[guard-of-terra]

The described IT painfully reminds me of Soviet-style planned economy. It tries to be the only economy in tow", but as it falls behind due to inefficiency, it tries hard to suppress any other economies that try to arise.

And of course it is done in the name of security! Obviously everyone is trying to steal your secrets and that's why you have to live in outdated and broken environment.

[betterunix]

Actually, people are trying to steal business secrets, and they are doing so all the time. The Chinese are notorious for it, and they target basically any business that has a valuable trade secret, even those that are not military. Even the US has been caught using its intelligence apparatus to pass foreign trade secrets to domestic businesses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy

If I were running a business whose trade secrets were worth more than a few hours of some Eastern European hacker's time, I would be concerned about computer security.

[guard-of-terra]

Security measures prevent you from doing work. You have to find a balance. USSR never found one, but USA did. So there is no longer any USSR.

[mikeash]

A lot of different aspects of companies remind me of this. Usually dictatorial control, rigid hierarchies, policies made with no input from those who will follow them, etc. It's wonderfully ironic that the iconic capitalist organization is often so communist internally.

[unimpressive]

> It's wonderfully ironic that the iconic capitalist organization is often so communist internally.

I'm not an advocate of communism by any means, but I think the word you're looking for is "authoritarian"; maybe "dictatorial".

[mikeash]

I don't think so. That certainly forms a part of it, but there are also the aspects of e.g. senseless policies, large sub-organizations doing nothing useful for no good reason, people engaged in turf wars instead of doing something productive, etc. Authoritarian or dictatorial regimes can be quite efficient if the dictator is good, and I don't really associate those features with authoritarianism, but they are definitely stereotypical (if not necessarily real) communism.

[jfb]

The workers don't own the means of production in a firm. It's not communist; it's Soviet. Show trials; pointless dig-and-fill exercises; five year plans; Potemkin villages; lunatic dictates from unaccountable leaders; and shadow economies.

Wonderful read: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-d...

[mikeash]

Precisely. I'm using "communism" in the American stereotype of communism sense.

[cma]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm