I've noticed something in my own professional circles and I wonder very much if it's true/common in others' as well. There seems to be this inflation, not of currency, but of "awards" and "honors." It's like recognition has supplanted achievement as the goal. A simulacrum of achievement. Is this just the much-memed "everyone gets a trophy these days" phenomenon brought to bear in the grown-up world instead of only in children's athletics? And when will the bubble burst? When the institutions finally have their bottoms rot out and we suddenly find no one is left to hand out the trophies like candy?
When I was a kid we graduated from high school and after that, for those who went on, from university. Now kids graduate from preschool, from first grade, second grade, etc, and in between there are trimestrial and even monthly best in class. There are no more exams, no one seems to check if kids know what they learned, and then people wonder how come we came to this !
I can attest to this from the years I taught "First Year" (because we do not say "freshman" anymore) comp. @ a university--K-12 has utterly failed the kids. They don't know shit. I've seen kids I reported for plagiarism on the honor roll, because it was an open secret at the university that nothing was ever done about cheating/plagiarism, because the university had such a low graduation rate they didn't want to risk losing another tuition-paying (gov't subsidized-loan-ppaying, I should say) warm body. Got totally red-pilled working there, watching the antics of the POC profs ("White people are so stuck up!" and "I hate white people!" hollered in the halls, by them, which hey, have an opinion, that's great, but methinks if some white person hollered they hated brown people in the halls, top o' lungs, there would be all kinds of complaints filed, based on the 'ready-to-take-offense' culture there....). Plus the guilt-ridden white profs who just couldn't apologize enough for existing. It truly was a bastion of participation trophies (tho yes, there were a couple hard-working and genuinely curious students in every class, it was not 100% a joke...but maybe 95%?). Profoundly disillusioning, and I was already walking in relatively cynical. Left when they mandated the jab.
Michele...I blast through the comments. I enjoyed your comment. Wanted to tell you rather than leave a heart. Who knows who is at the other end of a Heart? At least my heart represents a guy who wanted to acknowledge your comment first hand.
No, it will continue to inflate as a larger pool of people compete for grant money, and an increasing number of those people are unworthy because they are lacking in the ability to use the funds effectively. But if they look good on paper and have a well written grant app, they will get funded. Institutions get overhead costs from that grant money, so they are incentivized to give as many awards as they can to their faculty and students in order to fluff their resumes so that they are more competitive. Once the spice starts to flow, it is easier to keep it flowing. I think this explains what you are seeing, but also the mentality of "everyone gets a trophy".
Absolutely! The company I work at is gagging on "better because of you" awards, almost invariably awarded for actually performing their basic job functions. Or worse, project managers that get the big "pinnacle" awards while not doing any of the actual work on the project.
Meanwhile those that actually keep the wheels from falling off toil in the shadows. But that's OK. I derive my sense of accomplishment from solving problems and keeping things running. Not from some idiot without even a basic familiarity with the work telling me "good job".
I remember supervising a train wreck of an employee. Serious drinking, attendance and performance problems.
She was angry at one point that she hadn't gotten a bonus of any kind (these were performance bonuses). She thought she deserved one because she had "gotten better" at her constant tardiness and absences and uselessness. She complained loudly about it for days.
If it had been up to me, I would have let her go.
I bet she's in charge of something governmental right now.
SpankinRedAss (Love your alias) A few hours ago I was reading this thing I will attach. Did not read all of it. I think the idea of coming up with the perfect way to manage people is a hopeless goal, since there are no perfect employers. Many employers depend way too much on their managers to groom and promote. No manager will groom and promote an employee who is better for the company than the manager is. You sound like a self motivated individual. A rare thing in today's screwed up business world.
Bingo. When the alpha male walks into the room, he owns it by his very presence. Formal rank structures are not the source of his social power, they're merely the recognition of reality. Stronk wammen shrilly insisting that everyone respek their autoritah understand this just as well as everyone else does - you can't not understand it, it's instinctive - which is the source of their ressentiment.
I run a small business. Nothing fancy, I paint houses and have seven guys working for me. But I swear you would be surprised how many times I go somewhere where I'm unknown and people call me "boss", "bossman", "chief", "big man", etc. I know this is part of the vernacular and some of it is just happenstance, but it happens almost universally. I asked a buddy about it and he said, "You just have a way of carrying yourself that says confidence and you expect to be listened to. You never ask to be listened to, people have no choice but to listen because you say meaningful things." Sooner or later people need to realize that if no one is listening to you, you're not saying anything worth listening to. Screaming, " I'm in charge, I'm in charge, listen to me!", is the cry of one who is already lost and certainly not worth following. I'm not bragging and this is not even about me, just piggybacking on your alpha male comment to say I think you're right that it's an instinctive thing.
