Early Agile people had a lot of contempt for Taylor and Taylorism. The whole point of the Agile Manifesto [1] was rebelling against a top-down system of blindly imposed, mechanistic "ideal" process, putting power back in the hands of workers.

I will of course grant that the existing system of top-down control entirely won the war. The main effect of the Agile movement at most places was fancy new labels on the same terrible dynamics. These days processes and tools (coughjiracough) have won out over individuals and interactions. But let's try to remember that intent was different.

[1] https://agilemanifesto.org/ and also read the principles https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

As I’ve gotten older, it’s hard to fight the cynicism I feel anytime someone touts a new process or technology whose main feature is empowerment. I now always think “Who will centralize this? How will they do it? What are their motives?”

Nothing but the opposites of AM are being implemented, as taught by consultants. Interesting to note as fake agility gained traction, budgets and power concentrated to top leadership only.

To be fair though, not sure how to turn a tanker without centralized controls.

Yup. You've put your finger on what I think is one of the big mistakes of the Agile movement. I wrote about it some a decade ago. [1] Early on it was a lot of well-meaning idealists. I'm not sure if people failed to imagine it becoming the dominant paradigm or if they weren't sufficiently cynical about what would happen once it did.

I'm honestly not sure if they could have avoided the current outcome. It was always a pretty loose coalition. But I think trademarking Agile and setting down some strong minimum standards could have helped. But even that might have been washed away by Scrum's "certifying" anybody who could fog a mirror and the attendant revenue for people whose personal interest was in watering things down.

[1] http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how...

And practically, Agile removed all individual autonomy, decision making and accountability entirely. And replaced boss by complicated social process in which people get to constantly fight for dominance in back-handed ways.

I don't think that's true. Places that value individual and team autonomy can get that using agile techniques. That's certainly been my experience. Places that didn't value individual autonomy also got what they wanted using Agile™.

Sportspersons? Infuriating language? Pot meet kettle.

You got me there. Seems like effect of being mindful of language while updating my git branches from 'master' to 'main'