Good article. I followed up on their work with ICE as well and how some members on that team were shocked by the penny pinching on food, medical help and even in illegal areas of due process. Fuck McKinsey. Spreadsheet, growth, models my ass if you do not realize the human factor
It is still the best system for motivating people we have invented.
While for aesthetic reasons I still prefer centrally planned command economies where failure is met with a bullet I can't deny that those are terrible once the foundations of a modern society are put in place, e.g. roads, electricity, water, trains, public transport, telecommunications, etc.
That said, we would benefit from a decade or two of eco-Stalinism to deal with climate change before going back to normal.
> While for aesthetic reasons I still prefer centrally planned command economies where failure is met with a bullet
What the fuck??
I honestly have no words to reply to this, I just couldn't go past the comment since not replying seemed like implicit acceptance that this is a normal thing to read.
> I honestly have no words to reply to this, I just couldn't go past the comment since not replying seemed like implicit acceptance that this is a normal thing to read.
The correct response is to flag and move on. No reasonable people advocate for Stalinism (even anti-capitalists), and framing critiques of capitalism in a laissez faire vs. Stalinism dichotomy is a a right-wing shibboleth. That makes me think the GP comment is probably properly classed as a kind of internet post that starts with a T and should not be fed.
Considering capitalism is on track to deliver the end of industrial civilization by the start of the 21st century no reasonable people can argue for it.
But reasonable people once thought burning witches was a way to end droughts, so maybe instead of following common sense we should listen to scientists and change the political system to one that means our grand children will not have to eat each other?
Why is this shallow outrage piece on the front page? I get it, you’re upset. Preaching to the choir (bonus points because it’s a YC investment substack) is the worst way to deal with it.
Sociopath this, narcissism that. Your gif there is right: it’s all so tiresome.
Every thread that’s remotely related to health and lifestyle on here has a handful of people saying how Buddhist breathing techniques are a great remedy. Go do some breathing exercises and quit shitposting on a Saturday.
If this is what HN is reduced to, feigning some moral drum-up about oh how unfair things are, get off your ass and do something. Leave the damn website for tech related talks please.
The more productive conversation isn't around the tone of this particular "outrage piece," but the bombshell it references: The New York Times article about McKinsey's proposal of paying pharmacy companies rebates for OxyContin Overdoses [1]
Yes we had our 2 minute of hate thread on it a couple of days ago. Either do something about it or quit feigning outrage by submitting blog posts.
It was useless then, it’s useless now. There is no “bombshell” here. It’s on par business for billionaires.
Retweeting bullshit doesn’t improve your carbon footprint, get it through your head. You can scream all you want about what McKinsey is doing, but one thing you won't do is enact change by making blog posts with silly gifs inbetween bolded text proclaiming how outraged you are.
This is the pharma industry. It's been this way for decades. Don't pretend like you're woke and moralistic in light of this "bombshell" now please, it comes across as trite.
Individuals cannot "do something about" issues like this. Even a lone wolf gun attack against a corporate boardroom would see the victims swiftly replaced by ideological clones. Collective action is the only possible route to remedy, and that requires building a common understanding of what the problems are and what should be done about them. Hence the beating of the drum. Having two minutes of hate isn't the goal.
Pray tell, what collective action? Are you going to boycott McKinsey? Write to the same congress representatives that companies like McKinsey personally finance and wine and dine and call in for favors?
Do share, we are all curious what is this collective action that will somehow lead to enlightenment of "building a common understanding of what the problems are and what should be done about them."
Billionaires are the untouchable class of people. They don't answer to anyone. They quite literally own and run the country. I don't know why it's difficult for the rational person to get this through their heads. The last thing you will see is them being in any kind of trouble about it. We can discuss the failing of a company like Enron another time. They really fucked the dog and in much the same way as Jeffrey Epstein hanging himself in a high security prison, pissed off other billionaires who are the only people who can get some sense of action out of the legal system on each other.
No, writing to congresspeople is useless. There are a few possibly viable strategies: one, fill as many elected positions as possible with leftist candidates. Two, build power of labor unions to achieve democratic control over the sources of profit. Three, well... revolution, if the above two fail. The ultimate backstop. Would be happy to hear any other suggestions.