I actually abhor the leadership position and wonder how I got here. I think others might do better. I read once that only he who has well learned to follow may safely lead. So I try to follow only truth. It's the safest leader I know.
I experience the same thing (chief/boss/etc., people deferring to me without my asking them to), despite not even being in a formal leadership position in my professional life. Presence is something you either have or you don't.
I also dislike being a leader. Generally I just want to do my own thing. There's that old saying about those who want power being precisely the ones who shouldn't have it. There's also the old, sadly almost dead, practice of recruiting leadership from those who worked their way up from the bottom, learning the business at every level, and learning how to take orders as a prerequisite to giving them. Seeing the defects of bad leadership from below is a powerful motivator to not be terrible when you're above.
The best leaders are servant leaders. As leader you create the environment that causes those working for to want to do their best. You can find books on servant leadership.
At the time I entered my profession, a majority of my bosses, male and female, were trained as apprentices in trial by (almost literal) fire, as I was hoping to be. These people commanded authority with their knowledge and working acumen. About midway through my journey, they were all supplanted by people who went to school for 2 or 4 years to get a degree. The result was poor, even laughable management that hired people, not on merit, but because of shared school connections. And people wonder why so many restarurants have the same menu these days and all the food is mediocre...
I struggled on for a few more years in the biz, carving out a niche in a specialty no one had the patience or discipline for anymore but I burned out in the end, just at the time I should have been passing my knowledge onto the next cohort as my teachers did before me.
I have no proof for the following, but think it's largely true. What you've just described might be called degree worship or credentialism. There was a time, until perhaps 1950, when a university degree meant something far more than they do today. Partly by the GI Bill, but later by tuition subsidies or even free (e.g. California system) led to a boom in post-secondary education. It became big business and eventually to a large extent, a racket. "Equal rights" further diluted the value of any random degree. Sure, certain disciplines and schools still provided a quality product, but overall, the popularization of the degree necessarily led to demeaning its value. Over the years, I've seen the claim that for various reasons, education (from K-12 through post-grad) has been dumbed down by the equivalent of 4 academic years. Often the comparison is made that Grandpa's H.S. diploma = today's BS degree, etc. Today, people are routinely admitted to MA or PhD programs where two generations ago, they would not have been admitted as an undergrad. In all but the rare rigorous program (perhaps MIT engineering or hard sciences, etc.?) few are weeded out, and they "fail upwards", often getting the sheepskin from what is little better than a diploma mill.
Now to bring this around to employment: by shifting promotion consideration away from seniority at a firm or other true experience, the availability of a large pool of supposedly qualified (After all, she has a degree!) stuffed shirts made it much easier to meet goals that had little to do with a firm's viability: such as to meet the latest affirmative action targets required by the government, or simply to get one's niece or son-in-law a cushy position, set for life, if she wanted it.
And that concludes my mini-lesson, yet another instance of how traditional values get watered down or discarded when they may interfere with short-term gains.
You can heart as many comments as you like. Hit your refresh button and then come back to the comment you hearted. It should show up - if not, push the heart button again.
Same here...also in the trades and interestingly I find that most of those I’m surrounded with who saw through the ‘plandemic’ are also in some sort of leadership capacity, self-employed, owners or higher responsibility employees.
Resentment is, approximately, being pissed off about a real or imagined wrong one has suffered. A lesser known but related word is resentiment, which I've seen only in Nietzsche. It means, again roughly: hating one's station in life, but realizing one has little or no power to improve it, e.g. an enslaved or subjugated people. As with normal resentment, often a scapegoat is needed, even if the intended target cannot possibly be at fault by normal, rational standards.
Investment tip: find public companies that have recently appointed an “equity” (usually female) CEO. Short them. See IBM and HP, among others. It’s not guaranteed, but you will beat the market.
It’s not that a woman necessarily can’t do the job; it’s more about how those who get to the C-suite actually accomplish that feat.
I get accused of “sexism” for this very practical investment advice, but I don’t make the market. The money talks.
I think this phenomenon illustrates the Bad Cat’s thesis rather well.
As a professional trader / investor, I would respectfully suggest not doing this investment strategy. There is an investment maxim:
The markets can remain irrational much longer than you can remain solvent.
Shorting is dangerous business amidst high inflation and corrupt institutions. Rather, buy puts (put spreads even better) at levels you can afford to lose, if that's your strat.
We have a female CEO. Not only is she gung-ho to win, but when asked about female role models, the first words out of her mouth were "Margaret Thatcher!"
