The CIA Teaches Trolling

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During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (now known as the CIA) sought to destroy their enemy states… from the INSIDE. They distributed this Simple Sabotage Field Manual instructing ordinary citizens to destabilize their governments by sabotaging businesses and employers.

Organizations and Conferences

  • When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
  • Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
  • Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
  • Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
  • Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reasonable” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.

Managers and Supervisors

  • Demand written orders.
  • “Misunderstand” orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondences about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.
  • Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products.
  • To lower morale, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
  • Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
  • Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, paychecks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.
  • Apply all regulations to the last letter.

Employees

  • Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is necessary, use little force when considerable force is needed, and so on.
  • Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than is necessary. Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them.
  • Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.

There are also sections on how to start electrical fires and blow up a car. Any ordinary citizen can take down a complex organization simply by being a shit!

Reference:
Timeless Tips for ‘Simple Sabotage’ –cia.gov

Startup Self-Immolation

Homejoy burned to death. It wasn’t the worker classification lawsuits that did it in, although those certainly didn’t help. According to former employees, the company spent all its money expanding around the world, offering first-time customers subsidized services in each new city only to see them never return.

Remember how proud Paul Graham was of Homejoy’s explosive growth? It’s not hard to acquire customers when you’re selling dollars for fifty cents.

My current favorite company is Jet. They reached a $3 billion valuation before even launching a product. The original business model was to charge a $50 membership fee for a discounted version of Amazon, but shortly after launch, they pivoted and removed the fee.

Today and tomorrow, everything on the site is 25% off. On any other day, you only get 20% off.

The discounts are intended for first-time customers. But after I create fake accounts for each of my 49 cats, what incentive is there to come back and pay full price?

Not all startups are burning to death. I just presuppose that any company needing to subsidize stuff to attract customers is pretty much screwed. And if you don’t actually need to offer free stuff to get customers, why do it?

Back in 2010, Groupon served as the definitive death rattle for restaurants and small businesses. Today, you’ll find all manner of apps and startups soliciting customers on Groupon. Including, previously, Homejoy.

See Also:
1. Homejoy at the Unicorn Glue Factory –Backchannel (medium)
2. Crowdsourcing the Race to the Bottom

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Theranos Class Action Lawsuit

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It’s widely accepted that class action lawsuits only benefit the attorneys, who receive 25 to 40% of the total award. And that’s after deducting their costs, which include first-class transcontinental flights and paying paralegals to staple papers.

Class-action attorneys justify their existence by positioning themselves as society’s policemen. Maybe federal prosecutors have not sufficiently punished the defendants. Maybe it’s tough to enforce the letter of the law. Maybe it’s because US attorneys are underpaid government employees with limited resources.

Enter the class-action lawyer. Their job is not to prove that the law has been violated, but that people suffered damages for which they must be compensated. Class actions follow civil procedure, not criminal procedure.

The OJ Simpson case is a prime example of the difference between criminal and civil procedures. A criminal court decided that OJ was not guilty of first-degree murder. Later, a civil court determined that OJ was responsible for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Legally, these are not contradictory outcomes: It is totally possible to cause harm to another human being without literally violating the law*!

And so the civil court awarded Nicole’s family $33.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Punitive, meaning the amount was meant to punish OJ for what he did.

That’s probably what Mr. Ronald Marron is doing here with the Theranos class action. The FDA has not accused Theranos of wrongdoing, but somehow somewhere people suffered. And it was probably Theranos’ fault. Thus Ronald Marron has taken it upon himself to ensure peace and justice for all.

*The definition of first degree murder in the context of the O.J. case requires that the act be done with malice aforethought and premeditation. And to convict in the criminal court, the case against the defendant must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

How the Government Plans to Ruin Online Education with Taxpayer Dollars

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In the strange and faraway nation of Donkeylandia, people who own donkeys generally do better than people who don’t. The cause is unclear but the correlation is real.

Donkeys are expensive though, so some people borrow money to buy a donkey. Donkey prices are constrained by buyers’ credit limits.

Somehow it becomes conventional wisdom that donkey ownership is crucial to success in life. This message is propagated by donkey salesmen, banks that make donkey loans, and donkey owners themselves.

Donkeylandia politicians announce that society as a whole would be better off if more people owned donkeys, and declare donkey ownership a Basic Human Right.

Citizens are inspired to buy more donkeys. They don’t know that the banks making donkey loans paid politicians to deliver that message.

But many people still can’t afford donkeys. To encourage ownership, the government provides tax breaks to those who take out donkey loans.

Aided by government subsidies, banks make bigger loans. As a result, people can buy increasingly expensive donkeys on credit. Donkey prices go up.

More donkeys are bred to meet demand. Some of these donkeys are retarded or have three legs, but people borrow money to buy them anyway.

As loans get bigger, people struggle to pay them back. Distressed donkey owners complain about their debt burden. Many default. This becomes a societal problem.

To address this, Donkeylandia leaders announce: Everyone should be able to own a donkey, but nobody should go into debt to own a donkey.

This is great news for the banks, who receive repayment for loans that would have otherwise defaulted.

This is great news for donkey salesmen, who now have access to an endless stream of federal dollars with no strings attached.

The debt-stricken donkey owners get the creditors off their backs, but are no longer sure how their three-legged donkey will lead to success in life.

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Whether it’s real estate, health care, or post-secondary education, government-assisted access leads to abuse.

If an asset is unaffordable, the solution isn’t to encourage borrowing; it’s to make the asset cheaper!

That’s what online courses were supposed to do: provide an affordable alternative to a college education.

But last week, the Department of Education announced a pilot project that makes students enrolled in coding boot camps and online courses eligible for federal financial aid, including student loans.

I didn’t even know that coding courses cost money.

What happens next is that shady for-profits enter the coding camp business, market their services to the uninitiated, and drive up the cost of previously-free education. At no benefit to the students.

For $149, you can get a fake college diploma and transcript online. I’d rather have my tax dollars subsidize those.

See Also:
1. New Federal Program Offers Students Aid for Nontraditional Education –NY Times
2. Student debt’s subprime problem –FT Alphaville

Theranos Meets Investigative Journalism

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The Wall Street Journal published a story that could potentially undermine beloved unicorn Theranos.

Regardless of whether the Theranos allegations are true, I’m surprised it’s taken twelve years, five rounds of funding, and a $9 billion valuation for anyone to question the company’s credibility.

Why did it take so long? Because Theranos is a Silicon Valley tech startup, and Silicon Valley tech journalists are gutless panderers.

From Ben Thompson at Stratechery:

It’s worth noting that [the NY Times Piece about Amazon] and [the Wall Street Journal piece on Theranos] are truly excellent and necessary pieces of reporting that simply don’t appear in tech publications, particularly those supported by online advertising. It’s something worth considering in the context of the ongoing debate about ad blockers and sustainable business models for journalism.

You won’t see any TechCrunch writers winning Pulitzer Prizes for Investigative Journalism, that’s for sure.