Are you taking me for a ride here? I can't tell if you're LARPing or not.
This is exactly what I am talking about. HN crowd is so disconnected from reality, that people on here, without a moment of self reflection, literally believe "revolution" is a viable answer to something like this.
Yeah, you go and get started on that, internet soldier.
There are endless examples of bad press forcing change in laws and companies. This article is making something much more publicly visible. Spreading it is better than nothing, and again there's plenty of times when the populace becoming outraged results in change
tl;dr: The Cuyahoga river caught on fire many, many times over the years. However, a fire in June 1969 spurred legislative action that finally solved the problem, even though that fire was not the most destructive nor the most deadly. The difference was society had changed, and that fire struck a nerve when the previous ones hadn't.
The moral of the story is: past performance is no guarantee of future results.
> True. Totally unrelated, the example you cite is now fifty years in the past, and occurred in a time when local news still existed.
It's related because it's a nice clear example of "bad press [eventually] forcing change in laws and companies," on an issue that's settled enough that one would be hard-pressed to argue the end result was wrong. The swipe at local news isn't exactly relevant, given this recent is a national one that did get coverage and the river fire spurred a federal, not local, legislative solution.
> This is the pharma industry. It's been this way for decades. Don't pretend like you're woke and moralistic in light of this "bombshell" now please, it comes across as trite.
So, you're saying it's OK, then? Otherwise, you just seem unreasonably mad at people who don't dutifully accept the status quo without comment.
I don't doubt the proposal existed... But can someone explain why this is a good idea even assuming a lack of ethics? Would this really have changed the behavior of pharmacies somehow? Pharmacies don't have any influence over prescriptions, do they?
Even considering such an idea is enough for it to get in writing or presented is such an egregious lapse of ethics that whomever does it should be fired immediately.
"Sorry we know you're going to lose customers if they die, what if we make up the difference for you so you keep selling our product?"
It’s likely related to McKinsey’s recommendations to Purdue that they attempt to get major pharmacies to “loosen up” on efforts to stop illegal opioid scripts (which had resulted in an 18% reduction in OxyContin units sold by one major chain in particular). Paying kickbacks based on ODs would be a pretty blunt instrument that, I think, would have triggered alarm bells at those pharmacies’ leadership.
I think the even more productive conversation is centered around how these consulting firms (Deloitte, BCG, Bain, etc etc) have become giant black holes, sucking in massive amounts of hyper talented and competent people.
And then they have them building spreadsheets about how to more “economically” provide a product that was/is literally killing Americans at scale.
It’s part of a larger conversation that’s difficult to have, but I think is largely true: managerial and financial capitalism has been a complete disaster.
Talented, but not hyper talented. At my school, consulting was sorta the career you did if you couldn't get a job doing something else (like tech or finance).
Probably highly dependent on which program you attend (assuming you’re talking about MBA programs). For some banking is the “high status” profession, for others it’s consulting, for still others it’s tech.
I went to state school and do consulting at a B4 - you're right on the money, consulting (especially at Big 4 level) isn't sexy. MBB is a league sexier though, but gets beat out by PE and some good spots at the FAANGs
> Ultimately, when we reduce our fellow man to numbers in a spreadsheet, when we become alienated from them, we have turned them into shadows. And we too, have become shadows. A kind of perverse collectivism emerging out of individualism. Every person, reduced to a shadow.
> To these snakes, people are nothing but numbers to squeeze revenue out of. Spreadsheet sociopathy. If every single consultant and banker disappeared tomorrow, we would be better off.
"Ultimately, when we reduce our fellow man to numbers in a spreadsheet, when we become alienated from them, we have turned them into shadows."
The folks I happen to know who work at McKinsey are wrought with insecurity, ego & entitlement. They seem to love the business model of exploiting those most vulnerable.
Confirmed. This is standard fare in business school, undergrad and MBA alike. There’s no academic rigour because everyone passes because the schools treat students as high paying customers who are always right, and then they have a straight shot into consulting or investment banking, ruining the world due to the aforementioned insecurity, ego & entitlement and attraction to exploitation.
That’s hyperbole is incorrect. My generic state university only has a 60% graduation rate and it’s just a regular non-ivy league state university. That means 40% drop out or flunk.
