I think most companies these days are overly focused on the short term and on strictly measurable outcomes. Charging X customers $Y more will make use $XY more money, right now. Spending money on being nice to our customers is something where we can't really measure the return on that investment separate from anything else and, in any case, once we start working on this it will take a while for it to really pay off.

n/t

I think the main problem with our current political parties (worldwide) is that they are focused on methods rather than outcomes. Party A thinks this is always the best way to do things and Party B thinks that is always the best way to do things.

I think there's a possibility now (or soon) of a shift to a more outcome-based approach. "We want to get these results and we'll find the most effective most efficient way to get there."

My concern is not for my own privacy (I trust myself to recognize the implications and accept or reject the system accordingly) but the users of my site. If they aren't aware of all the ins and outs of Facebook's privacy options (which were pretty confusing already) they're going to freak out when they see "Bob posted this comment on turg's blog..." appear on their facebook wall. And their solution will probably be to stop using my site rather than to actually straighten out the facebook settings

Yeah. As I understand it, these not-quite-a-producer credits are the only thing in the credits that aren't specifically defined by some union contract or other. So if you want to give someone a higher-status credit without actually having to meet any particular standard, then this is how you do it.