The real question is what comes next. They aren't going to relinquish control over their institutions, and competent people aren't going to have any interest in trying to sneak their way into collapsing wreckage, so as everything turns into a raging dumpster fire of incompetence, those institutions are going to need to be replaced. Pretty much from scratch.
Looked at from another angle it's a fascinating opportunity. We basically get to redesign society. Eat your heart out, Great REEEEsetters.
Excellent rant, Gato! I was thinking what some examples of this process at work might be. I think the big one, Public Health during COVID19, is probably as good as any, starting with the CDC/NIH.
Birx is a textbook example of mediocrity rising to the top (though perhaps she rose by good old fashioned sycophancy, before the equity stuff got really big?). Redfield seemed pretty mediocre, though he doesn't check any diversity boxes. Walensky, OMG, Peter principle personified. Fauci, of course, isn't mediocre at all. He's brilliant, in his machiavellian way, systematically subverting the system over decades to enrich and empower himself and his agency while hobbling the NIH from doing real, useful medicine and actually improving health.
The crash you're talking about is the horrible health outcomes of this pandemic. The hundreds of thousands who needlessly died or had severe cases of the virus itself; The unintended (or intended?) consequences of lockdowns, distancing, masks, etc. in all cause mortality and serious health and mental problems (e.g. how much did it contribute to Uvalde?); And of course, our beloved "vaccines" that somehow haven't really slowed bad COVID outcomes while bringing on unimaginable amounts of officially unrecognized death and injury and over time making even C19 viral infection worse. We could hardly have had a worse outcome if we'd tried, which we may have, which would actually argue more for competence than incompetence, if the goal was having the very worst public health outcomes in a world of horrible public health outcomes.
Everybody gets to try is fair and is also good for competition, it means we maximise the probability of finding those whose ability is hampered by social and economical factors. That was the original logic which for the past fifty or so years has been twisted into this strange thing called equity.
Low-hanging fruit example: I'll never be fireman. I'm strong enough, my endurance is well beyond what's needed, and intelligence and mental fortitude too. Sound great, right?
Only, my L5 vertebrae is busted. And my reflexes are slow. Also, my eyesight and hearing is impaired. And...
So I still won't make fireman. (This is an example I've used for 20+ years against PC-thugs by the way.) Are we to change the definitons and demands of fireman so than I can become it? What happens when you are trapped in a burning building and I can't carry you out due to my back - are you still okay with that lowered bar for fireman?
(It is at this point the reeting of the PC begins by the way.)
But everybody should be allowed to try.
When I applied for my teacher's education, the bar was 20/20 as average for your post-compulsory grades. And uni was still swampd with applications. Now, it's 0.3 (different scale, about 5 on the former). Note that single mothers autmatically get +0.2 for "life experince". But not single fathers, because equality and feminism, yo.
Meaning that for the past ten years, many teachers finish teacher's ed in Sweden are barely literate. Math and STEM - let's not even go there, m'kay? It's now so bad that foreign exchange students have sued the chancellory for higher education for refunding their tuition fees - and won, repeatedly.
It's so bad that 15% of pupils leaving compulsory school are unable to read a tabloid - too difficult.
It's so bad I advise younger people of child bearing age to emigrate to Poland or Romania.
The scariest part of this equity agenda is that medical schools have embraced it with gusto. Mine did! In pursuit of equality of outcomes, the 'disadvantaged' were preferentially admitted with what were otherwise wholly insufficient grades and test scores. Medical schools are desperate to keep students from quitting once admitted, so these unqualified students were given personal tutors and study help which were unavailable to the kids who had earned their admissions. Worse, the 'disadvantaged' were given free tuition while the deserving were tagged about $55,000 every year.
I have worked in my department with products of this equity agenda, and they were uniformly incompetent, having never gotten the message of the gigantic gift they were given. They are scary doctors, but cannot be criticized.
There's gonna be a helluva splatter when this gigantic tower of turds tips over..
Three fabulous subs this week! I ran a small business for years and I had two absolute rules. I never hired anyone less qualified than me. Their knowledge and success only made my business better. And I always paid fair wages. I got great returns on my investment and loyalty that humbled me. This movement toward ever-lowering averages makes no sense.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.
This describes the prime minister of Canada perfectly. There has never been an individual more dangerously under qualified, or abjectly incompetent for the job, yet here we are.
It is interesting. A company I worked for announced after Floyd that 75% of people hired at my level would be minority. My direct report, seeing that he now had no future because the company just told him he had no shot at ever moving up or replacing me, quit. When I transferred out the position sat open for about 18 months. After I quit the position I transferred into it has sat vacant for 6 months so far.
"Womens leadership is overlooked and under-recognized.."
By definition, if you are a leader you do not wait to be "recognized". You lead, because others will automatically follow - if you are a leader.
The real question is what comes next. They aren't going to relinquish control over their institutions, and competent people aren't going to have any interest in trying to sneak their way into collapsing wreckage, so as everything turns into a raging dumpster fire of incompetence, those institutions are going to need to be replaced. Pretty much from scratch.
