It's not democratic on purpose.

A skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates. - Sun Tzu

Actually, the theory is to fire the lowest 10% in relation to performance every quarter.

Ugly, yet effective.

The behavior of "cutting the fat" is persistent in any business worth it's salt. It just so happens that this behavior is synchronized, and expanded, in weaker economies.

A person desiring to keep their employment intact, or finding new opportunities, needs to understand three elements of their "business related worth".

• Talent - I intuitively know what needs to be done as it relates to my function inside an organization. I rarely need input when it comes to improvising the use of my skillset.
• Skill - I have an expansive set of techniques at my disposal. I understand how these techniques can be used in pre-defined situations.
• Experience - I have executed multiple plans regarding my function and have the "war stories" to prove it. I am able to accurately predict the pitfalls, possible errant results, and optimal win scenarios for business plans within my function.

Every company on the planet needs people who have different mixes of the above qualities. The big problem is that these three aspects run in a Rock/Paper/Scissors manner. The bigger problem is that the relationships change from company to company. Sometimes experience trumps talent. Other times talent is better than experience.

If you approach these elements of your work history without ego, focus your job search on opportunities that match your mix, and clearly communicate them to prospective employers - you will actually find a better job that makes you happy.

It can be done, don't go into it with a negative attitude.

Without a Phillip K. Dick story to bastardize, this script could go into turbo-shitty land really fast.

Damn, I never thought a big box retailer with brick and mortars would ever get it.

How the fuck is this a troll?

Charging a child with taking their own picture is punishing the victim!

Jesus people.

I mean, talk about punishing the victim here...

Oh wait, I forgot Child Porn laws are no longer about the harm and damage done to the child during the creation of the material in question...

Way to be society.

You only need 1% of the smart side of the bell curve to go along with you to have a majority.

I have to disagree with this.

You're not describing cultural entities. You're describing a social framework.

Just because the same entities are close to ubiquitous doesn't mean that they transfer culture. People who eat at T.G.I.Fridays in the south gravitate towards different menu items than those in the north. If this weren't true, they wouldn't have to bother with localized demographic data when planning product roll outs.

This discussion can quickly degrade into a bickering over semantics, so I will lay out the definitions I use for terms such as culture, social, etc.

My interpretations of these concepts closely corresponds to the Ken wilbur's take on the holon. In somewhat blunt terms, Culture is what the collective feels internally, and their Social aspects are what you can observe about a collective.

Some places do create strict ordinances to maintain their culture, but those ordinances are a social manifest which never would have come to fruition without the collective sharing the same culture.

After I do a consult with prospective clients, someone always asks me "Why should we pay you since you just told us what we needed to do? We can just go do it ourselves." This is pretty close to the sentiment of the article.

I always say the same thing: "What to do is free, how to do it costs money, asking me how to do it after you try to do it yourself will cost you double and I won't even have to raise my price."

Knowing how to execute a particular idea is always better than the original idea, because you have the hands on knowledge to improve it and improvise with it.