I would suggest reading the materials. It’s slightly less insidious than the headlines would have you believe. A couple choice lead lines:
“We are committed to lowering average daily doses on OxyContin and will provide higher rebates on prescriptions with higher dose strengths”
“We believe in our technology: We will pay additional rebates on any new OxyContin related overdose or opioid use disorder diagnosis”
Remember OxyContin was supposed to be less addictive than traditional opoid painkillers. Unfortunately it turned out to still be quite addictive and deadly, but at least this doesn’t indicate that McK or Purdue actually knew that. I guess they probably should have?
There’s also a worrying chart showing rising overdose deaths which doesn’t seem to be accompanied by a thoughtful commentary or real analysis of why—it’s just an actuarial exercise.
Purdue is a clinical pharma company. They do extensive testing on their molecular candidates both in-vitro and in-vivo. There is no way they would not have known that OxyContin was more addictive. If memory serves me right there was a whistleblower who claimed that Purdue knew and hid the fact from regulators but I might be mistaken.
Another famous McKinsey piece-de-art comes to mind - the work they did for the NYC Dept of Corrections to stem violence at Rikers. Their recommendations were to build a piece of software which they built and delivered but it never worked. The software did all sorts of analytics and tried to pick the prisoners who would benefit from their risk violence reduction program.
Apart from their sordid failures in building and delivering software, it turns out that their data analysis was outright fraud as they cherrypicked the trial inmates, who were low-violence, to show it worked.
This disaster ended up costing NYC 27.5 million. Their recommendations were a dud, the software never worked and violence soared. Ripping NYC for tens of millions and condemning the people with the lowest power - prison inmates - to worse outcomes - that is McKinsey's credo for you.
The thing that baffles me is not that the majority of McKinsey consultants would go along with it but there are almost zero whistleblowers. Shows the power of the firm's narrative and the prestige. My hope is enough of these exposes and the prestige of working at McKinsey will be akin to having worked at Enron or a WorldCom.
> Anthony Shorris, and other aides decided to hire a consulting firm. They solicited proposals from firms on a pre-approved list from the previous administration. Despite its lack of corrections experience, McKinsey won the contract.
According to Wikipedia, he is also a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company.
46 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 100.0 ms ] threadIt is still the best system for motivating people we have invented.
While for aesthetic reasons I still prefer centrally planned command economies where failure is met with a bullet I can't deny that those are terrible once the foundations of a modern society are put in place, e.g. roads, electricity, water, trains, public transport, telecommunications, etc.
That said, we would benefit from a decade or two of eco-Stalinism to deal with climate change before going back to normal.
What the fuck??
I honestly have no words to reply to this, I just couldn't go past the comment since not replying seemed like implicit acceptance that this is a normal thing to read.
The correct response is to flag and move on. No reasonable people advocate for Stalinism (even anti-capitalists), and framing critiques of capitalism in a laissez faire vs. Stalinism dichotomy is a a right-wing shibboleth. That makes me think the GP comment is probably properly classed as a kind of internet post that starts with a T and should not be fed.
But reasonable people once thought burning witches was a way to end droughts, so maybe instead of following common sense we should listen to scientists and change the political system to one that means our grand children will not have to eat each other?
Yes because all these examples are working great right now.
What do you refer to by 'system' here, exactly? The political system or the economy one?
You sound like you conflate the two.
Sociopath this, narcissism that. Your gif there is right: it’s all so tiresome.
Every thread that’s remotely related to health and lifestyle on here has a handful of people saying how Buddhist breathing techniques are a great remedy. Go do some breathing exercises and quit shitposting on a Saturday.
If this is what HN is reduced to, feigning some moral drum-up about oh how unfair things are, get off your ass and do something. Leave the damn website for tech related talks please.
1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/business/mckinsey-purdue-...
It was useless then, it’s useless now. There is no “bombshell” here. It’s on par business for billionaires.
Retweeting bullshit doesn’t improve your carbon footprint, get it through your head. You can scream all you want about what McKinsey is doing, but one thing you won't do is enact change by making blog posts with silly gifs inbetween bolded text proclaiming how outraged you are.
