Are they good for anything at all?

No.

They’re a part of the system, so it seems like they need to be a part of the system, but actually it’s that the system has been warped to accommodate them.

Do they push innovation or productivity?

They specifically push it, but if and only if there’s an angle by which they can parasitize off of it. They don’t originate anything. Ever.

Like would a company without these people be crushed by companies with such people…?

Probably.

I figured out long ago that that’s the case on a personal level. The specific way it works:

People competing for a position in a hierarchy have to make decisions that will impact their chances.

People with integrity, morals, ethics, empathy, principles, etc. will have some number of potential options that they simply will not choose. People with none of those things are not so constrained - they’re able to do absolutely whatever it takes to get what they want, entirely regardless of any other condiderations. So all other things being more or less equal, amoral, unprincipled, dishonest, sociopathic pieces of shit actuyallt have a competitive advantage in hierarchies.

I hadn’t before considered whether that’s the case between businesses, but I would assume so.

I’d love to read more about this, but all I can find is always always tainted either by some status quo idea or basing everything on capitalism or dream thinking like communism or anarchism which just doesn’t work because of these kind if people.

I’m actually an anarchist in large part because of all of this, but my anarchism is very much an ideal. There’s absolutely no way that current humanity could manage it on any sort of scale, so when I advocate for it, I’m really just trying to promote the mindset that will make it possible sometime in the future.

I actually think that anarchism will not only one day be possible, but, if humanity survives, it will be inevitable. It’s vessentiallybthe adulthood of society - the point at which collectively - not just situationally and individually - we’ll be able to live without mommy and daddy state making sure we behave.

Can we detect non-empatic people and not allow them to manage people? Would that be a good first step?

I’ve actually said before that if I could leave a message for the people who will end up trying to rebuild civilization out of the rubble we leave behind, it would be, “Whatever you do, don’t let psychopaths gain power.”

I think there’s no single thing that anyone could do to improve literally everything that would be more effective than to somehow implement an international effort to identify and isolate sociopaths and psychopaths - that they do more harm to the planet and its people than anything else, and by a considerable margin.

But I don’t see any way it could happen, if for no other reason than that the psychopaths and sociopaths in the relevant positions would prevent it.

Which is exactly why I thought of leaving a message for our heirs, in the hope that they’ll do a better job of it from the start. Which I think is the only real chance humanity has.