Cogs and Hamsters

...so most people have experienced some degree of frustration from the fact that the people working in big company are interchangeable cogs and that their individuality doesn't matter to the company. Well, it turns out this isn't just a side affect. I'm reading Rich Dad's Guide to Investing, and the book is talking about building a business as a road to making money. It points out that any dependence on the individuality of any employee undermines the entire idea. The goal is to create a set of systems that make the business go, like a machine, with as little dependence on the individual characteristics of any one employee as possible. So it's like you're trying to create this giant, mechanical thing with all these specialized hamster wheels. As long as the hamster in wheel 24601 knows accounting, and the hamster in wheel 78704 knows manufacturing, etc, etc, the system will run and produce money (and, preferably, happy customers.) McDonalds is a perfect example. It's a monolithic business system feeding millions (for better or worse, go see Super Size Me) making billions for the shareholders, and it's run by *teenagers*. So when you sell the business, what you're really selling is the system of hamster wheels, not the people in it. In the case of, say, a franchise, you're simply buying the system, then hiring individual cogs to fill it.

So, you're *not* just imagining it. People *are* creating huge, soulless machines that take the labor of the masses and convert them into profits for the rich. It's not an accident, it's by design. It doesn't mean that there's no ethical use of the idea, but it definitely means your dealing with something that's designed to be inherently unappreciative of human individuality, and it's hard to care about the Collective when the Collective doesn't care about you.