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RobinHanson's avatar

I'm happy to endorse more competition in Human Resources policies and perspectives. Yes, coordination there is potentially one of those "choke points" I worry about.

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Jonas's avatar

You don't mention the biggest source of this conformist pressure, which is the human resources industry. Markets don't necessarily help here.

If it's a liquid, transparent market, it'll converge to some kind of Market Portfolio of assets/beliefs/practices, which then is adopted by every risk-averse market participant.

The human resources industry has adopted these norms not just because of social pressure or regulation, but because of market pressure.

The only way to reduce this pressure is to make HR management markets (and maybe even labor markets) smaller and less connected. That'll reintroduce some variability back into human resources practices.

Small law firms that hire the same HR managers & recruiters from a global pool of (interchangeable HR managers for all orgs) will end up with all the same HR practices. Competition at the final layer doesn't help if the supporting layers have been standardized by markets. Small firms don't have the power to dictate terms to their suppliers.

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