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cwgrody<p>It’s official — only scoring 13 points in the first half is a bad plan. <a href="https://mastodon.sdf.org/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a> made it close, though.</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.sdf.org/tags/MarchMadness" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MarchMadness</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.sdf.org/tags/CollegeBasketball" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CollegeBasketball</span></a> <span class="h-card"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/cbb" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>cbb</span></a></span></p>
J 💫 🏴‍☠️ :mets:<p>Buh-bye <a href="https://janerationx.rocks/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a>. LOL.</p><p><a href="https://janerationx.rocks/tags/MarchMadness" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MarchMadness</span></a> <a href="https://janerationx.rocks/tags/CBB" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CBB</span></a> <a href="https://janerationx.rocks/tags/CollegeBasketball" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CollegeBasketball</span></a> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://a.gup.pe/u/cbb" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>cbb</span></a></span></p>
CopterDoctor<p>My bracket is slightly broken because <a href="https://mstdn.party/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a> is getting their ass kicked by <a href="https://mstdn.party/tags/McNeese" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>McNeese</span></a>. <a href="https://mstdn.party/tags/NCAA_Basketball" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NCAA_Basketball</span></a> <br><a href="https://mstdn.party/tags/MarchMadness" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MarchMadness</span></a></p>
Bytes Europe<p>ACC tournament bracket, schedule: Cooper Flagg, Duke look to extend dominance with eyes on NCAA title <a href="https://www.byteseu.com/825503/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">byteseu.com/825503/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ACCTournament" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ACCTournament</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/California" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>California</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/CooperFlagg" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>CooperFlagg</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Duke" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Duke</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ESPN" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ESPN</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/GeorgiaTech" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GeorgiaTech</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/KhamanMaluach" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>KhamanMaluach</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/KonKnueppel" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>KonKnueppel</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Louisville" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Louisville</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/NCAA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NCAA</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/NorthCarolina" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NorthCarolina</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Sports" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Sports</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/STANFORD" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>STANFORD</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/TarHeels" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TarHeels</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/VirginiaTech" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>VirginiaTech</span></a></p>
College Mascot Designs<p>Our tiger graduation mascot passed all the exams and is getting a degree! Many made to order gifts with our solo tiger, graduation tiger or our tiger mascot playing different sports </p><p><a href="https://www.redbubble.com/.../Graduation.../53501475.QK27K" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">redbubble.com/.../Graduation..</span><span class="invisible">./53501475.QK27K</span></a></p><p><a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/BuyIntoArt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BuyIntoArt</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Tigers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tigers</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Bengals" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Bengals</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/GoTigers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GoTigers</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/GeauxTigers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GeauxTigers</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/GoBengals" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GoBengals</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Auburn" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Auburn</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Princeton" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Princeton</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/LSU" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LSU</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/IdahoState" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>IdahoState</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/RIT" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>RIT</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Memphis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Memphis</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/ETBU" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ETBU</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Towson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Towson</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/HSC" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>HSC</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Occidental" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Occidental</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/BuffaloState" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BuffaloState</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/SavannahState" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SavannahState</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Missouri" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Missouri</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/MIzzou" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MIzzou</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/LouisianaState" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LouisianaState</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/ColoradoCollege" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ColoradoCollege</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.art/tags/Doane" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Doane</span></a></p>
Dr Pink<p><a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/LGBTQ" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LGBTQ</span></a> related <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Wikipedia" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Wikipedia</span></a> article created 10 hours ago</p><p>Keri Sather-Wagstaff</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keri_Sather-Wagstaff" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keri_Sat</span><span class="invisible">her-Wagstaff</span></a></p><p><a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/American" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>American</span></a> <a href="https://mastodon.world/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a></p>
Democracy Matters :verified:<p>Come on, Superbowl! Certainly you can boo better than Clemson!</p><p><a href="https://mstdn.social/tags/Superbowl" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Superbowl</span></a> <a href="https://mstdn.social/tags/BooTrump" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BooTrump</span></a> <a href="https://mstdn.social/tags/MakeTrumpRun" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>MakeTrumpRun</span></a> <a href="https://mstdn.social/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Clemson</span></a> <a href="https://mstdn.social/tags/DonDicktater" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>DonDicktater</span></a> <a href="https://mstdn.social/tags/USPol" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>USPol</span></a></p>
Europe Says<p><a href="https://www.europesays.com/1760956/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="">europesays.com/1760956/</span><span class="invisible"></span></a> Clemson’s Zackery Brings Energy to Littlejohn <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Basketball" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Basketball</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/BradBrownell" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BradBrownell</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>clemson</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ClemsonBasketball" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ClemsonBasketball</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/ClemsonTigers" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ClemsonTigers</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/Energy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Energy</span></a> <a href="https://pubeurope.com/tags/JaedenZackery" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>JaedenZackery</span></a></p>
TikTokClemson bans popular TikTok creator after stadium trespassing incident Given the unethical, dange...<br><br><a href="https://awfulannouncing.com/tiktok/clemson-bans-garrett-fedewa-stadium-trespassing.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://awfulannouncing.com/tiktok/clemson-bans-garrett-fedewa-stadium-trespassing.html</a><br><br><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/College" target="_blank">#College</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Football" target="_blank">#Football</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/TikTok" target="_blank">#TikTok</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Clemson" target="_blank">#Clemson</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Tigers" target="_blank">#Tigers</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Garrett" target="_blank">#Garrett</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Fedewa" target="_blank">#Fedewa</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Georgia" target="_blank">#Georgia</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Bulldogs" target="_blank">#Bulldogs</a><br><br><a href="https://awakari.com/pub-msg.html?id=X6z4x336UanUzQgReXY2zcFzJk8" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Event Attributes</a>
TikTokClemson bans popular TikTok creator after stadium trespassing incident Given the unethical, dange...<br><br><a href="https://awfulannouncing.com/tiktok/clemson-bans-garrett-fedewa-stadium-trespassing.html" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://awfulannouncing.com/tiktok/clemson-bans-garrett-fedewa-stadium-trespassing.html</a><br><br><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/College" target="_blank">#College</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Football" target="_blank">#Football</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/TikTok" target="_blank">#TikTok</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Clemson" target="_blank">#Clemson</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Tigers" target="_blank">#Tigers</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Garrett" target="_blank">#Garrett</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Fedewa" target="_blank">#Fedewa</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Georgia" target="_blank">#Georgia</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="mention hashtag" href="https://mastodon.social/tags/Bulldogs" target="_blank">#Bulldogs</a><br><br><a href="https://awakari.com/pub-msg.html?id=4J7aoTeURODwGMiKyYRObjh65Nw" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Event Attributes</a>
Chuck Darwin<p>Another aspect of debt, <br />considered as an information technology, <br />is that if affects the information environment of the borrower. </p><p>If you are managing a company which has borrowed money, <br />making your payments becomes one of the survival conditions for that company. </p><p>At low levels of debt, generating short term cash flow is one priority among others, <br />but for a highly indebted company it becomes a signal which swamps all others. </p><p>You might want to change the world, but if you don’t meet the coupon payments, you’ll never get the chance to see if your other strategic priorities would have worked.</p><p>Consequently, a company with lots of debt cannot help but have a bias toward the short term. </p><p>Which might be considered problematic, <br />as the last few decades in the Western capitalist world have seen the rise of an industry <br />(leveraged buyouts, or “private equity”) </p><p>which has made it part of its fundamental operating strategy to load companies up with debt. </p><p>Considered in this light, debt is a technology of control as well as of information <br />– it’s a means of exerting discipline on management teams who might otherwise be tempted to follow priorities other than short-term financial returns.</p><p>This is, as far as I can tell, the real meaning behind the populist critiques of “<a href="https://c.im/tags/financialisation" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>financialisation</span></a>” in the economy. </p><p>There’s really nothing particularly bad about the growth of the financial sector, <br />even to the extent that it’s outstripped the growth of the “real” economy. </p><p>Quite simple mathematics ought to be enough to convince us that as the economy grows, <br />the number of links and relationships between producers, consumers and investors will grow at a faster rate, <br />and so you’d expect the parts of the economy in which decision making and information processing take place to grow faster than the “real” economy. </p><p>It’s the same logic by which the brains of primates take up proportionally more energy than those of rodents; </p><p>finance is part of the real economy, just like the cerebellum is a real organ.</p><p>What’s bad about “financialisation” is neither more nor less than the over-use of debt. </p><p>Modern corporations do often behave badly, <br />and they make systematically worse decisions than they used to, <br />this isn’t a delusion of age. </p><p>They do this partly because they have outsourced key functions <br />(cutting themselves off from important sources of information), </p><p>and partly because their priorities are warped by the need to generate short term cash flow. </p><p>Both of these problems can in large part be traced back to the private equity industry, <br />working either as a direct driver of excess leverage, <br />or as a constant threat which makes managers behave as if they were already subject to its discipline.</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/Management" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Management</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/science" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>science</span></a> and <a href="https://c.im/tags/cybernetic" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>cybernetic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/history" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>history</span></a> is all about things which began as solutions, <br />💥then turned into problems because the world changed. </p><p>Once upon a time, back in the 1970s, <br />private equity and LBOs were the solution to a problem of lazy, sclerotic incumbent management teams, <br />self-dealing and failing to make tough decisions. </p><p>But it’s now the 2020s, and private equity may itself be the biggest problem in our global information processing system. </p><p>The way that corporate history progresses is that we try to keep up with the ever-increasing complexity of the world, <br />♦️and then when this is no longer possible, we have a crisis and reorganise. </p><p>We’ve had the crisis <br />– or perhaps we are still going through it <br />– and now it’s time to think about how to reorganise.