[lbo-talk] Military industrial complex?

[Eubulides]

On 10/14/2011 08:14 AM, // ravi wrote:
>
> At least the techies among you have already read Steve Yegge’s rant about Amazon, which is quite a ranty rant, even compared to Yegge’s standards, and halfway through it, is this bit:
>
>> Bezos assigned a couple of Chief Bulldogs to oversee the effort and ensure forward progress, headed up by Uber-Chief Bear Bulldog Rick Dalzell. Rick is an ex-Armgy Ranger, West Point Academy graduate, ex-boxer, ex-Chief Torturer slash CIO at Wal*Mart, and is a big genial scary man who used the word "hardened interface" a lot. Rick was a walking, talking hardened interface himself, so needless to say, everyone made LOTS of forward progress and made sure Rick knew about it.
>
> I see this a lot - these “elite unit” army types in senior roles in companies. I had previously assumed this was either because the company caters to military/govt and wants people from the inside, or perhaps because the particular guy was just a great techie as well as being a soldier. But perhaps their real value is their unbending discipline and training to impose that on others in a mechanistic way?
>
> Oh, the rant is here: http://steverant.pen.io/.
>
> 	—ravi

=================

A problem that's been around since the East India Company, no?

Interested parties might want to check William McNeill's "The Pursuit of 
Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society since A.D 1000" and "The 
Corporation that changed the World: How the East India Company shaped 
the Modern Multinational" by Nick Robbins for some interesting history.

The problems definitely connect up with the issues in the Gregory Dow 
book mentioned a while back.

Typing military officers + corporate hierarchy into the google will also 
bring a decent harvest.

What to do with all the petty authoritarianism and the collateral 
inefficiencies that are contemporary capitalism?