Tag: corpocracy

Learning to talk

As a general rule, it’s a terrible mistake to take your lead on communication from actresses:

“Woman in a Meeting” is a language of its own.

It should not be, but it is. You will think that you have stated the case simply and effectively, and everyone else will wonder why you were so Terrifyingly Angry. Instead, you have to translate. You start with your thought, then you figure out how to say it as though you were offering a groveling apology for an unspecified error. (In fact, as Sloane Crosley pointed out in an essay earlier this year, the time you are most likely to say “I’m sorry” is the time when you feel that you, personally, have just been grievously wronged. Not vice versa.)

To illustrate this difficulty, I have taken the liberty of translating some famous sentences into the phrases a woman would have to use to say them during a meeting not to be perceived as angry, threatening or (gasp!) bitchy.

“Give me liberty, or give me death.”
Woman in a Meeting: “Dave, if I could, I could just — I just really feel like if we had liberty it would be terrific, and the alternative would just be awful, you know? That’s just how it strikes me. I don’t know.”

“I have a dream today!”
Woman in a Meeting: “I’m sorry, I just had this idea — it’s probably crazy, but — look, just as long as we’re throwing things out here — I had sort of an idea or vision about maybe the future?”

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Woman in a Meeting: “I’m sorry, Mikhail, if I could? Didn’t mean to cut you off there. Can we agree that this wall maybe isn’t quite doing what it should be doing? Just looking at everything everyone’s been saying, it seems like we could consider removing it. Possibly. I don’t know, what does the room feel?”

As with most erroneous conclusions, the fault is in the assumptions. “You will think that you have stated the case simply and effectively” is where the problem is. Where the writer, and the actress before her, are wrong is in believing that their feelings about how they have stated the case are conclusive.

In all communication, the primary responsibility lies with the person talking, not the person being addressed. If people regularly misinterpret you, the fault is almost always your fault, not theirs. If women “speaking their opinion” are often perceived as angry, then, assuming they are not angry, it is obvious they are inadvertently or unconsciously sending out signals that are easily misinterpreted as anger.

The problem, I suspect, is that many women have zero self-confidence. That’s why about 50 percent of all individual female products are sold on the basis of claims that they will improve the buyer’s confidence. (The other half concern divulging the secret of an envied woman’s success in looking prettier than the buyer.) And what most people lacking in self-confidence do when they are trying to state their opinion or speak up for themselves is either a) apologize in advance in the manner demonstrated above or b) overcompensate and come off as angry.

It’s absurd to say that women are speaking in this way out of fear of being perceived as Terrifyingly Angry, they are doing so because they are Ridiculously Insecure.

The fact is that if you have to steel yourself and work yourself up to simply stating your opinion, or worse, do so just to cite a straightforward fact, you are almost always going to come off badly. Your behavior and expression will not be consistent with your message. Most of these women who think they are just stating the case simply and effectively would be shocked if they saw a video of themselves doing it and saw their furrowed brows, angry facial expressions, and heard how their voices were raised as if in anger.

Compounding the problem is that the natural solipsism of women combines with that lack of self-confidence so they make it all about themselves. Note how many “I” references there are in the three examples above: nearly four per example. Just to be clear, the normal male response to this rambling “I just feel that I think I should be able to express what I feel is the right thing to do” is “who the fuck cares?”

Women are also more inclined than men to see criticism of an idea they have expressed as personal criticism and react angrily to it. Does someone telling you “that’s a stupid idea” make you angry and feel personally attacked? Well, then you probably ARE angry and your speech and facial expressions accurately reflect that.

Now, I’ve been in more than a few business meetings with women, and certainly some have spoken in a way that I would describe as “Oh Sweet Darwin, get to the fucking point before we evolve into a new species and all of this becomes irrelevant”. But plenty of them speak normally, without either anger or apology, and I’ve noticed that those tend to be the more competent women. No drama, no theatrics, no uptalk, just normal, straightforward communication.

Just talk. It’s not that hard. Stop couching and overcompensating and trying to frame, and foreshadow, and pre-convince, and talk. If you think X, say “I think X.” That’s it. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to apologize for it or get upset if someone comes back with “I think X is stupid, I think Y.” You think what you think. They think what they think. It’s not a sin or a crime to disagree.

Amazon goes after the fakes

I’ve been expecting them to take action to shut down fake reviewers for some time now, but apparently it took being embarrassed in public to make it actually happen. More than a few SJWs should be shaking in their shoes.

AMAZON, the world’s largest online marketplace, is suing more than 1,000 people suspected of selling fake reviews in one of the biggest legal actions to uncover hidden identities on the internet.

