Lobbying and the youth

The current downfall of the Western world is mainly its own making. Covid has shown that authoritarian governments mainly play charades when it comes to solving issues and their rise has mainly been a catch up using copying as well as tactics every rising power has used in the past. No imagination here.

The downfall can be stopped. It sure can be. The main problem is that politics and media as well as managers are not able to cope with the rise in complexity following networks and digitalization. And that leaves the constituency puzzled and allows the rise of clowns like Gaetz and Trump in the US or Hoecke in Germany with all their subcomplex ideas. These people lack any form of imagination and can only govern by idleness or better rejection.

Another problem are dichotomies. It’s either socialism/authoritarianism or capitalism/liberalism.

Every one is laughing about the idea of an “End of history” nowadays. Yet capitalism seems to be the end state of economies in a lot of people’s thinking. The alternative socialism has never been successfully implemented anywhere. Yet it seems the solution.

Philosophically we’ve been a few steps further already in the past. As Lind ¹ writes:

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, five major schools of thought debated the future of industrial society: liberalism, producerism, socialism, corporatism, and pluralism. Economic liberalism has come in several varieties, including the eclectic and flexible “classical liberalism” of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and J. S. Mill and a more rigidly antistatist ideology, associated with Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman and already called “neoliberalism” by the 1920s.

Neoliberalism had it’s time. It helped to free the economy from institutions modeled on wartime industries. Now we need a new idea of how to organize the economy because neoliberalism is “dying from its own success”.

But what to exepct from dystopians like Rosa or Precht — the finest philosophers the current German generation in power has brought forward.

Crises do not lead to fitness anymore but leave scarves in society just like Covid seems to leave scarves in the lung and create “Long Covid”.

There are four ways to create economic growth and with it progress:

• innovation
• marketing
• lobbying and regulation
• ???

For two centuries now politics has gone full supply-side and has allowed companies to thrive on arbitrage. Shareholders and managers follow the highest rate of return. And it seems more and more the best return results from investments in lobbying activities and its outcomes (eg. stock buybacks) — all mainly cancerous activities on the economy. The result is Potemkin growth.

We estimate that the lobbying group spent $282.7 million on lobbying expenditures and received $62.5 billion in tax savings, or a 220:1 return on investment. Using a statistical regression, we estimate that lobbying activity is highly associated with amount repatriated even after controlling for firm industry, size, profitability, liquidity and growth prospects. […] The tax benefits are accrued to older, larger firms that are declining in market value. ²

What’s disappointing is the conservatism of today’s youth when challenging the current paradigm as is the hypocrisy of todays’s generation in power. The youth is right to challenge with regards to the climate, the environment and “Late Capitalism”. They should challenge in even more domins — eg. education.

But their proposals are uninformed. The whole idea of degrowth can’t be taken seriously given humanity’s history. Humanity sure is on the cusp of degrowth given how bad institutions are with applying new ideas, processes and technologies. But that is disastrous!

The youth is ideologically as static as the old — the ignorance towards nuclear is as stupid as is the “Schuldenbremse”.

January 6, 2023 Economics The End of Politics 20xx Management Innovation Lobbying

Bilder

Jede Epoche hat ihren Denkrahmen. Zu Zeiten der Industrialisierung war es die Maschine. Entsprechend stellte Kahn den Körper als Maschinenpalast dar; Arterien wurden als Rohr visualisiert, das Herz als Pumpe.

Heute leben wir im Zeitalter der Information. Entsprechend definiert das Bit unser Denken, das Gehirn ist eine Recheneinheit.

Aus dieser Einsicht erklärt sich die Macht der Bilder. Weil aufgrund eines steigenden Informationsvolumens, bei konstanter Rechenleistung des Gehirns, die Verarbeitung von Information mehr und mehr Zeit beansprucht, benötigen wir neue Methoden.

Literarität definiert sich heute somit als numerisches Verständnis, nicht mehr als Wortakrobatie. Die Vergangenen denken in Stereotypen, in Klischees, in Szenen. Die Gegenwärtigen statistisch. Und sie visualisieren, weil Abstraktion und Verdichtung die Informationsverarbeitung fördert.