Looked at from another angle it's a fascinating opportunity. We basically get to redesign society. Eat your heart out, Great REEEEsetters.
Excellent rant, Gato! I was thinking what some examples of this process at work might be. I think the big one, Public Health during COVID19, is probably as good as any, starting with the CDC/NIH.
Birx is a textbook example of mediocrity rising to the top (though perhaps she rose by good old fashioned sycophancy, before the equity stuff got really big?). Redfield seemed pretty mediocre, though he doesn't check any diversity boxes. Walensky, OMG, Peter principle personified. Fauci, of course, isn't mediocre at all. He's brilliant, in his machiavellian way, systematically subverting the system over decades to enrich and empower himself and his agency while hobbling the NIH from doing real, useful medicine and actually improving health.
The crash you're talking about is the horrible health outcomes of this pandemic. The hundreds of thousands who needlessly died or had severe cases of the virus itself; The unintended (or intended?) consequences of lockdowns, distancing, masks, etc. in all cause mortality and serious health and mental problems (e.g. how much did it contribute to Uvalde?); And of course, our beloved "vaccines" that somehow haven't really slowed bad COVID outcomes while bringing on unimaginable amounts of officially unrecognized death and injury and over time making even C19 viral infection worse. We could hardly have had a worse outcome if we'd tried, which we may have, which would actually argue more for competence than incompetence, if the goal was having the very worst public health outcomes in a world of horrible public health outcomes.
Everybody gets to try is fair and is also good for competition, it means we maximise the probability of finding those whose ability is hampered by social and economical factors. That was the original logic which for the past fifty or so years has been twisted into this strange thing called equity.
Low-hanging fruit example: I'll never be fireman. I'm strong enough, my endurance is well beyond what's needed, and intelligence and mental fortitude too. Sound great, right?
Only, my L5 vertebrae is busted. And my reflexes are slow. Also, my eyesight and hearing is impaired. And...
So I still won't make fireman. (This is an example I've used for 20+ years against PC-thugs by the way.) Are we to change the definitons and demands of fireman so than I can become it? What happens when you are trapped in a burning building and I can't carry you out due to my back - are you still okay with that lowered bar for fireman?
(It is at this point the reeting of the PC begins by the way.)
But everybody should be allowed to try.
When I applied for my teacher's education, the bar was 20/20 as average for your post-compulsory grades. And uni was still swampd with applications. Now, it's 0.3 (different scale, about 5 on the former). Note that single mothers autmatically get +0.2 for "life experince". But not single fathers, because equality and feminism, yo.
Meaning that for the past ten years, many teachers finish teacher's ed in Sweden are barely literate. Math and STEM - let's not even go there, m'kay? It's now so bad that foreign exchange students have sued the chancellory for higher education for refunding their tuition fees - and won, repeatedly.
It's so bad that 15% of pupils leaving compulsory school are unable to read a tabloid - too difficult.
It's so bad I advise younger people of child bearing age to emigrate to Poland or Romania.
The scariest part of this equity agenda is that medical schools have embraced it with gusto. Mine did! In pursuit of equality of outcomes, the 'disadvantaged' were preferentially admitted with what were otherwise wholly insufficient grades and test scores. Medical schools are desperate to keep students from quitting once admitted, so these unqualified students were given personal tutors and study help which were unavailable to the kids who had earned their admissions. Worse, the 'disadvantaged' were given free tuition while the deserving were tagged about $55,000 every year.
I have worked in my department with products of this equity agenda, and they were uniformly incompetent, having never gotten the message of the gigantic gift they were given. They are scary doctors, but cannot be criticized.
There's gonna be a helluva splatter when this gigantic tower of turds tips over..
Three fabulous subs this week! I ran a small business for years and I had two absolute rules. I never hired anyone less qualified than me. Their knowledge and success only made my business better. And I always paid fair wages. I got great returns on my investment and loyalty that humbled me. This movement toward ever-lowering averages makes no sense.
Omg this sums up a lot of my thoughts on the ESG metrics they use in finance
I've seen hires fail up so often
Dude im smashing that paid subscriber button today
This piece is excellent.
I find your lack of Harrison Bergeron references disturbing...
A truly capable person from an underrepresented group lives under a question mark: is this person capable or simply visible? It’s not fair to her.
And (again) Kurt Vonnegut comes to the rescue...
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
HARRISON BERGERON
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel's cheeks, but she'd forgotten for the moment what they were about.
**** and so on... (read the rest)
So many fields where you can see this happening; journalism, law, comes to mind and, sadly, now, medicine.
Refresh the tree of excellence with the pink slips of sacred cows
This describes the prime minister of Canada perfectly. There has never been an individual more dangerously under qualified, or abjectly incompetent for the job, yet here we are.
It is interesting. A company I worked for announced after Floyd that 75% of people hired at my level would be minority. My direct report, seeing that he now had no future because the company just told him he had no shot at ever moving up or replacing me, quit. When I transferred out the position sat open for about 18 months. After I quit the position I transferred into it has sat vacant for 6 months so far.
The above sums up the Biden administration perfectly; look up and down the cabinets, heads of agencies, branches, etc…complete tumult