[yoz]

Dan Davies wrote a whole book on this topic, The Unaccountability Machine [1]. In it, he creates the concept of "accountability sinks": organisational structures or systems which abstract the source of a decision away from individuals so that no specific person can be held accountable.

Davies writes: "For an accountability sink to function, it has to break a link; it has to prevent the feedback of the person affected by the decision from affecting the operation of the system."

For a good short overview, see this piece by Mandy Brown: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks

[1] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo252799...

[palmotea]

> Dan Davies wrote a whole book on this topic, The Unaccountability Machine [1]. In it, he creates the concept of "accountability sinks": organisational structures or systems which abstract the source of a decision away from individuals so that no specific person can be held accountable.

The market itself seems to be the epitome of an accountability sink. All kinds of terrible things are done in the name of responding to market incentives, and when someone complains about those things, there's always some guy who points the blame at you the consumer with some BS about "revealed preferences" or the like.

[tarsinge]

The market itself optimizes for creating companies that are accountability sinks, for obvious reasons.

Regarding that guy, it’s because generally people have two approach to the market: to some the market is just a tool to an end goal, an economic system like any another, it has to be evaluated and corrected to serve that goal if it deviates. To other people, there is no goal, the market is philosophically always right, because it is an economic extension of individual liberty (which is debatable of course, I think Locke was not a proponent of laissez-faire for example).