The Overlooked Truth About Major Consulting Firms

There is a mirror phenomenon between the reality experienced by workers in their workplace and our social organization outside the corporate world, especially in our institutions. One reflects the other and vice versa.

I don't believe in Capitalism with a capital C. It does not exist. There are several possible forms of capitalism, and we have the worst one in the West today, the most hostile to workers. Some call it financial capitalism, others crony capitalism, depending on whether one wants to emphasize the destructive coupling between finance and the real economy or the plutocratic nature of our administration.

Both labels are accurate. They imply, and it is entirely true, that our political regime is apolitical. It only serves the interests of a few. Western regimes are designed by the anti-word "democracy" but they are plutocratic in essence.

The Governing Machine

The current situation is a disaster for workers and citizens:

- The role of the State should be to handle sovereign functions, notably that of exercising monetary authority, and to develop a long-term strategic vision by submitting technical progress to civilizational limits. Only within the context of such a long-term vision, entrepreneurs could be autonomous. We are deprived of such a vision. Ethics is an anti-word to deny the existence of civilizational limits.

- Instead, the State merely ensures the conditions for forming speculative bubbles (real estate, green-washing, AI-washing, bullshit values). Its role is limited to selling national assets, transforming public power into an administrative machine providing the fewest possible services to citizens, and enslaving the taxpayer through taxes and duties.

- The State serves the interests of great private power. Central banks do not serve the general interest.

- Competition is not free, despite the extraordinary inflation of the body of law supposed to guarantee it. The nurturing of startups is just feeding the big fish. Industrial cannibalism is the norm.

- The multi-positioning of players (i.e., the fact, observed by Bourdieu, that the same individual holds multiple positions and honorary titles in interconnected spheres, professional, academic, or other) makes the boundaries between public powers and private strength porous. Alumni clubs and think tanks, to this regard, tend to dissolve the boundaries.

- The four powers (legislative, executive, judicial, and media) are purportedly separate but are, in fact, intertwined.

Of course, if you are unable to untangle the Orwellian language in the West and reality, this truth eludes you. But if you're smart enough to discern the truth behind the sophistry of spin doctors, you've followed me thus far. In the West, nations are under the control of an exocracy.

Yet, you might ask: what does this have to do with major consulting firms? Analyze the recent collusion case between PwC and the Australian tax office. All the boxes are checked. Major consulting firms play a crucial role in impoverishing workers and consolidating a plutocratic regime. Accounting standards and tax law are designed for this purpose.

Now let's turn our gaze inward...

A Deeper Dive into Consulting Dynamics

The lack of general culture and overall intelligence in large consulting firms is turning into an abyssal void.

These vast pyramidal structures are based on an organization and a way of functioning inherited from the principles of positive law, which itself stems from materialistic reductionism and rationalistic reductionism.

The entirety of Western society, from economics to finance and the organization of work, operates in relation to positive law. However, positive law is folly. On one hand, it is the subject of its own fragmentation into subdivided rights, the rights of "these" and the rights of "those". On the other hand, it is the object of its own technicization. Fragmentation and technicization inevitably produce arbitrariness. Anyone who hasn't yet grasped that Western law no longer aims to protect but merely grants privileges is blind.

In a major consulting firm, the blind are at the bottom of the pyramid. They form the masses. At these levels, no one commands, obeys, or disobeys, three intimate experiences whose Ancients praised the virtue. Their absence deprives modern workers of the opportunity to develop civic wisdom.

All merely devise and execute processes. The process has this significant advantage over the old authority principle, which is entirely absent at the pyramid's base, to identify errors in tasks that are well formalised. Hence, it enables the fall-guy to find his place and a utility.

What is a fall-guy? While we can nicely call him a manager, a fall-guy is a mere subordinate whose primary role is to preemptively shoulder the responsibility of mistakes. In other words, the process ensures that someone takes the fall in case of an issue. In an environment not known for its workers' intelligence, problems are frequent. This chicken-and-egg phenomenon results in the collapsing quality of work in major consulting firms. It also leads to rising costs in process management, insurance fees, and attorney fees.

