| ▲ | tomp 3 days ago |
| Dictatorships are far more efficient. That’s why military is a dictatorship. That’s why “design by committee” has such a bad rep. The only problem with dictatorships is that you can’t change them. Also countries shouldn’t fail, so an orderly “change of power” process is needed. But you can change companies, and companies can fail. |
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| ▲ | jordanb 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| I've known quite a few people in the military and "efficient" is a word they never use to describe it. |
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| ▲ | tomp 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Do you think it would be better to have a democracy during war? (I mean in individual military units, not in a country overall - note that military is controlled by a civilian democratically elected president) "The enemy's forces are shelling us. Do we want to attack back? Who votes for/against?" | | |
| ▲ | jordanb 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Interestingly I read a history of the French Army mutinies in WWI. One thing that came out of that is lower commanders had a duty to question orders from superiors if they didn't think the goals were achievable. Previously any hint at not following an order was considered "cowardice" and millions of men were led into insane situations with impossible objectives because nobody thought orders from the top could be challenged. | |
| ▲ | threetonesun 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If we're making odd analogies to politics I think most high performing teams tend to end up in the Marxist "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Or instead of the military, think of a basketball team. How do five excellent athletes work together. The coach is not a "dictator", nor is anyone on the team, but they also don't vote on plays. They know what each other is good at and, based on the situation given to them, execute in a way that is most likely to succeed. | | |
| ▲ | tomp 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Marxism is amazing as long as you get to freely choose who to share the spoils with. In fact, this idea is so amazing, we should create a new political philosophy around it! How should we call it? Share-ism? Freedom-ism? Or, maybe just Capital-ism? | | |
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| ▲ | wcarss 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Also, the purpose or end of a country is not to produce some widget at high efficiency for a client, or to rapidly respond to the whims of a despot. It is just a structure around the essential activity of humans simply living their lives. |
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| ▲ | lomase 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| First time I have read in HN that waterfall is good for anything. Have you ever worked in the military? I have and I don't think I have never seen a less efficient projects. They do have very good reasons to do it that way. But my life is not in the hands of my coworkers, using the same tactics has no point. |
