30 January 2022

The Gospel of Amazonia; or, What We're Fighting to Defend (against those beastly Russians)

No virtue without efficiency, of course, no question - who could deny it? Ah, but just what do we mean by "efficiency"? There's the rub (to coin a phrase).

After all (as I've tried to suggest in other places*), there are some kinds of work that are so flowingly quiet, so unturbulent, both in their outflows and in their wellsprings - so Spirit-embanked the whole length of the stream, one might say - that they hardly seem to suggest the word "efficiency" at all.

*Chiefly Part IV, last three paragraphs. 

So maybe we ought to rephrase it thus:
No MODERN, mechanized, digitalized efficiency without the Bezosian virtues: without, not just ardor and intensity, but vehemence and even (a kind of) anger towards the work to be done. And mutual competitiveness among the workers (aka one-upmanship). And of course - last but never least - terror of management.

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