Those at the top are not blind. They understand that positive law tends to generate a multitude of inarticulable legal axioms, with combinations so complex and absurd they escape human comprehension. They know that the law is just a facade. Their inclination to disregard it, for themselves as much as for their major clients, stems from this paradoxical form of lucidity tinged with cynicism, as much as from psychopathology. The PwC scandal in Australia will not remain isolate. There will be other affairs of the same kind.

At the very top, one tends to find only narcissistic perverts and paranoids. Narcissistic perverts only see in others an uninformed or retarded version of themselves. They never relinquish the illusion of acting for the common good, even when trampling on public interest. Paranoids only perceive potential threats. The slightest problem, even if it's purely random and unlikely to recur, is scrutinized with the utmost rigidity. A generic solution to an issue that probably won't happen again, in the paranoid mindset, always entails pushing someone to implement a new process. Compliance becomes an obsession. Profound aloofness meets hyper-logical insanity.

This paints the full portrait of the technocratic psyche. At the bottom of the pyramid, people lack sufficient political culture to discern the clear signs of the current totalitarian drift in every aspect of the Western society. Enforcing rules without having to command, obey, or disobey gives them an illusion of freedom and responsibility. However, they beckon the totalitarian drift from the depths of the collective unconscious. There is nothing more powerful than the collective unconscious properly channeled through social engineering mechanisms. At the very top of the pyramid, people are aware of the totalitarian drift and deem it desirable. They know that this drift is inevitable and that it is the only way for them to maintain a position of power. When they pretend to defend the values of democracy, even though they are demophobic, it's to keep the workers away from the levers of power. Again, anti-words are used: fascism, extremism, conspiracy theories…

From Present Strains to a Hopeful Restoration of Natural Law

The average person in modern society is an educated fool, meaning a perfect idiot. They confuse dictatorship with totalitarianism, so when one tries to warn them of the current slide towards the latter in its technocratic and passive-aggressive form, they look for signs of the former in its tribal and brutal aspects. Unable to be alarmed by what they don't understand, they inevitably contribute to the totalitarian edifice.

If Socrates, Aristotle, or Plato were to personally remind us that the primary quality of a republic is not in its institutions but in the ability of its citizens to stand tall, which is absolutely true, they would be labeled as fascists. The labels we apply in the West to our pseudo-reality and our own representation have no connection with reality. We live amidst constant semantic distortions, anachronisms, fictional narratives, and phantasmagoria.

The most clear-sighted, deserving, and public-interest-focused workers have already left major consulting firms or are about to. This exodus will only accelerate the downfall: leaving behind only the most inert, conformist, and cunning to execute an increasingly senseless and counterproductive job. Such a work environment is becoming as unbearable as destructive. Humble advice to my friends who still work there: get out now!

The principle of tolerance now only leads to Kafkaesque non-sense, and it will give birth to an ubuesque nightmare. It's the absurd price to pay when tolerance is viewed through the lens of positive law. If you've worked in a major consulting firm, try thinking about your last training in diversity, compliance, or ethics without laughing or crying. You surely realize now that all forms of diversity are encouraged except the most crucial: diversity of thought.

The organizational structures of large companies and administrations mirror our political structures. The regime of representative plutocracy, which we stubbornly and in denial call "democracy", has no future but to rot. There will come a time when the inexorable collapse that's sweeping our society will complete its destruction. We will need to restore natural law and the principle of authority, and we will need to cure ourselves of our dependency on positive law and compliance.

Tolerance does not involve legally framing every specific case. It means prohibiting the unacceptable, and within what is acceptable, treating both the norm and the exception equally. This is only possible within the realm of natural law.

Each day, the grotesque decline of major organizations into Absurdistan reminds us to maintain a spirited optimism.