EP 869 Is Anyone in Charge and Accountable Anymore?

 Isn’t it great when you deal with a company where the principal is the owner who will take full responsibility for the actions of the company’s employees?  How rare is that?  Well, according to our guest, it is getting rarer by the day as systems are built to insulate humans from ever having to claim direct responsibility for any of the indignities you may face in your dealing with companies and politicians.  Dan Davies, author of “The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions and How the World Lost Its Mind,” describes how human decision-making has often been replaced by a literal algorithm and it has allowed us to have crime without criminals.  No one, for example, went to prison following the financial meltdown in 2009 because we replaced individual responsibility with ‘criminogenic organizations’ designed to ensure that crimes would be committed, and no one would pay the price.  Private equity deal-making, which we have reported on previously, offers guilt free destruction of whole industries.  Impress your friends when you explain to them what an ‘accountability sink’ is after listening to this podcast.

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