[idle_zealot]

A terribly defeatist attitude. The same could be said about, say, death during childbirth. For hundreds of thousands of years people tried methods of midwifery to ease that process and reduce deaths to little effect. People considered that to be women's lot, an immutable fact of human nature. Then we figured out how to reduce deaths during childbirth to a relatively tiny fraction of all-cause mortality, and that level of care became standard, at least in parts of the world. Why would you be so convinced that systems of organization are unsolvable? Where is your hacker's spirit?

[AnthonyMouse]

We have a system for improving organizations. Competition.

The actual problem is that our system for preserving competition is insufficiently effective.

[account42]

Competition on its own is a very bad system for improving organizations as is selects for the most ruthless and underhanded, not the best for society. Unless you can 100% ensure that companies don't externalize their costs then the company that learns how to will win the competition game.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Competition on its own is a very bad system for improving organizations as is selects for the most ruthless and underhanded, not the best for society.

If a company is ruthlessly screwing you but you have 50 other viable alternatives, nothing is forcing you to continue using them, which is a disadvantage for them, not an advantage.

If a company is lying to you, there are already laws against that, and on top of that actual competition means you also get to stop doing business with them.

Which companies screw people the most, the ones with limited competition (Comcast, Microsoft, Boeing) or the ones with lots of competition (Costco, Framework, IKEA)?