The web giant is mounting the unprecedented court action to strip 1,114 alleged fake reviewers of their anonymity and force them to pay damages for the “manipulation and deception” of Amazon customers, according to court documents filed in America on Friday.

It is the first time any company has taken action against its own reviewers on this scale, according to legal experts, and could have far-reaching implications for privacy and the way consumer websites are policed.

The clampdown comes after an undercover Sunday Times investigation, in which a ghostwritten ebook was published on Amazon and fake reviewers were paid to push it to the top of one of the online retailer’s bestseller charts.

I’ve spoken to two Amazon executives about the problem, and they both agreed that fake reviews are a real problem that strikes at the legitimacy of their entire review system, and therefore, their business. They didn’t necessarily agree that anyone who leaves a fake review should have their ability to review permanently removed and have their account suspended for 90 days, but they agreed that some form of negative incentive would be in order.

Amazon is full of SJWs, but they are mostly at the lower levels. The mid-level and higher executives aren’t much interested in politics, they are interested in selling. Anything that gets in the way of that is likely to get steamrolled.

Fair play for FATCA

It looks like the Law of Unintended Consequences is about to strike the US federal government again:

This week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will announce its final package of measures under its Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project that would enable foreign governments to tax overseas earnings of American companies. If the United States fails to make changes of our own before that plan begins being enacted next year, this effort, which The Wall Street Journal called “a global revenue grab,” will ensure much of these American earnings stay overseas permanently.

Considering that the US government claims the right to force foreign banks to track and report its citizens, it’s not going to have much of a leg to stand on when foreign governments start claiming the right to tax the earnings of US corporations with bank accounts in their countries.

This is why it is so reprehensibly stupid for the US to insist on intervening in sovereign lands; by doing so it sacrifices its own claims to sovereignty. It is unlikely that Putin would have intervened in Syria if the US had not intervened in Ukraine and Syria. This foreign cash grab probably would not have been successful without FATCA.

Fire local, hire global

Okay, that’s not entirely fair. But it does raise some serious questions when Microsoft is simultaneously a) laying off 7 percent of its workforce while b) lobbying hard for more H1B visas to permit it to import more foreign workers.

Up to 7,800 people will be laid off globally, the company announced Wednesday morning. Most of the jobs are within its smartphone hardware business. Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) had 118,600 employees as of March 30, with about 60,000 of those workers in the United States. The cuts represents about 7% of its staff.

This is Nadella’s second major restructuring. He announced 18,000 layoffs in Nokia’s devices and services business last year, following Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30)’s acquisition of the handset maker.

Of course, I don’t think anyone is even remotely surprised that the Nokia acquisition didn’t work out well.

Rumblings of tech war

This article is amusingly incoherent concerning the growing fears of US technology companies concerning Europe:

One message so far from the corridors around the World Economic Forum
in Davos: U.S. technology companies are very worried about the backlash
they are now facing in Europe. From their standpoint, Europe
risks shooting itself in the foot by rejecting the cutting-edge
technologies they have brought to the continent. But they would say that, wouldn’t they? Look at it from the European point of view.

Europe
once led the world in mobile technology: The Global System for Mobile
Communications, developed in Europe, became the global standard. But
that was a long time ago. Now, most innovation in information and
communications technology comes in waves from across the Atlantic.

With America’s vibrant capital markets giving them billions of dollars in risk capital, they can absorb the successful European tech enterprises—look at Skype Technologies, swallowed by Microsoft Corp.

These U.S. companies— Google, Facebook , Amazon and others—are disrupting industry after industry. Publishing, telecoms and retailing have already been convulsed. Now, the companies, and Google in particular, are turning their gaze from consumer-oriented to business-oriented platforms.

That is a big deal for growth-starved Europe and for its biggest economy, Germany, which leads the world in high-quality engineering. Europe’s car industry is a leading employer, its suppliers reach through the continent, and it is one of the biggest spenders on research and development. Germany’s machine-tool manufacturers are deservedly renowned.

But much of the future profit for these industries won’t flow from punching metal but from the networks they will use to manage information—for example, taking the cars where they want to go, catering to passengers with entertainment and retail experiences as they travel—and it’s a strategic question who owns them.

Isn’t it good of those US technology executives to worry so much about Europe shooting themselves in the foot? They must have tremendous empathy! Or could it be that they are not telling the truth and it is something else that worries them?

Such as, perhaps, the possibility that they will be legally locked out of Europe due to their enabling of US goverment espionage and their continued disinclination to show any respect for various European privacy laws?