I think we will succeed with leadership like that.
I get the generalization, though. Anybody promoted for the wrong reason is likely to fail.
Exactly. I see no reason that a company can’t have every success with a woman at the helm, and as a father of a daughter, I am delighted when women in general, and my daughter in particular, are successful at whatever they choose to do.
Sadly, I have seen those promoted for the wrong reasons, and it breaks my heart. I saw this just recently. The newly-minted “manager” gave a presentation to a bunch of call-a-spade-a-spade engineers at which he proudly trotted out all the de rigueur vocabulary in syntactically correct sentences that didn’t really convey much meaning, and then was unable to answer even rudimentary questions. People were, mercifully, polite about it, but I felt really terrible for the poor guy because I sensed everyone was thinking the same thing I was. I honestly hope he grows into the position. But it was not a strong start and it was obvious the fellow had been promoted beyond where he should have been. I think his chances of being happy doing what he is doing are not good.
My last boss was amazing. She was my supervisor for about 20 years and she knew how to motivate me (and keep me happy), she was sharp as a tack and knew my job (having done it before) and she was an absolute bulldog protecting me from the bullshit coming down from on high. I doubt I will ever see such a good boss again, male or female.
Agreed. Shorts can be a zero sum game. And downside risk with shorts is there's no floor or support levels if a stock rebounds - theoretically a stock price can keep rising forever. In other words with a short you could lose much more than 100% of the original investment. I learned this the hard way during dot com bust.
Although in theory I can short, my funds (and my gut) do not allow. I have two years of using (mostly) puts betting against (and so far) losing. Ask me how my Russian stocks are doing that I bought shortly before they were suspended. 😡 I've gotten this whim that I could be a fantastic investor, nay, speculator, if I could figure out how to invest in precisely the opposite of what I do. 🙂
My advice: You should be good on the Russian stocks. You have to wait for some resolution to the sanctions to trade them on our markets. However, you MIGHT be able to transfer them to some overseas exchange that is not sanctioning. I imagine those stocks have bounced back and you would be in profit in most foreign currencies. I know the Ruble shot way back up in spite of being blocked from trading on Western markets.
Patience is key! Considering the artificial price suppression, you should be fine.
I'll buy them myself if we can figure out how to transfer to my account!
Added to that - during a major crash, you will see some of the biggest upmoves in the market, mostly due to shorts taking profit and triggering upside stops. So if you're timing is off, you are fcuked.
Along the same lines, ever since Affirmative Action (equity) was put into effect, I will not use a doctor, lawyer, etc, who is a potential recipient of such policy. I want my hired experts to have earned their knowledge, not gained a degree thru ethnicity or skin color.
You can apply similar logic evaluating a person's competence by their skin's melanin content. Absent any other data, this actually is a fair rule of thumb to assess an individual's competence, or more likely, that Peter Principle example of being promoted beyond where one's qualifications dictate. Of course, you will be called "racist" if anyone finds out. And that's probably a condemnation far worse than "sexism."
An often overlooked irony, black humor as it were 😏, of the whole "diversity" craze is this: by holding minorities to low standards, they actually perpetuate traditional stereotypes! The statistically rare, but truly qualified minority's talent may go unrecognized, because cynical observers will lump him in with the rest of his ilk, under the depressingly correct assumption that any randomly chosen member of that group is probably of mediocre quality with make-believe credentials and training.
Tragically true. There have been many minorities that have achieved a lot, yet are diminished by pushing in-your-face diversity. The curse of low expectations harms society.
The sports analogy is so obvious--and lethal. This is what Vonnegut foresaw in his dystopic story, Harrison Bergeron. What is also literally lethal is a world where mechanical engineers can believe that 2 + 2 = 5. Who is going to redesign and rebuild our crumbling physical infrastructure while our cultural intellectual capital is crumbling? Jocalyn's favored affirmative action recipients. LOOK OUT BELOW!
We're losing the old cohort of engineers who can build things with a slide rule and a piece of paper to write on. Kids these days can't do crap without a computer and AutoCad.
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.
well, the good news is that in most cases, we don't really need them at all.
markets and cooperative parallel structures already exist and will rapidly evolve if we get these dead hands off the controls of the world.
imagine how schools might flourish if there were no such things as a department of education and we funded kids, not systems.
imagine the vibrancy of an energy sector without absurdist rules and regulations driven instead by markets and property rights.
these folks have set themselves up to be utterly routed as the bar to look better is now so low that even a half free market could step over it and never even have noticed that it was there.
but the citizens will notice. and they will learn whom and what trust.
this is the cycle by which another generation is inoculated against collectivist malthusian stupidity and doctrinal obsession.
it's a shame that such lessons are never durable and recede as times once more get good, but that's human nature for you...
