this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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That surely changed how I look at things, actually
This reminds me of a book called The People's Republic of Wal-Mart. In particular this excerpt about when SEARS decided to run its internal operations as a competitive free market is pretty eye-opening
(TLDR
)
I think
had an episode about SEARS: essentially they had departments competing with each other with advertising as the reward. Power tools ended up as the cover for the Mother’s Day newspaper insert.
Sears aka "Internal contradictions speedrun (Any%)"
"People's Republic of Walmart" is a decent work on this topic
Two folks have already suggested “People’s Republic of Wal-Mart”, which is defintiely what was on my mind when I wrote this post and is a much more fulsome analysis of this specific subject, but if this is interesting to you as an angle for viewing the world, I highly recommend the book “Thinking in Systems: A Primer” by Donella Meadows. It’s not an explicitly socialist text, but it’s a concise and very accessible introductory work on systems thinking, and it puts a lot of the key concepts in place to think about the world in these terms.
Good on you for asking these questions.
More half measure, Walter.