The hollow corporation: Economic consequence quotage.

/ Chris Gale

There is a lot of discussion about diversity. People look at skin colour, or whom you say you are sleeping with: they try to appease the social justice petunias. But they miss the main thing. Most corporations don’t need that many people: they don’t need many managers, and their workforce is hollow.

A few people in the centre control a lot of people hired for the task. What matters is your skills. For example, Silicon Valley is nondiverse. If you are lazy, or are not at least two standard deviations above the mean in mathematical talent, apply not.

If you cannot handle the socially inept and/or mathematically bright (who are often the same person) do not apply.

And the proportion of women who meet those criteria are few. . Without the petunias policing things, the workforce would be male nerds. Jewish, Korean, Southern Chinese and Southern Indian in particular.

From all over the world, from Brazil and Canada, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Norway, Egypt, fellow humans come to Silicon Valley to work, create, succeed. And they do. Silicon Valley is extremely diverse.

Of course, the iPhone wasn’t created because of diversity. Nor was Google. Nor Facebook, nor the computer chip, nor the touchscreen. They were created because a small band of super-smart people who worked very hard to create something better than existed before.

Wait. It gets better.

Silicon Valley doesn’t just create greatness, it’s probably the most open, welcoming, meritocratic-based region on the planet. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that disproportionately more Chinese, Indians, and LGBQT succeed in Silicon Valley than just about any place in America. Guess what? Everyone earned their job because of their big brains and ability to contribute.

Is that you?

Then come here! It’s an amazingly inclusive place.

But be sure to bring your computer science degree, your engineering degree, your proven set of accomplishments. Be sure you are prepared to sacrifice “fun” for long hours and hard work. Offer proof of how well you did in school, in math, in physics. These matter dearly as they are fundamental to what makes Silicon Valley succeed.

Silicon Valley is not perfect. It’s certainly no utopia. But if you aren’t able to make it here, it’s almost certainly not because of any bias. Rather, on your refusal to put in the hard work in the hard classes, and to accept all the failures that happen before you achieve any amazing success.

The trouble is that this group is small. About two percent are two standard deviations above the mean — the curve is not a perfect Normal distribution, but skews left — and many of those people are just not interested in applied numerical methods or programming.

The hollow corporation contracts everything else out. If you are not Nerd, you are not needed. And that is no way to run a society.

White Middle Americans express heavy mistrust of every institution in American society: not only government, but corporations, unions, even the political party they typically vote for—the Republican Party of Romney, Ryan, and McConnell, which they despise as a sad crew of weaklings and sellouts. They are pissed off. And when Donald Trump came along, they were the people who told the pollsters, “That’s my guy.”

They aren’t necessarily superconservative. They often don’t think in ideological terms at all. But they do strongly feel that life in this country used to be better for people like them—and they want that older country back.

You hear from people like them in many other democratic countries too. Across Europe, populist parties are delivering a message that combines defense of the welfare state with skepticism about immigration; that denounces the corruption of parliamentary democracy and also the risks of global capitalism. Some of these parties have a leftish flavor, like Italy’s Five Star Movement. Some are rooted to the right of center, like the U.K. Independence Party. Some descend from neofascists, like France’s National Front. Others trace their DNA to Communist parties, like Slovakia’s governing Direction–Social Democracy.

These populists seek to defend what the French call “acquired rights”—health care, pensions, and other programs that benefit older people—against bankers and technocrats who endlessly demand austerity; against migrants who make new claims and challenge accustomed ways; against a globalized market that depresses wages and benefits. In the United States, they lean Republican because they fear the Democrats want to take from them and redistribute to Americans who are newer, poorer, and in their view less deserving—to “spread the wealth around,” in candidate Barack Obama’s words to “Joe the Plumber” back in 2008. Yet they have come to fear more and more strongly that their party does not have their best interests at heart.

If I read the tea leaves correctly, times are getting tougher. Our society is distributed, international and global. Our corporations are hollow, relying on a distributed network of contributors.

This is helpful for people like me: I can communicate with fellow authors in projects in the UK, Canada, USA and Australia. Indeed I do: there are some projects I have worked on for years and I have never met my editors or fellow authors. But the entire system is as vulnerable as fine glass, being shipped to Siberia.

This is where things get difficult. For size (population) and shape (geography) matters. One size does not fit all. If I can give a personal example.

When the mother of the children and I married, we bought a house, deliberately (on my part) in one of the small boroughs that then constituted Auckland. Not Auckland City: it was grand: it had a big office block, it made big gestures and built big projects. I cared (and still care) not a whit for these things. I wanted the drains and sewage to work and the rubbish to be picked up. Then… for efficiencies sake… the local government was reformed and all the small boroughs were merged into four cities. My rates went up, the amount of bureaux increased, and my rates increased further. I noticed there were now four-colour pamphlets delivered, which I simply put in the trash.

Then the four cities in Auckland merged (about the time I left). There is even more bureaux, multiple consultation groups one must appease, and the rates have skyrocketed. I miss the old Mt Albert Borough Council.

The city as a corporation no longer interacts with the local communities. It is professionals marketing their solutions to their “customers”. Who are compelled to pay them, and do not want the message.

What can we do? Firstly listen to practitioners: those who, as Taleb says, have “skin in the game”.

Secondly, be local. Support local business, people you know.

Thirdly, keep those who filter by ideology from power and control. Including in your organization: avoid hiring them. Taleb talked about sacking anyone with an economics degree: Spartacus says one should sack any Social Justice Petunias. Both are correct.

And Fourthly, understand that redundancy has a a virtue. Two is one, and one is none. To say it differently, have backups: of data, of employment, of suppliers. So if you are disemployed or disassociated by the fragile you increase your efficiency and success.

The elite is Fragile.

Fragile things break

Do not be them, or be like them.