Quibble: the only people who should be funding students are their parents. There should be no "we" involved.
The biggest budget item in my state is for government-run and -controlled "education." I'm tired of my money being stolen to pay for the schooling of other people's kids. They need to pay for it themselves.
But I think it is always important at least to STATE what the ultimate goal should be rather than immediately "settle" for what is politically feasible now and not even bother to mention what SHOULD be done. Not doing so seems to be pandering to the lowest common denominator rather than attempting to challenge people to be their best.
(That's a big problem with the NRA, for example, vs GOA. The folks at the latter state what we should be doing then get the best deal they can.)
Vouchers may be better. Maybe. But they still come with government control. He who pays the piper…
Incrementalism is fine, in some contexts. You break the chains one at a time.
But ultimately slavery can't be reformed. It can only be abolished.
I think it's a mistake not to make that goal clear from the start.
Not only a mistake but deceitful. Endpoints are important, essential. My sense is WEF has a clear endpoint, at least the “A” players do. I do believe this group has “hired” B & C players. Possibly no fair to include WEF in the scenario.
Being clear about goals is really essential. At the moral level, it's what differentiates us from the WEF. They need to trick people into adopting their policies, because if they just came out and said 'we want to enslave everyone' no one would go for it.
Without clear goals, how do we know where we’re going or when we’ve arrived? With obscured ends, in the best case, we may end up in the general neighborhood where we want to be. In a worse case, we’ll lose our way and find ourselves in a bad situation.
(I couldn’t find my original reply. Apologies if this is basically a duplicate.)
Indeed; Washington where I'm from is certainly not the only state where provision of basic primary and secondary education is mandated for the state to perform.
That's a traditional conservative dream. But as you say, it is simply not politically possible. In fact the nation's public "education" system is a textbook example of an institution captured by special interests. In the case of education, it is the teachers, their unions, and allied government education administrators. These are all but untouchable and thus immune to any substantive change. As with any system, once established, is first priority is to survive and, if possible, to grow. Educating children is an incidental.
If the above is a reasonable view, then it follows that no reform of the system is possible absent a catastrophic destruction or weakening of the existing system. Since there is so much legal framework holding all this together, it would probably require a literal revolution or other complete change of government to dramatically alter it. I don't think the next election is going to do the trick.
I have no children and have paid for crappy education for other people’s children for decades. I’d gladly donate to what I consider an excellent school because I do believe the education of children impacts our future as a society. But it would never be a government school with unions involved.
Hmm - I'm open to that argument, but I'm not in agreement. This is punitive to the poor, which also harms society in general.
Obviously, handing the power of all education decision over to the state is a recipe for whatever the fcuk we have now - a dumpster fire of a society trying to wage war against half the planet and half its own people with idiots believing women have penises and gene therapies will vaccinate well if we just vax harder.
But there has to be SOME middle ground. I have no problem paying taxes for legit education to genuinely benefit society and the less fortunate.
Maybe a local level? Or an opt-in system with some better choice? idk.
What I think is punitive to the poor is them having no escape from horrendous government schools. Whenever poor parents have a chance to leave gov schools and migrate to private schools, they scramble to do so.
You and anyone else are welcome, as you suggest, to opt in to give as much of your money to whomever you want. You or anyone else have zero right forcibly to take other people’s money. That’s called “theft.”
I never said anything about taking your money, princess. Calm down.
So, let me get this straight - get them out of bad government schools and leave them to never learn to read or write unless someone bothers to teach them cause they can't afford private schools.
Agree, we are in the process of removing power from the "incompetocracy". (Love that term - thank you). Our ostensible rulers, our acknowledged lords and masters, still labour tirelessly at their tasks, 'dumbing down' education, imposing 'equity', eliminating constitutional rights, and transiting their societies into totalitarian states.
The downside is - real power now resides in the nameless, faceless, bureaucratic state. Who are the puppeteers pulling the strings of the Bidens, Turdos and Johnsons of the world? And what is their long term goal? Are they really stupid enough to believe that they, personally, are somehow exempt from the economic and social chaos their incompetent minions are loosing on the world? Undoubtedly, there will be a reset. There always is. But I suspect the transition to whatever comes next will be cataclysmic.
They kinda are...They all have fully stocked bunkers in New Zealand. BUT, they do need servants...And someone on another substack said something about gasoline down the airflow pipes???
