Reimagining Capitalism

What Hacker News says

1. daheleOct 2020
   "Reimagining Capitalism" by Rebecca Henderson is an eye-opening book that outlines very clearly defined steps that would force corporations to take more social responsibility.

   Here's my take on the book:

   Capitalism at its best works wonderfully, but the checks and balances that are needed for capitalism to work for the good of society are broken. Most countries across the world do not have a truly free press or even semi-functional democracy. We're hurtling towards a climate disaster, with no signs of slowing down, as well as facing massive global inequality.

   Corporations are succeeding at present, but the single-minded focus on pleasing shareholders above all else is not sustainable and _will_ come back to hurt everyone, not least corporations. It's a classic case of the prisoner's dilemma - each corporation individually does better by ignoring societal damage, but if all of them do so, the whole system will eventually collapse - whether due to climate disaster, a collapse of buying power from impoverished masses, or a global pandemic.

   Henderson argues that "only the relentless pressure of the free market can drive the kind of transformative innovation at scale [that we require]". The solution is to first fix democracy - get money out of politics, and fix the voting system. A representative government can agree on common goals and implement polices that harness the free market to work towards these agreed goals - eg. a carbon tax. Henderson also puts hope in "collective action" - corporations working together voluntarily, towards common stated goals. I'm a little sceptical of this last part.

   Azeem Azhar (Exponential View) did a great interview with Henderson - https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/reimagining-capitalism-for-a...

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2. KelvinobazzJul 2021
   Architecture is defined not by the knowledge of design, construction, visualization, or model making; but by the knowledge of how they could all be put together to create something beautiful, and unique.

   How things work is just as important as whether they work. An example is the wheeled suitcase. These days, we all live in the comfort of wheels in suitcases that aid movement with ease during travel. But initially, Bernard Sadow had to deal with several objections before Macy's commissioned a line of 'bags that glide' as they were called.

   The problem wasn't whether these wheeled suitcases could work - as we've seen, they do! - but it was the architecture of stations and ports. There were lots of willing porters to transport luggage, the platforms and concourses were short and close to car-friendly drop-off points, lots of staircases, and the airports were small. Hence suitcase manufacturers were slow to adopt.

   As air travel expanded rapidly in the 1970s, airports got bigger, so did the distances travelers had to walk. People began to see more reason to have wheeled suitcases.

   Who knows how different it would have played out, but the change in architecture around airports made the use of suitcases more viable, hence it sold.

   Architectural knowledge has the same impact. It is the knowledge of how things fit together.

   Things might work, but the architecture around them limits their efficiency. Like wheeled suitcases in airports where stairs abound. You can't possibly wheel a suitcase up a flight of stairs.

   We are mostly interested in the components of systems we develop and not in the relationship between them. Now that productivity tools flourish, we jump on the next one supposed to improve your "productivity by 25%." If it doesn't have a proper relationship with other aspects of life, it would reduce the efficiency by more, increase sulkiness, and trigger frustration.

   To make it work, we need to shift some of that focus and target to architectural innovation which changes the components of a system without changing the system itself. Sometimes, tools do not need to be changed, how they work with other parts of the cycle need to change.

   Architectural innovations look at the big picture to figure out the changes that may improve efficiency. Those changes are more like tweaks. Some could be as subtle as putting the bookshelf closer to the workstation.

   In Reimagining capitalism in a world on fire, Rebecca Henderson gives an example of the British Army after creating the tank. They failed to realize how to make it fit into the branches of their Army - Cavalry, and Infantry. Hence the United Kingdom entered the second world war seriously unprepared.

   Having something valuable and not knowing what to do with it is an example of the need for architectural knowledge. So is building something without knowing how it affects other parts of the whole.

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