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by dirtybirdnj 917 days ago
> At what point is a company too large to effectively serve the public interest?

I use the term "maxium tribe size" to describe the human capability (or incapability) of extending compassion and understanding to a group. Companies don't fail. People fail within companies. People fail other people and hide behind "limited liability" and the sham that is corporate personhood.

Every person has a different MaxT. You may not feel the pain of violating this constraint yourself, but lots of people under you will suffer. You may actually feel GREAT, look at all the respect I have gained! I can make things happen, people listen to me... or now I can just ignore them...

You don't care because you are blinded by success.

Money and power are the worst poisons this world offers. It turns otherwise intelligent and caring people into awful piles of human effluence. It is IMPOSSIBLE to gain sufficient power to drive a company and not lose your sense of humanity. The idea that you will not violate your maximum tribe size in this exercise is insulting. You will quickly be insulated from the consequences of your actions, and no matter how depraved your behavior there will be a line of people congratulating and cheering you on because they desperately want to be the next person in line to enjoy the ride you are on.

The people driving enshittification are not human. They may share our genes but they are not part of our society or species anymore.

1 comments

The sociologist's term for this is Dunbar's number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

It's about ~150 with some variance between individuals.

I'm developing this theory for a while now that we should break all corporations that are bigger than Dunbar's number: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641