Ocean-front diplomacy

Never let it be said that Obama doesn’t think ahead:

President Obama announced sweeping changes to U.S. policy with Cuba on Wednesday, moving to normalize relations with the island nation and tear down the last remaining pillar of the Cold War.

Under the new measures, the United States plans to reopen its embassy in Havana and significantly ease restrictions on travel and commerce within the next several weeks and months, Obama said. Speaking from the White House, he declared that a half-century of isolation of the Communist country “has not worked.”

“It’s time for a new approach,” he said.

The history-shaping overtures come after more than 18 months of secret negotiations with the Cuban government of President Raul Castro. The final touches appeared to be arrangements for a series of simultaneous prisoner releases.

It’s probably one of the smartest moves of his presidency, if not the smartest. Cubans don’t vote for Democrats anyhow, and no one gives a damn about them anymore since they’re massively outnumbered by Mexicans now. It’s all upside for Obama; no doubt there are plenty of big-money interests just slavering to snap up Cuban real estate.

I’d be astonished if he doesn’t come out of it with a sweet post-presidential villa.

“Women have no idea”

And here I thought we’d be more productive with women in the workforce. Tapping into that vast pool of hitherto untapped talent and all. And yet, Dr. Helen is unimpressed with her sex, nominally at work:

Apparently, rather than focusing on their own jobs, men are supposed to spend their time playing therapist to how women think and feel. And of course the author has no understanding of how hard it is for men to even interact with women at work, given all the rules and regulations. One “tip” in the article tells men not to be afraid of tears:

    When Paul Gotti of Cardinal Health gave performance reviews, he says that, without even realizing it, he was easier on female directors: “I didn’t want them to cry, to feel bad.” He recognizes now that this was no favor. They should have the feedback “so that they can grow too.”

    Ms. Flynn of Flynn Heath Holt says that her firm has found that men aren’t only afraid of tears but of getting in trouble with “the diversity police” for speaking harshly, or of women being “too high maintenance, or [that] she’ll ask a million questions.” As a result, “men are scared to death to give us feedback…. They’ll let women run astray and off course and be fired before they’ll take the chance to give them feedback.”

    Her advice: Be honest. That doesn’t mean you have to be blunt, adds Mr. Schwartz of the Energy Project, which is more than 60% female: “I’ve learned it’s a balance between honesty and empathy. Honesty without empathy is cruelty.”

Women have no idea what men in the workplace are dealing with when they
work with women. And men, despite what the author thinks, are not there
to babysit women by telling them to ask for raises, brushing away tears
and “twisting” women’s arms to ask for her own promotion.

I suggest learning to refer to “equality” and to say “look, you’re a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need any help from a man to do her job” will be vital for many men in the corporate environment. Black knighting and ruthless compliance with all workplace regulations is the optimal way to circumvent the lunacy.

A refusal to learn

We have learned nothing from history and so we are bound to repeat it:

We’ve known for 5,000 years that mass spying on one’s own people is always aimed at grabbing power and crushing dissent, not protecting us from bad guys.

We’ve known for 4,000 years that debts need to be periodically written down, or the entire economy will collapse. And see this.

We’ve known for 2,500 years that prolonged war bankrupts an economy.

We’ve known for 2,000 years that wars are based on lies.

We’ve known for 1,900 years that runaway inequality destroys societies.

We’ve known for thousands of years that debasing currencies leads to economic collapse.

We’ve known for millennia that torture is a form of terrorism.

We’ve known for thousands of years that – when criminals are not punished – crime spreads.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system.

We’ve known for centuries that monopolies and the political influence which accompanies too much power in too few hands are dangerous for free markets.

We’ve known for hundreds of years that companies will try to pawn their debts off on governments, and that it is a huge mistake for governments to allow corporate debt to be backstopped by government.

We’ve known for centuries that powerful people – unless held to account – will get together and steal from everyone else.

It’s not different this time. There will be ethnic cleansing and probably several incidents of mass slaughter, although whether it will be the immigrants or the native people on the short end is yet to be determined.

There will be series of economic crashes and the ongoing depression will deepen and widen, because the incipient credit busts in 1987 and 2001 and 2008 were all papered over with more central bank “money” created ex nihilo.

There will be wars, both due to the great clash of civilizations and pro-globalist elites clinging to government power in the face of furiously nationalistic people denied their will through the limitations and legalistic perversions of representative democracy.

