"No, Virginia, ..." [Re: Nominet's handing of EGM voting data to a market research agency, Savanta]
> Is this the common template for how things are going to be in this country from now on? [...] I know it was always like this in some respects, but it's become turbo charged and in-your-face contemptuous.
No, it's always been like this.
What's changed is _you_ : you're getting older and the sheer weight of experience of the real world is overwhelming what you've been taught the world is like.
See, as kids, we're fed a whole pack of fictions to make the world seem more fun or less scary. But as time goes on, hard facts accumulate until they can no longer be denied, and they crack thru another layer of the scales on your eyes and another treasured myth crumbles away.
First the Easter Bunny dies, then Santa Claus, and then the simple happy childish belief that if you set up a structure to handle something useful or desirable then people will engage with that and do their job ongoingly in a sensible and honest fashion --as opposed to any such structure being progressively infested by parasites then wholly hijacked-- dies too.
Because every practical real-world experience you have, unremittingly shows instead every such structure being progressively infested by parasites then wholly hijacked.
Everywhere you look, from the smallest most trivial social club to the largest of whole country and multi-country systems/organisations. From the local footy club's social committee, to corporations, to charities, to the civil service, to the UN. All become over time progressively infested by parasites working the system for their own purposes, and completely hijacked if they can reach critical mass internally or can insulate the system from practical external intervention or even inspection. (Incidentally, moves to create such insulations are major red flags re parasites.)
Not new; go back as far as you like and you'll see the same pattern.
The defence is to create the system's rules/structure for 2 completely different outcomes/goals -- 2 sets of rules/structure, if you like. One is the obvious one, the straightforward one, which everyone automatically does: what needs to be in place to get the job done -- task-focus. One is almost never done: what needs to be in place to STOP things being done -- antihijacking-focus.
And very often strengthening the latter will require that you accept a less-good, sub-optimal, possibly even unsatisfactory, result for the former.
Example of different weighting/balance between the competing goals: benevolent dictator vs democracy. The latter is a piece of shit compared to the former in terms of getting things done and done well, but the former always goes horribly wrong. Example: totalitarianism (eg communism, real-world socialism) vs capitalism. Again, the latter has all sorts of problems but staggers along moderately well, whereas the former always starts well then goes horribly wrong. A lot of the "somehow"-longstanding structures around you that make you grind your teeth at their dysfunctions, if you look closer you'll realise that the suboptimalities creating those dysfunctions are also stymieing the worst effects of parasitism. Which is why they've survived so long.
Note that the standard corporate structure has very weak defences against determined parasites. Very quickly, in fact, you're left with nothing but the nuclear option: blowing up the Board. But then also needing to create a new Board which immediately blows up ~all the senior management -- parasites flock together, and unless a post-nuclear new Board takes this executive action and quickly, the end result will be: essentially no change, just a pause, brief setback, in the parasite infestation. Just a bobble in the process.
Seen it happen too many times...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
