MemeMachineGo!

Charlie Stross talks happy about running a country as a corporation .

In general, most corporations are internally constituted as perfect Stalinist dictatorships, directed from the center by managers who are free to do anything as long as it furthers their mission. There is an almost total lack of accountability from the employees, except where it may be imposed by external regulatory authorities. The corporate model is as profoundly anti-democratic a system as can be imagined, but we put up with it because it has the saving grace that it exists as a little island within a larger society. Corporations have a strictly limited scope for oppression.

The problem I’m noticing is people with the mind-set of corporate upper management trying to run a country as if it is a corporation. Dissent is suppressed, all actions must be goal-oriented, policy is dictated unilaterally from the centre and collateral damage is ignored. The emphasis on appearances that typifies the current administration is simply an old ingrained habit from operating within the constraints of a broader context (of a corporation in a market regulated by a bigger entity); the contempt displayed for dissenting viewpoints is characteristic of the worst excesses of a corporate monopoly.

Rumsfeld is a corporate manager. Bush is, too. So is Cheney. It all seems to be of a piece with the willingness to use any means to get results, however evil, the obsession with meeting goals regardless of colateral damage, the determination to spin criticism as subversion or treason, and so on. They think they’re running America, Inc., may the devil take the hind-most, and society can look after itself. In this kind of climate, is it any surprise that low-level employees try to shape up to the perceived expectations of their masters and deliver results by any means necessary, however dehumanizing or monstrous? And is it any surprise that they refuse to be held to account by anyone except their shareholders? (And I’m not talking about Congress here.)