Of the managerial class, mice and men, and behavioural sinks

John Carter

Feb 9

Let’s look at post-industrial post-modernity from the point of view of the people whose nominal function it is to keep everything from going off the rails, and try to do so as charitably as possible. If we can see the world as they do, their actions may become more understandable. For the sake of argument, we’ll assume that the majority of them are at least partly well-intentioned, with the proviso that many are of course willing to do unethical things if strongly indicated by self-interest. In other words, we’ll make the assumption that they aren’t a ponerogenic mass of pathocrats, but by and large composed of psychologically normal Homo sapiens sapiens who are just trying to do the best they can in the situation they’ve found themselves in

The human world is now composed of thousands of cosmopoles, which we’ll define as any urban centre large enough to house an international airport. The ability to shuttle people across continents in hours, and ubiquitous nigh-instantaneous telecommunications, has turned each cosmopole into something more like a neighbourhood in a single global city, than an authentic expression of the local or national culture. That global city is a fantastically complicated, interconnected machine, moving around food, energy, information, and people on a vast scale and at a high velocity.

The managerial class are tasked with keeping it all from breaking down or blowing up. Growing it tends to be the domain of entrepreneurs, and those who find success as founders of successful enterprises aren’t really managers. Managers are brought on board to operate existing enterprises, not to start new ones.

The first thing you’ll notice as a manager in this global megalopolis is that people can show up on your doorstep from anywhere at any time. Occasionally they might be dangerous, and there are bureaucrats whose theoretical job it is to do something about that, but for the majority of middle-management types the main issue will be foreigners with strange customs behaving oddly. This isn’t just an issue with high immigration rates, although that exacerbates the consequences, but rather a function of the technology itself. There’s not much that any given manager can do to prevent it, so instead he tries to smooth the way by telling those under him in the org chart to be tolerant.

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