Picasso war hier Vorreiter. Felton und andere sind Vorreiter, wie es einst Luther und andere Schriftsteller waren.

November 26, 2022 The End of Technology

Management

Humans think linear, not being capable of mentalizing all variables and consequences of any decision. Our brain sets the limit ¹. In general, we can create and maintain a culture with institutions and technologies to overcome.

But because of mentioned limits we do act irrational with hindsight and are ultimately bad with predictions. Even experience does not help as Peterson and Wu write:

[As] entrepreneurs gain experience across projects, their future projects include additions that lead to more and more unforeseen interdependencies that they do not account for when making ex ante predictions. ²

Knowledge is a “bitch”. Experience is “Engelchen und Täufelchen zugleich”. Both seduce to create (unnecessary) complexity. And given most (corporate) cultures lack foresight they lack the tools to build, maintain and share knowledge gained from experience — most of it stays tacit and is not transformed.

So when Karpathy says:

I think the most I’ve learned [from Musk] is about how to sort of run organizations efficiently and how to create efficient organizations and how to fight entropy in an organization. […] [It’s] process […] and […] inefficiencies and that kind of stuff. ³

It struck a chord: always simplify! The things, regardless of being a manager or leader, one should keep in mind: simplify, focus on interactions within organizations and interdependencies; create options and tackle risk first while being aware of your environment.

November 19, 2022 Management Leadership Systems Technology Foresight

Deutschlands Zukunft

Wir leben in Deutschland diese naive Vorstellung der Zukunft als fertiges Konstrukt, das morgen oder an Tagen danach angeliefert wird — vornehmlich aus den USA, vermehrt aus China. Statt in einem Bewusststein zu agieren, dass Zukunft nicht mehr ist, als ein Amalgam millionen gegenwärtiger Entscheidungen.

Wir sind Exportweltmeister von Anlagen und Maschinen, aber Importweltmeister von Zukunft.

Der einfachste Weg in Deutschland eine Person zum schweigen zu bringen ist folglich nicht der politische Diskurs, die politische Korrektheit, sondern die einfache Frage: wie sieht Deutschland in 10 Jahren aus?

April 29, 2021 Politics Technology Foresight 20xx

Super League

Yesterday, a few big football clubs announced a new „Super League“. The outrage has been enormous.

Yet, the league will happen.

First, one has to look at the owner‘s of clubs. They‘re either driven by deep financial needs (Barcelona, Real Madrid) or without any ties to the European tradition of football — Juve being the one exception. Agnelli being the opportunist he‘s always been.

Second, it‘s interesting to note that proposed scheme reflects the current top american leagues with one exception. They will take place mid-week. Will this guarantee enough time to marketize? There‘s a reason why matches usually take place on weekends.

Hype requires an constant inflow of talent. Will there also be some form of College Football? Is this considered? Maybe the play comes too late, as a battle of Messi and Ronaldo might have been an attractor to a super league some years ago? But now?

Third, the current scheme of football has a lot of costs and risks attached those owners in their short-terminism don‘t care about. National teams being the first and foremost mention.

Fourth, the outrage of fans and pundits is incorporated and doesn‘t matter. The competition is already global, and the riches are earned in Asia. So fans over there matter as much, and they don‘t care about the tradition as they don‘t have the tacit knowledge to understand. The imagery and infrastructure of the clubs taking part carries enough symbolism for them.

The „Super League“ is the next logical step following the Asia tours of the likes.

Fifth, the „Super League“ will be boring. No relegation is just one part of this. Another will be metrics like playtime. If one looks at the @nba or @nfl, the matches are long but short on action. It‘s about the span of attention that can be advertised.

Sixth, given the global nature of football and the bifurication of Advanced Economies the clubs won‘t have problems to attract talent. Their youth centers offer enough perspective and foreign viewers don‘t care about nationalites.

Seventh, will players care in case @fifa really disallows them to participate in their national teams? If yes, there‘s a real danger that the „Super League“ goes down the way of the Chinese, Saudi-Arabian or American league. Will @harland — at the beginning of his career — move to a „Super League“? Is it really just the money?