These things are all inevitable. Not likely, inevitable. There is no force on Earth that can stop them, because in our arrogance and foolishness, we have again decided this time it’s different. But it’s not. It never is. And if you’re still a Republican defending income inequality because communism or a Democrat defending big government because poor people or a Libertarian defending open borders and free trade because individual, your entire political perspective is outdated and irrelevant. That world doesn’t exist anymore.

Disclose and DISQUALIFY

runsonmagic explains the reason behind the growing pressure to eliminate online anonymity:

Anonymity forces you to evaluate a writer only on their work, which is precisely why so many oppose it. The people against online anonymity are intellectually lazy. They want to be able to tell what they think of an idea based on who is telling them to think that way. They want to nod when a minority, “alpha male,” or person who looks like them tells them something. Knowing an author only by their words forces readers to think abstractly, to think for themselves, and they hate it.

Social justice warriors and feminists hate anonymity because they do not believe in objective truth. They believe it matters more who makes a certain statement than what is being said. The same words that are okay for a black lesbian to say, might be offensive if a white heterosexual male says them. This is precisely why social justice warriors hate Anne Gus and #notyoursheild….

The real reason many social justice warriors are against anonymity is
because it prevents them from harassing writers and getting them fired
from jobs. It prevents tech companies from collecting accurate data on
public forums. Even in the manosphere, anonymity prevents internet
marketers from slandering their competition by claiming they are “not a
real alpha male” without photographic evidence. Like most things, the
push against online anonymity comes back to money and power.

I can’t tell you how many times pinkshirts and other lefties have tried to out me. They assume that simply because one has a pen name, they must be trying to hide something. (Never mind that all it did was demonstrate their insufficient level of intelligence and classical education.) In fact, their deliberate choice of addressing me by my given name is always a dead giveaway that they are an ideological enemy.

The whole point of forcing disclosure is to DISQUALIFY, which is the only form of argument that the sub-intellects of the Left are ever capable of making. Which, of course, is why it is pointless to even attempt to engage in rational dialectic with them. Relentless scorn and dismissive rhetoric is the most reliable means of routing them, but it is a tactic that requires confidence and a combative nature.

But anonymity is an absolute necessity for every non-combatant who dares to stand in the way of the pinkshirts, which of course is why they are desperate to eliminate it in the belief that everyone will cower obediently before them once they are stripped naked and forced to choose between submission and being unable to make a living. They don’t realize that there are millions who will embrace the ISIS model before submitting to them. Their triumphalism is not merely foolish, it is insanely suicidal.

Look at how panicky they sound when a few advertisers simply withdraw advertising and show their vulnerability. And then imagine if we were truly the monsters they claim us to be. My strong suspicion is that they have limited imaginations and are simply incapable of realizing that the status quo is not built upon a foundation of stone, history does not progress inevitably in one direction, and civilization is considerably more fragile than they understand.

Vietnam vs America: round 2

Vietnam appears to be coming out ahead again:

According to the Pew Global Poll, 95% of people in Vietnam agree that most people are better off under capitalism, even if there is inequality. By contrast, only 70% of Americans believe the same thing…. But the Vietnamese advantage may boil down to this: Free markets are new there, whereas America has had them for a long time. Scientist Thomas Ray once said that every successful system accumulates parasites, and the free market in America has been successful for a very long time. Established businesses get tied down with regulations that keep out new innovations — like Michigan’s GM-backed anti-Tesla law that bars carmakers from selling directly to the public — while politicians line up to line their pockets with taxes and fees and campaign contributions.

This phenomenon probably explains why most of the growth and innovation in the U.S. economy has been in the Internet or Internet-enabled sectors where regulation has been light, though even there the politicians are cracking down. Ultimately, the political system doesn’t like anything to go on unless it has control — and a chance for politicians to wet their beaks and look after their own.

I expect Glen’s explanation is correct. All things are corrupted in time, all empires, even the mightiest, fall. Glen quite rightly doesn’t want a war or revolution, but that is what the USA is likely to eventually see at least one of those things as it inevitably fragments, as all force-imposed empires do in time. The UK very nearly broke apart earlier this year, and the Catalan-Spain union will likely do so within ten years.

Both of those unions were voluntary, so how can anyone possibly assume that the USA, which is a union imposed by military force and the will of a conqueror rather than the people, will not do so as well? It’s simply not a credible position, and demonstrates both the lack of the imagination and historical ignorance of anyone who holds it.

NB: I’m sorry about the comment captchas, but I’ve already got word verification turned off and I can’t seem to do anything about it. The way to avoid it is to be logged into Google; you can still use Name/URL and you won’t be forced to deal with the captchas. I suspect it is because I use an old template, but I don’t actually know why Blogger is suddenly ignoring the Word Verification setting.