If you consider the hens in the analogy to be companies (rather than people) I think it holds.

We select for companies that can outcompete other companies rather than ones that contribute the most to the system.

> If you consider the hens in the analogy to be companies (rather than people) I think it holds.

If you consider a fern to be an alligator then it's an example of a deadly reptile.

> We select for companies that can outcompete other companies rather than ones that contribute the most to the system.

I think that the whole point of our system is to ensure that firms which outcompete other firms are the ones which contribute the most total value to the system. Where this isn;t the case (e.g. as with the effects of mass advertising, monopolies &c.) it's a bug, not a feature — and should be adjusted for.

I've played a minor support role in numerous fraud and antitrust lawsuits. Although experts and counsel said a great deal about economic and social welfare, the key evidence involved what people intended and planned (based on documents, email, etc) and what they did (based on business records).

Determining which firms "contribute the most total value to the system" is just too hard to be a useful strategy.

Translating that back to the workplace, I'm more inclined to agree with TFA.

> Determining which firms "contribute the most total value to the system" is just too hard to be a useful strategy.

Yes, it is — which is why we have a free market instead of a central authority trying to determine who contributes the most. Wisdom of crowds & all that.

The companies with the most money that have been a long time can afford to buy their competition, buy influence in government and essentially rest on their laurels. I'd hardly call those companies the best.

Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft etc seem to prove your argument wrong.

Founder CEO's who built the company up from nothing tend to be good. Non founder CEO's are often the worst kind of toxic "fake it till you make it" yes-men who just play politics. The worst part is that they will fill the entirety of upper management with people like themselves. If this didn't happen then there is no way startups could ever compete with the massive resources, domain knowledge and data of incumbents.

It is correct that the economy corrects a bit against this, but the incumbent advantage is so huge that even extremely mismanaged companies can live on for decades, letting these parasites thrive, build competitive resumes and then spread to healthier companies.

Companies are rarely optimizing to give you as many eggs as possible for basically free.

Companies are optimizing for survival and draining their environment of as many resources with as little compensation they can get away with.

Companies are not optimizing for the benifit of the public. benefit for the public is PR and just like billionaire philantropes they would help humanity by magnitudes more if they paid their taxes instead of tossing cookies. No big company on earth would ever limit their usage of ressources just on their own in any significant way. if the resource runs out, they die or find another resource.

This is of course a polemic statement, and reality is more shaded than this. But capitalism can and will get nasty with increasing company size and revenue. They also get better in hiding the nasty, which doesn’t make it any easier