For me there is no right answer. Maybe the engineer should have been more pushy with what things not to add. Maybe the founder entrepreneur should have been realistic. Maybe sales should have not had to promise things that were not developed yet. But to each of those there is a counter-argument of why that needed to be done in that moment.

Take it as a mental exercise.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48772388

Points: 1401

# Comments: 411

That sounds like a pretty sensible reason to not trust someone no? Politicians don't make the most sensible decisions at a time, but the ones were if they were to not work wouldn't be blamed on them.

Let's say there is an attack on Google or [insert random engineer name working for belgian goverment] and thousands of emails from politicians were leaked. The public outcry would be wildly different. In the case of google they would talk about how can a company hold so much sensitive data and power blah blah blah. In the case of random engineer much of the blame would be on the politician on why did they rely on a random person having access to all emails and sensitive information instead of a reliable company like google.

Sometimes the most popular answer is the best one because if you are wrong then everyone is wrong too.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47805844

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Just to expand on this really interesting topic. That's where the common pitfall on planned economy begins. Because to some degree a free market can withstand some amount of regulation; after all, external agents trying to manipulate the market are just that, agents in the market. As long as there are other autonomous agents intervening the market will keep functioning as it was. So the bureaucrat has both the incentive and the justification to expand the intervention. In other words, his economical plan didn't work because it was not intervened enough and just if they intervene in this extra thing it will work for sure. That loop continues until the market is 100% intervened, and at that point it requires such a enormous structure of power and control that makes it difficult to fight it (clientelist networks, repressive states, etc).

On a micro scale it is possible, and sometimes favorable, to intervene. On a macro scale to intervene economically becomes impossible due to the economic calculation problem. It is widely accepted in modern economics that the unit of maximum extent where economical intervention is possible is a business/company/enterprise. Or in sociological terms the maximum unit is the family. Anything broader than that and the compound effect of the economic calculation problem becomes apparent and inefficiencies accumulate. Autonomous decentralized mechanisms (like a free market) are the only solution to it, but not the most optimal.