{"id":5674,"date":"2012-03-21T09:41:06","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T17:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=5674"},"modified":"2012-03-21T14:28:59","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T22:28:59","slug":"a-pair-of-sophistries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=5674","title":{"rendered":"A Pair of Sophistries"},"content":{"rendered":"

I'm engaged in a fight with a corporation[1]<\/span> in which I note its agents practice two, somewhat intertangled behaviors which are common to large or corporate enterprises, but which should be opposed whenever encountered.<\/p>

The first of these is for the agent of the enterprise to confuse his or her rôle. For example: I gave agents of this corporation the same information repeatedly in the course of one phone call. In a later phone call, I told another agent that I'd given that information to you<\/q> repeatedly, to which the agent replied, as if I were delusional, that she<\/em> had never spoken with me before. This might be read as deliberate or incompetent misunderstanding of the word you<\/q> (which of course must serve as a plural as well as a singular[2]<\/span>), but it fits another pattern, in which the agent speaks as representative<\/em> when it suits his or her immediate purpose, but instead as just an individual<\/em> when that immediate purpose changes, and in which the agent doesn't announce changes in the entity for whom he or she speaks. I immediately told the agent in this case that, since she was representing the corporation in the conversation, you are<\/em><\/q> the corporation, and that since I'd repeatedly given the information to the corporation, I had repeatedly given it to you<\/q>.<\/p>

The second behavior is to confuse endogenous policy<\/em> with necessity<\/em>, to represent the association as unable<\/em> to do something simply because they have made a deliberate habit<\/em> of not doing it. Actually, one sees people in general<\/em>, in or out of a corporate frame-work, doing attempting this confusion. But the misrepresentation is more likely to be effective<\/em> in the context of a formal, multi-personal institution, and the word policy<\/q> is more likely to be invoked as if it represents something endogenous and fixed. (Does one often hear a neighbor insist that keeping his dog out of one's garden would be against policy<\/q>?) And the misrepresentation is even more effective when the agent of the institution confuses the issue of whether he or she is speaking for the corporation or for his- or herself. Speaking for my<\/em>self, I don't let an individual or association pretend that its chosen<\/em> policy is not a choice<\/em>, and I don't let the agents of an association off the hook of being its representatives<\/em> when they try to claim that something cannot<\/em> be done because it is against policy<\/em>.<\/p>

[1]<\/span> Sprint Nextel Corporation.<\/p>

[2]<\/span> In standard English. And I'm not about to adopt y'all<\/q> or youse<\/q> or even you guys<\/q> to humor a corporate agent.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I'm engaged in a fight with a corporation[1] in which I note its agents practice two, somewhat intertangled behaviors which are common to large or corporate enterprises, but which should be opposed whenever encountered. The first of these is for the agent of the enterprise to confuse his or her rôle. For example: I gave […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,318,4],"tags":[1127,404,1126,218,405],"class_list":["post-5674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-communication","category-ethics-philosophy","category-public","tag-agency","tag-eristicism","tag-policy","tag-representation","tag-sophistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}