Yes, it's "feudalism", but it's a specific part of feudalism, that deserves to be called out separately—the idea that "everything must flow" through the org chart in a literal sense, with each node on the org-chart entirely encapsulating everything below it on the chart from the view of those above, such that the knight's liege-lord really doesn't know how they're getting the job done, just that they are or aren't; and has no actual capacity to micro-manage the HR decisions of the knight, with the lord's only controls on their knight being to change their budget, or to fire them.
In a way, it's less like what we're doing today in bigcorps, and more like what you get on the other end, when everyone is an individual, atomized contractor selling their services to everyone else. You can't see "through" a contractor-client relationship to the contractor's employees and/or subcontractors; you can only fire the contractor, or renegotiate their rate.
IMHO, while this paradigm might seem inefficient in ways, it still seems like a better "organizational architecture" than managerialism. Perhaps because, given the encapsulation, a punishment coming from your boss's boss can never "run downhill" to end up falling on you (though, nor can a reward); instead, each node on the org-chart can only rewrd/punish their direct report. At some point someone on the org-chart claims ultimate responsibility for getting the job done; and even if it came down to you, three nodes lower, failing to do it, it would still be their head, because it's their promise to their liege-lord.
Such a paradigm is inconvenient, in the sense that if your boss is fired, that means that you're out of a job—you were being paid, effectively, out of your boss's salary. But it's also convenient, in the sense that you can just apply for a job with another part of the company (really, apply to another superior to work for them), and there won't be any institutional bias (e.g. records of a "Performance Improvement Plan" against you because of a bad previous boss's poisonous office-politicking, only the personal biases of the boss's direct friends, who you can just avoid.)
In my view a larger version of that is the way the military is setup in the US. Lots of duplication. Every branch has planes and when they try to coordinate on large projects you get the F-22 project where every branch has demands that make the project take longer, more expensive and, with lots more compromises.
But yeah, the military's a good example of taking the worst of both worlds there.
In a way working at Google is like that. If your project doesn't have "impact" your manager isn't promoted and nobody in the team is.
And engineers are generally free to change team.
It does have some inconvenients and it doesn't remove politics.
A friend of mine also recognized it in this 2015 article (see footnote 1): https://reasonandliberty.com/articles/obamacare
But I really like "soviet capitalism", as it points at a key contradiction. Somehow, fans of capitalism, which maximizes surplus value by freeing individuals to make economically rational choices, rarely seem to notice that large corporations never make use of the mechanisms of capitalism, instead relying on central planning. And like the soviet era, corporate central planners often do things that are economically irrational, but useful to their careers and their quality of life.
Is that clearer?
My goal was to make a particular point about an unresolved conflict in managerialist ideology. If you're still having trouble understanding the point, feel free to ask specific questions, or to try restating the point in your own terms. But if you're mainly JAQing as an argumentative technique rather than seeking to understand, then I think we're done here.
First, you describe a "key contradiction" that the capitalist economy as a whole would operate differently from a corporation. But it's unnecessarily reductive to demand such consistency. Ideologically a corporation is closer to an individual actor than to the overarching economic system imposed by government. In practice corporations grow from a single individual to huge conglomerates on the merits of their market performance, not from threat of violence, monopoly on employment, or other political power.
Second, you claim, "large corporations never make use of the mechanisms of capitalism, instead relying on central planning," which is a bold claim requiring evidence. There is tons of autonomy granted across the levels of a corporation, and a long history of conglomerates and franchises that cover the gamut of such regimes. If all of these are "central planning" then you need to explain what the alternative would be, otherwise its just a hand-wavy no-true-scotsman claim that can't be meaningfully examined or discussed.
You are incorrect, when you start getting into nuances. When you have the govt doing central planning, there is no way to get rid of them when they under perform. When people voluntarily form central planning organizational structures, they are eliminated by the free market if they under perform.
The difference between communism/capitalism is fundamentally of philosophy not of structure. In the former it's coerced co-operation (which almost always results in central planning) and the in the latter it is voluntary co-operation( there will be many organizational structures and some may have a central planning)
How old are you? (no I didn't make a mistake when I asked you that question)
All Democratic governments include a way to do exactly that - by definition. There's room for debate over how effective it actually is at removing underperformers compared to the free market, but saying it has no way to get rid of them is just untrue.
In a democratic government, you're not electing the central planners. In the american government, you're not electing any of the millions of three-letter agencies that rule your life. You hire a president, and he may or may not do something, who knows.
At least a market has some contact with a ground truth of bankruptcy. If there were several competing EPA's competing for money on the basis of their efficacy, that might be interesting.
You are either young and naive, or an idiot. Sorry, name calling is the only way to call out ignorance. Things simply don't work the way you think it does. In theory 'democracy' promises you a lot of things, but you get very little. Most democracies for most part are sophisticated form of oligarchy where the masses are essentially fed what to think, by propaganda, 'debates' etc.
Crossing into making an argument personal is especially not ok, and we have had to ask you about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21797575.
The difference between classes or tribes is their value system. The more you rationalize why your tribe is superior, the less chance you will ever be able to switch to another. So ask yourself if you really want to feel superior, or to prove yourself?
Would you care to show me where you think I claimed 100% of managers have MBAs?
> ask yourself if you really want to feel superior, or to prove yourself?
Neither. There are more things, Horatio.
You wrote it was a "vital qualifier" to join the managerial class. You didn't 100% commit to saying it was necessary, but without that implication, I don't think you have really said anything.
You may find the term "managerialism" handy. It's the belief that managers and execs are the central story of a company, that everything must flow through them, especially key decisions. And of course, that as the special people, they deserve outsized rewards. It's the dominant philosophy of US business, and although it seems eternal to us, it was invented in the 1950s and 1960s, along with the MBA that became a vital qualifier to join the managerial class. And it is definitely a class system; note who flies in "business class", for example.
It took me a long time to be able to see it, but once I did I see it all over the place. It was sort of the same struggle when I learned functional programming: I had never really thought about the rest of programming, its philosophy and value system. I was soaking in it, so I didn't need to.
The book that got me going was "Confronting Managerialism", but I'm sure there's a fair bit more out there these days: https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-Ec...