Articles of Confederation Anyone?

The phrase “too big to fail” has become a well known part of the American lexicon since Obama took office, and this ill-informed and destructive concept has been readily embraced by corporate entities and politicians alike, resulting in stunning failures and calls for bigger government, sort of as the ultimate poster boy for the “too big to fail” mentality.

Steven Yates casts his eye on the subject of too big to fail in a piece at the American Daily Herald titled Who Was Leopold Kohr?, which he was spurred to write after reading a Guardian article last September titled This economic collapse is a ‘crisis of bigness’ which also notes Leopold Kohr, the author of Breakdown of Nations.

Kohr, who I am not really familiar with, allegedly “warned 50 years ago that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded,” and, indeed, the current “gigantist global system” does give the appearance of impending implosion.  Even though I am unfamiliar with Kohr, Yates, in concluding his informative piece on Kohr, succinctly paraphrases why “too big to fail” is a fatal mentality.

Read Breakdown of Nations today, and we come to see why we have a largely unresponsive political system, and why so many of our institutions seem mismanaged—private corporations as well as government agencies. They are too big! Bigness begets alienation and faceless bureaucracy, but more importantly, it begets more bigness: organizations grow larger through desperate attempts to correct for, or at least manage, the dysfunction their present level of bigness has generated. This is as true of leviathan corporations as it is of overextended, expansionist governments. (bold by ed.)

Articles of Confederation anyone?

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/23 at 10:06 AM

  1. Bigness begets alienation and faceless bureaucracy
    ================
    Right.
    Every call AT&T to fix a problem with your cell service? Me too, but never again. You see, they work for ME, or not, and I chose not last year. See, I don’t have time for their bigness or their silly phone games, and their lack of accountability for billing errors. As far as I’m concerned AT&T’s bigness caused them to fail for me and the rest is history. If more people prioritized their life as I did these too big to fail companies would fail in short order and all of us would be better off for it. I ain’t saying I’m the model to follow but the premise is. Life’s too short and all that….

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/23  at  04:38 PM

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Next entry: It's More Mainstream Than You Think

Previous entry: SOPA and A Variation on "Don Henley Must Die"

<< Back to main