Eigth, for players it might be a devils bargain. Their bargaining power will be tested, there‘s a reason the big leagues in the US have strong player unions. But they will also loose out, in case the league fails, as owners might loose interest and payments will fall.

Ninth, it might be a smart move for @bayern and @psg to stay out so far. There are still lots of clubs with renomee left: AS Roma, Lazio, Fiorentina, Sevilla, Marseille, Monaco; and new clubs might arise given their chance. Attention is still plenty available. And that might mean easier access to the riches of Champions League and given the competition payments to players might also fall.

Tenth, there‘s a risk of a „Schweinezyklus“. Meaning the damage will already be done, and the wrongdoers will already have moved on. The stakes for the owners aren’t really high as it resembles a typical Private Equity play.

Eleventh, there‘s a big discrepancy. The season holder‘s so far have sold their tickets for matches against smaller teams to foreign visitors, and focused on the big games. Yet, they‘ll probably be the ones arguing big against the „Super League“.

Twelvth, where will the league be incorporated? This might not just be about moving on from @uefa and @fifa but also European regulations — think Bosman et al.

The player‘s reaction will really be interesting. It‘s important to keep the discussion going, and make the „Super League“ members position themselves.

The player‘s reaction is the one big unknown. But the big ones will probably move with, Ronaldo being the first. Also, how will fans at Real Madrid and Barcelona react? How big is their influence really? And how will the „traitors“ bow down, in case of a defeat?

April 19, 2021 Sports Politics

Product Management as Practice

Bourdieu argues in “The Logic of Practice” that habitus is needed for praxis based on experience. This co-evolves during episodes in which the practitioner practices. The practitioner is thereby part of a community based on mutual engagement in combination with a joint enterprise and a shared repertoire of concepts, models, tasks, roles and rules. This requires understanding context within the human activity system: the artifacts, subjects, objectives, as well as the outcome in combination with established rules, participants, and labor division.

To execute product management well, the understanding of practice is essential. Not only because the concept is not limited to the idea of logic but open to ideas of capabilities, tacit knowledge, Action Theory, Participatory Design, Service Management Theory, the Service Dominant Logic of Marketing, Weltanschauung, Managerial Identity Dissemination Discourse. More importantly, it accepts the fact that managing is inherently social and even more so political. In reality product management is often limited to interactivity and improvisation, tactics do dominate strategy — productivity suffers and product development tends to become conservative over time because product managers develop routines and practice management procedural.

„Product Management as Practice“ accepts the social nature, is based on principles combined with a toolset based on insights from varying fields of research.

• Design Innovation Spectrum
• C-K Theory
• Human Activity System
• Strategy Foresight for the Business Model
• IT Alignment and Business Model
• Business Modeling and Software Design

At its core „Product Management as Practice“ is a knowledge building activity based on the communicative act of designing and thereby transforming resources into information.

„Substanz ist Form. Spezieller: Materie ist Form. Bewegung ist Form. Masse ist Information. Energie ist Information.“ — Carl F. von Weizsäcker

This cultural process is called innovation and its outcome is technology, the latter defined as everything of which output of information is greater than the total input of resources. Knowledge thereby is like the epigenetics of information! During the transformation the product manager manages designing.

• Why should we propose a solution to consumers? Why should the community of practice care?
• What does proposed solution entail?
• How should the activity of consumption be configured? How does our community of practice become the authority for that outcome?
• Where do we propose our solution?
• Whom do we address?

These questions are answered within the spaces of problem, solution, construction, and operations. His responsibility is to configure the know how with know what, know when and know why. And as soon as resources needed for transformation become intangible, the game changes. The idea of the corporation solely based on transaction costs becomes obsolete and markets do become echo chambers.

As a matter the product manager needs to act on the principles of:

1. Humans act goal-oriented, emotions are a feedback mechanism.
2. One cannot not work on the business model!
3. Understanding context is key.
4. Established products rarely are replaced by new ones, successful new products reconfigure the activity of consumption.

The only things that matter are the human activity system, complexity, scenarios and „deep truths“.

October 12, 2019 Product Management