The Mush Part 2
Big Evil Inc.!
Oh boy, these are my favorite. I have an irrational love of talking about The Mush, and hope to continue digging into this topic a few times a year. Maybe our kids can find a way to unravel it. Until then, let’s keep talking and thinking!
- JC
I think pretty much everything that gets “Big” (with a capital B) ends up losing all it’s goodness over time.
So, what exactly is “Big”?
When I refer to Big, I’m thinking of Big Pharma, Big Tech, organized religion, and the US Govt. That kind of big. The amount of scale that allows a group to impact not millions, but tens of millions of lives with single decisions.
So why would that happen? My going theory has two parts, so bear with me please.
First, I think something happens when true scale is achieved. When the thing itself has become too large and widespread for even a few dozen people to properly manage it. It takes on a life and mission of its own, and is no longer made up of people, but workers slaving away in search of a lost purpose.
Dramatic? Absolutely, you know me by now… But, I don’t think it’s inaccurate.
At the startup stage, a company is basically just the exciting marriage of its founder, and a new idea. It grows to become a vision or purpose, led by a group of people. After that, it becomes a powerful coalition of employees, suppliers, managers, and products all marching in the same direction. In the final days of its life, it becomes Big Mush. After that, they either re-brand in a desperate attempt to keep sucking cash out of the thing, or they go bankrupt and get swallowed by a PE firm.
Secondly, size attracts bureaucratic schemers. The people who are always looking for ways to insert themselves into success without actually creating something of their own are drawn to Big organizations nonstop. They come in, take on an “advisory role”, implement a couple of new protocols that sound nice, but actually just slow everyone else down, and kick up their feet in the corner office.
See, bureaucrats love power, and scale creates power. The ability to step into a role where you can immediately take control of resources, and direct them to your own goals is just too tempting for those people. They can’t help it. The term “grifter” is perfect in this case.
So, the pattern goes something like this…
Idea > Company > Corporation > Scale > Evil
And maybe “evil” is too strong of a word, maybe it’s just that they’ve lost their way, and started hanging out with the wrong kids at the skate park.
I can’t help but wonder if it’s just a natural, inescapable cycle. Like, is there any possible way to maintain the love and passion of a startup, at +$1bb annual revenue?? I doubt it, but maybe. It’s literally just too much money for any one person to resist the urge to mess with the whole thing. At the end of the day money is just an efficiency measurement of the overall economic engine (of a company, person, or state/country).
Why else has Apple (random example) invented nothing new since, *checks notes*, 2014(???) with the smartwatch? Like many of the other Fortune 500 companies, they’re a giant bloated monstrosity focused on delivering shareholder value, customer be damned.
If you follow me on IG you may have seen my rant from trying to buy a new phone a month or so ago.
I learned about a new kind of Mush that kinda sent me over the edge. Did you know that the big 3-4 telecom providers literally will not sell you a phone?? As of this writing, you’re *allowed* to “purchase” one on a payment plan, then after 31 days you are then *allowed* to pay off the rest of it.
Excuse my French, but what the hell kind of dumbass business model is that?? “Screw the customer, who cares about them? We just need to sucker as many poor people in as possible, by convincing them they can afford a $1,200 iPhone, and lock them into a debt contract for the next 3 years. Oh, and after that we’ll just give them a new one and load them up with more contractual debt!”
Literal. Evil. Mush.
Just let me buy a phone!!
The feedback from many of you was very helpful. “Calm down John, you old fart. Just buy it direct from factory like the rest of us.”
Oops. Oh well, I’ll do it the right way in 7-10 years when I need a new one, assuming we aren’t communicating telepathically through our Neuralinks by then.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is, it feels weird that we aren’t just a tiny bit more outraged at how the Big companies bully the customer into conforming to their crappy business plan. We’ve gotten so away from our capitalist ideals, the customer is no longer right, and the suppliers of goods/services have gotten so massive that there are no viable alternatives to their products, without putting yourself at an enormous disadvantage to the rest of society. In the event an upstart comes in to change the status quo, you can bet they’ll get gobbled up within a few years. After all, who wouldn’t love to say they raised a company from the ground and made a $50mm exit? The suppliers have SO much power that they can force entire markets to accept their Mush without any meaningful pushback. If the regulators push, they’re lobbied and brother-in-lawed into oblivion, and the beautiful machine chugs on.
No idea how to solve it, but we should sure as hell be aware that it’s happening, and spread that awareness as far as possible. Hopefully in the future we’ll have a way to hold them accountable, and bring the focus back to the good folks that just want decent products at a fair market price. I suspect social media and deregulation would help, but it’ll take more than a few libertarian influencers and bitcoin bros to make meaningful change.
Sorry for beating my favorite dead horse (it’s just dust and bones at this point), but it’s 100% happening in the auto industry too. They are absolutely producing garbage on purpose, and for some reason saying that it’s “what the people want”.
There was a Road and Track clickbait article a few months ago about how Mazda “wants” to build a 6-cylinder, RWD sedan (which would kill, I think), but they don’t think anyone would buy it.
I can’t even begin to speculate how they come to these conclusions, but I can tell you definitively that the consumer doesn’t want any these little crossover SUVs full of boring engines and plastic parts. They buy them because…
They’ve been lied to by silly publications like Consumer Reports about things like safety. Newsflash folks, there aren’t really any “unsafe” modern cars (Besides Jeeps, they like to implode), just unsafe drivers.
They’re extremely cost sensitive, and are forced to get one for their college age kid because it’s “the most car for the money”, and life is unbelievably expensive these days.
If automakers would build the infrastructure to produce cool stuff, instead of mediocre nonsense, cool stuff would sell just as well if not better than the Mush they currently push out year after year. As an added benefit, people would be happier and more inspired by their cool stuff, and we could all continue to improve upon and push things forward even more!
So what’s causing it? Well, my conspiracy brain says it’s a concentrated effort by the public sector to enforce some crazy DEI initiatives. My rational side says it’s probably like 100 different factors all at once, and is a fairly innocent phenomenon.
Nobody wants a mini crossover SUV with a silly lil hybrid engine. People want nice sedans, big cars/trucks (Tahoes), and an array of sports cars (from roadsters like the Miata to the Corvette), that’s about it.
So, here we go.
Scale isn’t evil, size isn’t evil, 99.99% of humans aren’t evil. Evil is a silly hyperbole that people like me use for effect in their writing. The Mush isn’t even evil, despite it being one of the more unfortunate outcomes of modern society.
When things get Big, they gain Scale. Scale creates power and leverage. Bad, lazy people love to abuse power and leverage. Big companies aren’t evil, they just tend to get co-opted by bad, lazy people.
Entrepreneurs and hard workers drive our world forward, and innovation is the lifeblood of our economy, which remains the greatest most powerful on the planet.
There’s no way for me to return the love and passion to Big Evil Inc., but I sure as hell will try to bring it every day to the things I do. I hope you’ll join me by doing the same, let’s un-Mush things just a little.