This is the pharma industry. It's been this way for decades. Don't pretend like you're woke and moralistic in light of this "bombshell" now please, it comes across as trite.
Pray tell, what collective action? Are you going to boycott McKinsey? Write to the same congress representatives that companies like McKinsey personally finance and wine and dine and call in for favors?
Do share, we are all curious what is this collective action that will somehow lead to enlightenment of "building a common understanding of what the problems are and what should be done about them."
Billionaires are the untouchable class of people. They don't answer to anyone. They quite literally own and run the country. I don't know why it's difficult for the rational person to get this through their heads. The last thing you will see is them being in any kind of trouble about it. We can discuss the failing of a company like Enron another time. They really fucked the dog and in much the same way as Jeffrey Epstein hanging himself in a high security prison, pissed off other billionaires who are the only people who can get some sense of action out of the legal system on each other.
>leftist candidates
>democratic control over the sources of profit
>revolution
Are you taking me for a ride here? I can't tell if you're LARPing or not.
This is exactly what I am talking about. HN crowd is so disconnected from reality, that people on here, without a moment of self reflection, literally believe "revolution" is a viable answer to something like this.
Yeah, you go and get started on that, internet soldier.
Big oil has entered the chat.
tl;dr: The Cuyahoga river caught on fire many, many times over the years. However, a fire in June 1969 spurred legislative action that finally solved the problem, even though that fire was not the most destructive nor the most deadly. The difference was society had changed, and that fire struck a nerve when the previous ones hadn't.
The moral of the story is: past performance is no guarantee of future results.
It's related because it's a nice clear example of "bad press [eventually] forcing change in laws and companies," on an issue that's settled enough that one would be hard-pressed to argue the end result was wrong. The swipe at local news isn't exactly relevant, given this recent is a national one that did get coverage and the river fire spurred a federal, not local, legislative solution.
So, you're saying it's OK, then? Otherwise, you just seem unreasonably mad at people who don't dutifully accept the status quo without comment.
"Sorry we know you're going to lose customers if they die, what if we make up the difference for you so you keep selling our product?"
And then they have them building spreadsheets about how to more “economically” provide a product that was/is literally killing Americans at scale.
It’s part of a larger conversation that’s difficult to have, but I think is largely true: managerial and financial capitalism has been a complete disaster.
Talented, but not hyper talented. At my school, consulting was sorta the career you did if you couldn't get a job doing something else (like tech or finance).
Who's the sociopath I wonder?
The folks I happen to know who work at McKinsey are wrought with insecurity, ego & entitlement. They seem to love the business model of exploiting those most vulnerable.
“We are committed to lowering average daily doses on OxyContin and will provide higher rebates on prescriptions with higher dose strengths”
“We believe in our technology: We will pay additional rebates on any new OxyContin related overdose or opioid use disorder diagnosis”
Remember OxyContin was supposed to be less addictive than traditional opoid painkillers. Unfortunately it turned out to still be quite addictive and deadly, but at least this doesn’t indicate that McK or Purdue actually knew that. I guess they probably should have?
There’s also a worrying chart showing rising overdose deaths which doesn’t seem to be accompanied by a thoughtful commentary or real analysis of why—it’s just an actuarial exercise.
Apart from their sordid failures in building and delivering software, it turns out that their data analysis was outright fraud as they cherrypicked the trial inmates, who were low-violence, to show it worked.
This disaster ended up costing NYC 27.5 million. Their recommendations were a dud, the software never worked and violence soared. Ripping NYC for tens of millions and condemning the people with the lowest power - prison inmates - to worse outcomes - that is McKinsey's credo for you.
The thing that baffles me is not that the majority of McKinsey consultants would go along with it but there are almost zero whistleblowers. Shows the power of the firm's narrative and the prestige. My hope is enough of these exposes and the prestige of working at McKinsey will be akin to having worked at Enron or a WorldCom.
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/new-york-city-paid-mckins...
> Anthony Shorris, and other aides decided to hire a consulting firm. They solicited proposals from firms on a pre-approved list from the previous administration. Despite its lack of corrections experience, McKinsey won the contract.
According to Wikipedia, he is also a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company.
Straight up money grab.