Links to Consider, 7/12

Alan Pentz on personnel decisions; Lorenzo Warby on Jews and group victimhood; David Friedman on the Current Thing; Richard Peterson on 1955 and the birth of Rock 'n' Roll

Alan Pentz writes,

Hire slower, fire faster. People tend to show you who they are pretty quickly. The, “I’m going to work on this person,” mindset works about 5% of the time.

…Every time you 2-3x the revenue of your business, 50-75% of leadership will need to be replaced/changed. This is probably the toughest lesson. Companies can grow faster than people.

…If the owner can’t sell it, no one can.

The notion that you are going to have to sell may not seem intuitive to engineers and product designers. But selling really is job one for an entrepreneur.

Concerning personnel, there are two types of mistakes that you can make with a disappointing employee. One mistake is to fire someone when they could have worked out. The other mistake is to keep one and have them continue to disappoint. The second mistake is the one you are most likely to make. Instead, follow Pentz”s advice.

I am not sure that every time revenue doubles or triples that leadership needs to change. But I definitely think that corporate culture has to change when the number of people gets past the Dunbar number of around 150 or so. Below that number, you can be informal about making decisions and bringing new employees up to speed. Above that number, and you need organization charts, employee orientation routines, and other formal systems. Some people only fit well into informal organizations, and they need to be replaced when the firm gets large enough to require formal management.

Lorenzo Warby writes,

Who did the most to promote the notion of the entitled victim? Who pioneered the notion of the entitled victim as the basis for driving people out of public life, out of their livelihoods? Who? The Jewish lobby; that is, Jewish activists allegedly operating in defense of the Jewish community.

The idea of group victimhood is that individual(s) X is entitled to something because of what was done to individuals Y who belong to the same identity group. Warby is saying that Jews really pushed the idea of group victimhood after the Holocaust. And now the idea of group victimhood has boomeranged, as it is used to justify atrocities by Hamas.

That is a fair point. I would say that it is unwise to justify Zionism on the basis of the Holocaust. A better case for Zionism is that the Holocaust was the last straw. Coming after decades of pogroms, blood libel, The Protocols, etc., Jews felt that the need for a state to provide them with self-government and security was now undeniable. Unfortunately, many Muslim Arabs seem convinced that a state in their midst with Jewish self-government is inherently humiliating. So that is where we are.

David Friedman writes,

Fluid intelligence responds to a problem by figuring out a solution, crystallized by remembering the solution you found last time. As people age they tend to shift from fluid to crystallized, perhaps because the old have a larger stock of past solutions, less time to benefit by new and possibly improved answers to old questions.

…If you were choosing one of them to do a difficult task that he wanted to do, Trump would be the obvious pick. The problem with him, perhaps even more than with Biden, is that the task he wants to do is not the task I want done.

On the final sentence, he and Daniel Klein would have a disagreement.

Richard Peterson wrote,

In 1939 the radio networks, in a dispute with ASCAP over the increased licencing fees ASCAP wanted to charge, formed rival licencing agency, BMI. BMI offered inducement to ASCAP publishers and songwriters to defect. Few did, and so BMI signed numerous publishers and writers that had been excluded from membership in ASCAP. Many of these worked in the jazz,Latin, r&b and country music tradition

Pointer from Jason Manning.

Peterson tells a fascinating, multifaceted story. In the quoted paragraph, the point is that until there was competition in the music licensing industry, only plain vanilla big band/crooner music could get distribution. Various developments promoted competition.

In terms of technology, in the late 1940s and early 1950s the 45 RPM format became standard. This allowed small record companies to produce and distribute singles. Previously, only large recording companies could obtain distribution.

Still, it took several years for 45s to be played by radio stations. The main development was the advent of small, local radio stations alongside the major networks. The small stations had to rely more on recorded programming than live programming.

In the 1950s, the recording industry discovered that radio airplay drove record sales. The record companies that hurried to take advantage of this were small upstarts.

Meanwhile, the radio industry discovered the “top 40” format. Listeners wanted to hear the currently popular tunes.

There was now an audience of teenagers and pre-teens, thanks to the transistor radio. Thus, the American market finally had the conditions that could allow the rock revolution.

substacks referenced above:

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Essential Sociology

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Effects of Aging

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Jews can’t afford the Jewish lobby

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https://www.smallbusinessmentor.co/p/8-rules-running-successful-smb