</p><p>(3/3)</p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dan-Davies/author/B07DGHPV6F" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">amazon.com/stores/Dan-Davies/a</span><span class="invisible">uthor/B07DGHPV6F</span></a></p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/debt" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>debt</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/information" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>information</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/technology" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>technology</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/criminogenic" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>criminogenic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/organisation" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>organisation</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Stafford" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Stafford</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Beer" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Beer</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Barry" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Barry</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Clemson</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/accountability" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>accountability</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/sink" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>sink</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/737MAX" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>737MAX</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/McDonnell" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>McDonnell</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Douglas" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Douglas</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/engineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>engineering</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/cost" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>cost</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>control</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ricardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Ricardian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fallacy" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Fallacy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/hard" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>hard</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/data" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>data</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/best" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>best</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/practice" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>practice</span></a></p>
Chuck Darwin<p>It’s really striking to compare the two big crises of the last two decades.  </p><p>The Global Financial Crisis beginning in 2007 was purely a matter of book entries in computers.  </p><p>No actual physical capital was destroyed, nobody died.  </p><p>By contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020 was a massive blow to productive capacity<br /> – millions of people died, <br />buildings were rendered unusable.  </p><p>But it was the first of these two crises that led to massive scarring and a prolonged global recession, not the second.  </p><p>Why?</p><p>It might be said that the reason why is that if you consider the world economy as an organism, <br />the pandemic attacked its muscles and sinews <br />while the financial crisis attacked its brain.  </p><p>The global financial services industry is a crucial part of the distributed decision-making system of the world, <br />and its core component is a very old, but still surprisingly poorly understood technology <br />called <a href="https://c.im/tags/debt" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>debt</span></a>.</p><p>In the strictest, purest sense, <br />debt is an “<a href="https://c.im/tags/information" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>information</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/technology" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>technology</span></a>”</p><p> – it’s one of the mechanisms human beings have invented to handle information.  </p><p>By structuring an investment in someone else’s project as a debt, <br />you immediately reduce the space of possible outcomes to two <br />– you get paid back, or you don’t.  </p><p>There are a lot of other information-processing techniques that banks and investors use, <br />from statistical credit scoring to modern portfolio theory, <br />but this is the big one.  </p><p>It allows a modern bank to keep track of vastly more financial investments than would ever have been possible for a medieval merchant in the first days of double-entry book-keeping.  </p><p>Rather than having to preserve face-to-face relationships with every single borrower, <br />you can rely on the fact that 99% of mortgage loans get paid back in full and on time, <br />and concentrate your attention on managing the 1% of cases where something goes wrong.</p><p>🔥The trouble is that if you build a business on this basis, what happens when it turns out that there’s a small variance❓</p><p>Unfortunately, a small variance in the proportion of good loans from 99% to 97% means a tripling in the number of bad loans❗️</p><p>and consequently a huge excess load on the systems that are meant to deal with them.  </p><p>Faced with this massive cognitive overload, <br />the system froze.  </p><p>And even more unfortunately, <br />in a world in which trillions of dollars need to be rolled over and refinanced every day, <br />the one thing that the financial sector cannot do is stop for a moment to regain its bearings.  </p><p>If information processing was free and the bankruptcy process frictionless, <br />the Global Financial Crisis would have been over in a month.  </p><p>As it was, all the information which had been attenuated by the use of multiple layers of secured debt came back, <br />suddenly unattenuated and needing to be dealt with.</p><p>That’s the “cybernetic history” of the debt crisis which I outline in my book, <br />and I think it’s a useful alternative perspective to the economic one, <br />and one which makes it more comprehensible that a relatively small market for synthetic CDOs turned into a continental crisis.  </p><p>But this might not even have been the most pernicious use of debt seen in our lifetimes.</p><p>(2/3)</p><p><a href="https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">profilebooks.com/work/the-unac</span><span class="invisible">countability-machine/</span></a></p><p> <a href="https://c.im/tags/criminogenic" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>criminogenic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/organisation" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>organisation</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Stafford" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Stafford</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Beer" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Beer</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Barry" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Barry</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Clemson</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/accountability" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>accountability</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/sink" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>sink</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/737MAX" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>737MAX</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/McDonnell" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>McDonnell</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Douglas" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Douglas</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/engineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>engineering</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/cost" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>cost</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>control</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ricardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Ricardian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fallacy" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Fallacy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/hard" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>hard</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/data" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>data</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/best" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>best</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/practice" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>practice</span></a></p>
Chuck Darwin<p>More from Dan Davies:</p><p>About five years ago, I started to get very interested in an obscure subject called “<a href="https://c.im/tags/management" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>management</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/cybernetics" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>cybernetics</span></a>”.  </p><p>It was a product of the technological dreamscape of the 1960s and 70s; </p><p>after the invention of the computer, but before it became ubiquitous, <br />in a period when there was room for speculation about how the new world of artificial intelligence would change our world.</p><p>I had just finished my previous book<br /> (Lying for Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of the World), <br />and was keen to say a bit more about how organisations go wrong.  </p><p>It seemed to me that it might be possible to expand the concept of a “<a href="https://c.im/tags/criminogenic" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>criminogenic</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/organisation" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>organisation</span></a>” <br />(one where the incentives structurally produce illegal behaviour) <br />to a more general 🔸“bad-decision-o-genic organisation”.</p><p>And furthermore, that the weird mixture of pure mathematics, philosophy, accountancy, physics and economics that came together in the work of now-forgotten management gurus like <a href="https://c.im/tags/Stafford" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Stafford</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Beer" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Beer</span></a> and <a href="https://c.im/tags/Barry" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Barry</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Clemson" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Clemson</span></a> might be the way to think about it.</p><p>What do bad decision-making organizations have in common❓</p><p>Quite a few things, <br />but one of the clearest signs is something you might call an “<a href="https://c.im/tags/accountability" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>accountability</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/sink" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>sink</span></a>”.  </p><p>This is something that might be familiar to anyone who has been bumped from an overbooked flight.  </p><p>There is no point getting angry at the gate attendant; <br />they are just implementing a corporate policy which they have no power to change.  </p><p>But nor can you complain to the person who made the decision <br />– that is also forbidden by the policy.  </p><p>The airline has created an arrangement whereby the gate attendant speaks to you with the voice of an amorphous algorithm<br />-- but you have to speak back as if to a human being like yourself.  </p><p>The communication between the decision-maker and the decided-upon has been broken <br />– they have created a handy <a href="https://c.im/tags/sink" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>sink</span></a> into which <a href="https://c.im/tags/negative" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>negative</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/feedback" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>feedback</span></a> can be poured without any danger of it affecting anything.</p><p>⚠️This breaking of the feedback links is, I think, one of the most important things that has happened to large organisations <br />– banks, but also large corporations and government departments<br /> – over the last fifty years.  </p><p>In most cases, it’s not been carried out purely as a responsibility-dodging exercise, <br />or as part of a conscious effort to make things worse.  </p><p>That has happened, on occasion, <br />but for the most part, after spending a lot of time looking into examples, <br />I concluded that feedback links were being broken simply because 💥they had to be.  </p><p>The world keeps growing and getting more complicated, <br />which means that individual managers gradually become overwhelmed; </p><p>the problem of trying to get a sensible drink from the firehose of information that pours into any large organisation every day has become unbearable.</p><p>And this is why institutions have started ❌ delegating decisions to systems <br />– credit scoring algorithms, regulatory risk weighting formulas <br />and the like.  </p><p>As well as allowing decision-making to be automated and industrialised, <br />they provide a psychological defense system, <br />👉preventing individual human beings from the consequences of having to make a decision and own it.</p><p>Most of the time, these systems work well.  </p><p>But when they break down, the consequences can be spectacular.  </p><p>Because every such algorithm or rulebook is, implicitly, based on a <a href="https://c.im/tags/model" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>model</span></a> of the thing they’re meant to govern.  </p><p>And every such model is capable of failure.  </p><p>And when something comes along that’s outside the model <br />– like, for example, a sustained nationwide fall in US house prices <br />– you end up in a situation where literally nobody knows what to do.</p><p>(1/3)<br /><a href="https://www.netinterest.co/p/decisions-nobody-made" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">netinterest.co/p/decisions-nob</span><span class="invisible">ody-made</span></a></p><p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic" class="u-url mention">@<span>pluralistic</span></a></span> <br /> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/737MAX" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>737MAX</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Boeing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Boeing</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/merger" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>merger</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/McDonnell" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>McDonnell</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Douglas" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Douglas</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/engineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>engineering</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/cost" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>cost</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/control" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>control</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Ricardian" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Ricardian</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fallacy" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>Fallacy</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/hard" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>hard</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/data" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>data</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/culture" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>culture</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/best" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>best</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/practice" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>practice</span></a></p>