The 2010 IG Nobel Prize in Management was awarded to Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. They used a computer model to confirm that when you promote people based on competence (i.e. until they stop displaying competence), you are more likely to end up with a hierarchy largely lead by people who do not display competence. This is also known as the Peter Principle.
Should we likewise expect science to produce better theories, you might ask, if we promoted theories at random, instead of based upon each theory's competence? Good question! Unlike managers, scientific theories do not climb a ladder--they either destroy all competitors or are destroyed themselves. The Peter Principle does not raise doubts about the competence of the last man standing--that person stops getting promoted, not because he/she stopped exhibiting competence, but because there was no higher position to which he/she possibly could be promoted. Thus, the Peter Principle does not raise doubts about science.
Unlike theories, however, humans are more effective when working together, recruiting their competitors rather than completely destroying them. Furthermore, while the best theories can be used everywhere, even the most competent human has limited capacity, and therefore must delegate. Capitalism nevertheless copies something from the way theories compete: like theories, new businesses aim to destroy competing businesses. The fragility of market leadership allows entrepreneurs to skip the corporate ladder, to avoid waiting for rungs to open-up. One might wonder whether this allows capitalism to circumvent the Peter Principle.
In socialism, by contrast, the only way to crush the old regime and fast-track greater competence into positions of power is through politics. In some ways, this sounds equivalent to capitalism--tricking voters isn't much worse than addicting consumers--but perhaps capitalistic success rest on a wider range of competences. New businesses can be created to leverage superior skills of science, art, engineering, socializing, beauty, foreign cultures, litigation, etc.--even politics. Socialistic economies would instead be dominated by political skills, and, because of the Peter Principle, non-political competences would be relatively lacking where most needed.
On the other hand, we don't expect the world to be that bad. We expect scientific advance to change the world, even if no competent entrepreneur or politician champions that advance. We expect our response to the theory of global warming, for example, to be settled by experiments, not by the competence of green start-ups or Al Gore. Likewise, Justin Bieber confirmed our expectation that good music can break-out even before being endorsed by businesses and politicians. In other words, we expect to see an economic system of a third kind, one in which ideas compete against ideas, and winning ideas constrain competition among humans. We expect the Peter Principle to be resolved because the competition for power among humans becomes meaningless--truth and goodness are recognized on their own merits, and they, rather than the people in charge, decide the path of our economy.
This alternative to socialism and capitalism deserves a name. I call it "medicalism", because medical theories are the ideas likely to constrain our economy first. For example, every politician and entrepreneur must ultimately succumb to the evidence that smoking causes cancer. None can be competent enough to champion smoking. I expect similar research to overwhelm our economy faster and faster as the Internet makes research more accessible. Today smokers face fees (at least in terms of insurance premiums), and I expect similar fees to arise for other health inefficiencies, more and more, until our lives become pretty much ruled by medical research (instead of by corporations or political parties).
Medicalism is a better answer to the Peter Principle because it is far less costly to have a theory, rather than a corporation or political party, supplanted. Supplanting a corporation or political party entails putting many people out of work, at least some of which are bound to be scarred by the experience. In comparison, rolling-out the next round of medical research might be as subtle as rolling-out an operating system security update. Moreover, as it becomes clear that climbing the corporate ladder does not bring power, promotions may be based less upon competence than upon health factors--something approaching the randomization strategy that performed best for Pluchino, Rapisarda, and Garofalo.
No comments:
Post a Comment