the firm’s scammers and con men. They’d become a really revolting group of people.
I think Goldman’s problems really started when they quit being a partnership and went public. When you actually can go grab partner’s assets for the bad decisions they make and put them in jail, the management makes slightly more prudent decisions and they’re not chasing short term stock options to sell at some inflated price before the market figures out what they know and the market doesn’t …
No, their problems started well before that. Anyway that’s what I believe from what I observed. I was there and saw it and idiotically tried to fight it (my partner had to listen to my increasing diatribes at night as it got worse and worse throughout the 90s). The problem was scammers and con men got hired at the firm without the good guys realizing. The scammers and con men were hot with charming smiles and MBAs from Harvard and Wharton, highly socialized and charismatic, and wearing very nice Brooks Brothers suits – these guys did not look or appear like oily con men, they were likable and fun – then made bigger money for the firm than the regular big money earners, and they used that as leverage to win in disputes to get away with murder. The traders and VPs who did things the right way were shoved aside by those who didn’t. It was a slow creep at first but by the time Glass Steagall was repealed, which happened the same year as their IPO, they were full throttle with their shenanigans. Congress repealing Glass Steagall was really just a formality that made what they were already doing fully legal.
It was the character of the individuals of the new generation coming in (not all of them but too many) who’d gained power and changed the rules of the game, which began before 1999, before they went public. Some of those guys were just scammers to the core, you wouldn’t believe some of the arguments I got into with them, but some were basically good guys with too much ambition and too little commitment to the principles they knew were right and they saw the way the scammers were making money and followed suit. Dan Sparks, the guy Carl Levin made hamburger out of last spring, was a good guy, a close collegue and friend of mine back then, but he wouldn’t believe that getting away with a little leads to getting away with a lot and that it always ends in disaster.
It really wasn’t that they went public, it was that the bad guys gained power over the good guys. I liked Jon Corzine a lot but in hindsight I’ve realized it happened during his watch, that’s when all those guys were hired and moved up in the ranks. When Glass Steagall was repealed and Paulson took over in 1999 they kept doing the same stuff, only more and more brazenly.
Interesting. You should write a book. Really.
Just got on and would comment: I worked at a major Big Ten University, GE and General Dynamics. Part of the hive is having to get something done and relying on teams to accomplish goals. Of course Salary and corporate profit are part of that. Salary to feed families (wives with kids and caravans), survive major medical costs and oh by the way an occasional vacation for the most part two weeks when the kids are young.
I can be biased in terms of being a engineer, and will say that in the hive there are people who do the right thing and do not subscribe to the financial holy grail. Many of us are proud of accomplishments such as the Hybrid and Electric Cars etc. Many of us would agree that the finance people might be idiots. So whille your points have validity, you might want to be carefull of the broad brush.
So – where is the utopia – in the academic world? Realy I think the utopia exists when you are young and going to the university and living in student housing, sex is good and have access to university sponsored boat clubs, athletic fields etc When you graduated and had ti deal with the kids, family illness, house and car payments and bosses at work life gets to be different than the cloistered colloquia free spirite sessions.
In the end, it is the accomplishments of your kids that are really important and they get on the same hampster wheel.
No utopia in the academic world. Academic freedom and tenure allow you to be a bit more eccentric, however, and you don’t have to spend all day in an office trying to work. You can go home and get work done when you need to and clean dishes when you need to. I think some start ups begin as good places to work, but for some reason, a lot of these places eventually hit a point–either through size or lack of leadership–where it become easier to become an ant colony.
Interesting thoughts by Stross. I was thinking the same way back in the 1980s, informally and in my free time, and never wrote any of it out. The only audience I had at the time was hostile dismissed what I had to say.
BTW, I love science fiction too.
That should be “was hostile AND dismissed.”
Heck, what am I talking about?
Interesting thoughts by Stross AND YOU.
You should read Stross’ Sci Fi stuff. It’s kind’ve interesting. He’s basically a fiction writer.
I really wish we could figure out a way to overturn whatever it is piece of law that gives personhood and constitutional rights to corporations. It’s insane and dangerous.
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That would require overturning multiple Supreme Court decisions beginning in 1827 and then 1844 when SCOTUS held that a corporation should be deemed a “citizen” of the incorporating state and many more since then.
Gee Dak – I thought I would get more out of you when I talked about utopic colloquia. I did that one night to Empty Wheel when she was backing Obama and I was backing Hillary. She is Michigan Ann Arbor based. I accused her of being stary eyed with all the hope thing and life was diffeent that the university colloquia . God she and her friends pummeled me the rest of the evening in a very nasty way.
Further thought reveals that your blog is realy the modern day older people version of utopic colloquia, probably of equal University quality seasoned with the experiences of life.
Possibly female biased
🙂
I thought that movement died out with the Arts and Crafts stuff in the 20s or the Hippie stuff in the 60s?
There’s a really interesting PBS documentary on Cotswold Guild and then the Roycroft stuff. The Roycroft community sounds like it was my kind of place!!!
http://www.oldhousejournal.com/utopian-arts-crafts-communities/magazine/1661
SHV – I thought that was what Chuck Schumer was going to do – like Obama, all bluster and no action. They hit that magical filibuster and did not make the Republicans stand in the well defending the corporate position.
I agree with you – giving corporations that status is the race to the bottom.
I agree with you – giving corporations that status is the race to the bottom.
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This flip side of the argument is that since the corporation is legally a citizen, you can sue the corporation in court or bring other legal actions against the corporation. The English common law tradition established in 1613, was that a corp. couldn’t sue or be sued in it’s own name and each individual shareholder of the corp must sue or be sued. This was changed in the US by SCOTUS decision in 1827 Bank of US v Dandridge and viola the corporation was on it way to full US citizenship. Citizenship for corporations is probably a necessary legal invention but like most things, it can be carried to far.
Does that mean we can charge Halliburton and KB&R with murder?
Technically yes, but who to prosecute? There’s the rub. Corporations are used to shield horrible crimes from prosecution of the individuals.
I think you (and Stross) are soo right on this. Again and again I watch people’s souls getting co-opted by whichever corporate hive they’re in. Becomes the center of their existence (which I guess is unsurprising – the way our culture is set up, career professionals are supposed to take their sense of meaning/value from their work – which, over the course of time working for a coporation, ends up in their complete absorption into the entity – the goals of the corporation, which are generally inherently devoid of meaning in the larger picture, become their personal goals). The person’s values shift – reflecting what’s of benefit to the corporation, and they fail to see how their thinking has become biased in this regard (you sometimes even get liberals who remain liberals on most matters, except those issues related to their particular corporation’s and profession’s interests).
On a side note, I’ve been arguing with a friend of mine. Regarding the global future, she talks a lot about how the future will be defined by China’s ascendancy. I argue that she’s substantially wrong in this – that yes, China’s ascent will have profound impacts – but it’s a mistake to think about the future mainly in terms of nation-states. The era of the nation-state is fading (these entities are gradually losing their fundamental importance and powers), and is being replaced by a global structure in which corporations are the fundamental organizing entities.
Godwinning the multinational corporation … “”LITERALLY””
You probably wouldn’t have been happy in the AF either. There is still a hive mentality in the military branches. Granted, once you make rank they listen better but there are still many times you are FORCED to conform to what someone else sees as a better proposition. Rank matters less than knowledge on a subject.
One thing I have learned is there is no thing as an easy compromise and you have to draw lines early on or people will have you compromising ad infinitum. I’m blessed the only compromising I do these days are with those I love and they generally go easy on me.
The hive-mind thing makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t see Krugman’s point as being particularly effective against the idea. The leaders of the hive-mind sanction greed, perhaps through their own actions, perhaps through just ignoring it in their workers, and suddenly the whole hive is greedy. Where’s the disconnect?
As for what to do about it, I don’t know really. My suggestion, since corporations, at least currently, feed on money, don’t give them any food. Makes it very harsh for the hive workers though. Perhaps reward the good ones, like Halla Tomasdottir at TED Women, and not the rest.
I so understand your antipathy to corporate life. I couldn’t do it myself. I was lucky to be able to follow my whims 20 years ago, and ended up with the farm. I figure old age is going to be a disaster, but I’ll have lived as truthfully and freely as I could. I, too, fear the bag lady future, although with loved ones around, friends spread over the world, me and my partner might be able to do a bit better.
When I was a young onion working in (shudder) defense contracting, I became horribly depressed. I couldn’t imagine doing such soul-sucking, pointless work for the rest of my working life. I made it my life’s mission to work for myself. I have since 1996, and haven’t regretted it one bit. My husband works for himself also, and we do just fine. We produce high-quality service for reasonable prices and we put integrity and accountability above all else, business-wise. I suppose we could go hog-wild and make it all about the dollar, but instead we just like our life. And how fortunate we are to love what we do and do what we love. I am thankful about it every day.
PS Sima – “but I’ll have lived as truthfully and freely as I could.”
Very moving, and profoundly important.