> Current EU company structures like the European Company (SE) are made for public companies and ill-suited for startups due to high capital requirements, complex formation processes, and heavy administrative burdens. A flexible, tailored EU-wide entity for startups will solve these issues.
I think the article explains that Adams "turned bad" because it is the sad consequence of him being smarter than the rest of the people. I'm pretty sure that someone who has time to lose can got through the article and pick up all of the quotes about how Adams was clever and the managers were so dum.
No, the article argues that Adams was good at one very specific thing (writing silly comics about the workplace) and bad at everything else. It's very clear on that point. It argues that later in life he lost his self-awareness of his own ineptitude and began to falsely believe he was smarter than everyone.
Keep reading. The central thesis of the article/eulogy is that Adams wanted to be successful at something more serious than Dilbert but was bad at everything else he tried.
It talks about his first new business attempt with the Dilberito, which was terrible. It quotes, it "could have been designed only by a food technologist or by someone who eats lunch without much thought to taste".
Then he tries to run a restaurant, which he is also bad at. Even Adams realizes he is bad at it. "After every workday, Adams and the waiters get together and laugh long into the night together about how bad a boss Adams is!"
Then he tries his hand at writing philosophy, which he is also terrible at. The article spends two long sections describing just how bad his books "God's Debris" and "The Religion War" are.
Then the article describes how Adams claimed himself to be a master hypnotist/manipulator in the most delusional and cringey way possible.
Then the article talks about Adams' many terrible political predictions. E.g. "His most famous howler was that if Biden won in 2020, Republicans “would be hunted” and his Republican readers would “most likely be dead within a year”."
Then there's how he responded to liberals beginning to see him as an enemy when he was predicting Trump would win the 2016 election: "As he had done so many other times during his life, he resolved the conflict in the dumbest, cringiest, and most public way possible: a June 2016 blog post announcing that he was endorsing Hillary Clinton, for his own safety, because he suspected he would be targeted for assassination if he didn’t"
Then in 2023, Adams stupidly gets himself cancelled.
> There are plenty of quotes like this one
No, there aren't. While the article/eulogy says a number of positive things about Adams, that very faint praise at the beginning is the only place the article describes him as being even only-slightly-above-average intelligence at anything other than Dilbert.
What it does mention several times is that Adams thought himself cleverer than everyone else. For example (describing Adams' thoughts):
> Thesis: I am cleverer than everyone else.
> Antithesis: I always lose to the Pointy-Haired Boss.
> Synthesis: I was trying to be rational. But most people are irrational sheep; they can be directed only by charismatic manipulators who play on their biases, not by rational persuasion. But now I’m back to being cleverer than everyone else, because I noticed this. Also, I should become a charismatic manipulator.
But the tone here is mocking Adams and not endorsing his view.
Thanks. I often think of it as a minor character flaw in myself that I spend the time replying to things that really aren't important. Your comment made me smile.
I think there’s a nuance. Chasing the low millions, and therefore financial security and comfort, is not the same as chasing billions, which would be Gatsby territory
Banality of evil. Promotion-driven/mortgage driven development. NIBMY. But don't mind me, I'm guilty of this more than most people but IMHO I think at least it's important to acknowledge the culpability of the affluent 10% people vs. the 1%. IMHO, we are worse than the 1% for enabling this society.
Indeed. And I see no evidence for the premise or the article. I read the book at school, and we all understood the not very subtle point about the illusion of money and how it does not bring happiness. The hopeless romantic aspect does get more touching as one ages though.
Balzac is quite fantastic. And also not great for you if you have too much empathy for the characters but decide to read 10 of his books/stories in a row.
I know Zola, but I don't know why I haven't read his works yet. Just by reading the introduction, I know I would probably love all his works. Maybe it's because I've been reading more history and less fiction in recent years.
The institutions work if all countries abide by their rulings. The US doing this sort for things is destroying the institutions we have, chief of all the UN and the ICJ, put in place at the end of World War 2 to avoid a repeat. We have not learned.
JFK tried to build up international institutions on the basis that "Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside", but then both he and NSK got cancelled...
Yes, the UN was founded in 1945, and the Geneva Conventions originated all the way back in 1864, but some US administrations have tried to bolster international institutions, and some to tear them down. JFK, having said, "If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved" was among the former.
In 1962, he and NSK managed to arrive at a diplomatic cooperation; the reward for both of them was being cancelled.
He was awful from the start, sending political opponents to prison and transferring oil money to himself and his croneys, but he claimed to be taking from the rich to give to the poor, so the Western left lapped it all up. It took them years to realise what he was actually doing (from the start).
He could give a hell of a speech. I've listened to him make speeches where pretty much everything he said was correct from a policy standpoint. The problem was he was an incompetent administrator running a personality cult.
I'm reminded of Noam Chomsky and what has recently come out about his social time with Epstein. He would talk about how the media only allows leftist thought in public as a sort of controlled opposition. Then he turns out to be exactly what he was complaining about. One moment he's calling Steve Bannon the enemy and the next he is smiling with him and Epstein, in a photo I've heard multiple people describe as "the happiest they have ever seen him".
All this is to say: it's not enough to "say the right things". Your actions have to match.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societas_Europaea