[HN Gopher] Soviet Shoe Factory Principle
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       Soviet Shoe Factory Principle
        
       Author : dccoolgai
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2025-01-29 20:26 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wiki.c2.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wiki.c2.com)
        
       | georgeecollins wrote:
       | What gets measured gets done.
       | 
       | But, Goodhart's Law "When a measure becomes a target it ceases to
       | be a good measure."
        
       | black_13 wrote:
       | The Theranos Startup Model is just the capitalist equivalent of
       | SSFP: Instead of making useless shoes, they make useless software
       | or fake hardware. Instead of meeting state quotas, they hit VC
       | funding goals. Instead of the government propping them up,
       | investors keep them afloat.
       | 
       | 2. Theranos as a "Startup Shoe Factory"
       | 
       | Theranos is the perfect capitalist version of the Soviet Shoe
       | Factory:
       | 
       | Soviet Model == Theranos Model (Capitalist Equivalent) Shoe
       | factories produced small sizes to meet quotas. Theranos faked
       | blood test results to meet investor expectations. Factories cut
       | material costs and quality to meet output goals. Theranos lied
       | about its technology because real innovation was too slow.
       | Central planners rewarded metrics over reality. VC investors
       | rewarded hype over real products. Factories looked productive on
       | paper, even if they made useless products. Theranos looked like a
       | billion-dollar startup, even though it had no working product.
       | The economy was distorted by planned quotas. The startup world is
       | distorted by fake valuations and exit-driven funding.
        
       | cynicalsecurity wrote:
       | The corporate world generally resembles Soviet culture a lot to
       | me.
        
         | watwut wrote:
         | Hierarchical structure with basically powerless bottom, strong
         | blindly believed unaccountable top that is primary rewarded for
         | looking certain way.
         | 
         | There is going ro be a sociological rule that this thing always
         | leads to similar dysfunctions.
        
         | rqtwteye wrote:
         | Totally. I visited East Germany a few times when the wall was
         | still up. The communist planned economies were a lot like
         | corporations: 5 year plans, lots of internal propaganda, power
         | struggles in leadership, total distortion of reality,
         | sociopaths making their way to the top, no acceptance of
         | dissent, metrics that make no sense.
        
         | BurningFrog wrote:
         | Except we have thousands of competing Soviets keeping the
         | system healthy.
        
       | tombert wrote:
       | A similar thing I've noticed in the last ~6 years is in regards
       | to smartphones, and in particular their cameras.
       | 
       | Android is pretty standardized these days, and even a fairly
       | cheap Android phone will probably do most smartphone things (make
       | calls, send texts, watch YouTube, etc.) reasonably well, but a
       | corner that seems to be cut in cheaper phones is almost always
       | the camera, and that kind of makes sense.
       | 
       | If you're buying your phone online, you can look at the more-or-
       | less objective specs of the phone like how much RAM it has, or
       | how fast the CPU is, but you can't really tell how the photos
       | will look [1], and as such it's easy to put a cheaper sensor or
       | lens in there, especially in the cheaper phones which (I think)
       | have lower margins.
       | 
       | [1] Even if the listing has sample pictures, you don't know how
       | representative they are of the actual experience; they could just
       | have taken the sample photos with ideal lighting, with a tripod,
       | in a controlled studio, for example.
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-29 23:00 UTC)