That's arguably a case for, not against, youth rights. What could be more dangerous to liberty than subjecting those "barbarians" to so many years of submission to arbitrary authority? Is that why 2020 happened?
No argument here. I advocate the complete separation of education and State.
Interesting site, was not previously aware of it. I think I could get behind what they propose, but working to have the State change one arbitrary age requirement to another does not strike at the root of the problem.
When the political winds change, all of the progress can be easily erased.
The root problem is the State having power over things like drinking ages, compulsory indoctrination in its "schools", etc., etc., ad nauseam.
I'm glad I introduced one more person to the idea of youth rights. Anti-youth ageism is so pervasive nowadays that we supporters of youth rights can feel like voices crying in the wilderness. If my phrase "not against" sounded a bit defensive, that's the reason why.
"When the political winds change, all of the progress can be easily erased."
Yes, that can happen, but the good news is that politics is downstream of culture. Respect for youth rights at the *cultural* level would be relatively durable. Hypothetically, gays could suddenly lose their newly won permission to marry each other through a change in political winds, but it seems very unlikely given the ongoing decline of homophobia in the culture.
What is "the real fight"? Since culture guides politics, I think the real fight at any given time is what will most likely move the Overton window in a favorable direction. Because of the Overton window, we can expect the culture to become a tiny bit less ageist whenever any government allows sixteen-year-olds to vote, for example. Every little bit helps.
'imagine the vibrancy of an energy sector without absurdist rules and regulations driven instead by markets and property rights.'
Operative word there is "absurdist". I grew up in LA in the 60s where you couldn't see more than a block for the smog. Some regulation is actually useful.
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.
These officials and politicians reach these positions because they've sacrificed their souls for notoriety and increasingly worthless fiat currency. I will not shed a tear when they end up swinging from the lamp posts.
Such a pity that none of them will ever be held to account for their failures. While the vaccine mantra has now subsided given the arrival of real result data, they refuse to admit error. We can hope that the damage is not long term and that competent leadership will arrive. There have to be honorable people within those institutions who can rise.
I share your optimism, but only if we can get a good administration that knows what time it is, such as Desantis. I'm not even sure it could happen under Trump. If we continue to have Dem admins, thngs will only get worse.
I can hope that others beyond DeSantis rise to the cause. I do hope Trump decides to back others. We need a free Florida to prosper to show the way forward.
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 fireman example is classic. Used to get in arguments with feminists back in the 90s, after Canadian fire departments started using different standards in order to meet equity targets. It amazed me at the time that it was more important to them to have more firemenesses than it was to know they had a reasonable chance of their unconscious bodies being hauled out of burning buildings.
After an additional 20 years of this, ideologically induced mental illness no longer amazes me. Now I'm just enjoying a cold beer while I watch the building burn, with them trapped inside.
Never thought that things are that bad that someone would unironically advise it's better to emigrate from Sweden to Romania. And I should know cause I am from and still live in Romania. ;)
Realty is essential. But I do want to have the opportunity to engage. There are many preconceived notions. Some of them have been dispelled. I don’t want to be told that I cannot try. I know you are saying that.
I know as an older female (XX) I won’t bench as much as a male. It frustrates me, very much but it is a realty. I do pretty well and I haven’t reached my limit.
Too true - when we stopped teaching children that you can both aspire to be all you can be - Per Aspera Ad Astra so to speak - and in the words of Eastwood: "Man's gotta know his limitations", we broke every generation thereafter.
Male/female example: when hiking, my natural gait and pace is much more mile-devouring than my wife's so I generally wind up about half a mile in front of her and can have mini-breaks while she catches up. Of course, I can lurch along at her pace too but that doesn't make her move faster.
So instead I scout ahead, marking nice spots for a break, putting marks to show where I went, where there's fresh water and so on. Meaning that when we make camp, it's me who does most of the work, except raising the tent - that kind of thing is where she excels.
So we achieve that much vaunted ewuity and equality and whatnot by complementing eachothers strenghts and compensating eachothers weaknesses.
Which is how it should be: voluntary, natural, spontaneous and free of coercion. (And trying to "corece" my wife to do something she won't, well... duck and cover 'cause all the trees in the Lady's forest ain't enough to hide behind.)
Never having been a highly motivated sort, I've accumulated little praises of sloth here and there in life. One of my favorites is this obscure Grateful Dead tune (first stanza):
I don't think anyone ever said "girls can't apply to be firefighters." They said, "here are the standards," and it turned out that 99% of females could not meet them.
Similarly, I can try to give birth all I want. It's never going to happen. Biology is what it is and there's no sense being 'frustrated' by it unless you privilege illusory ideological silliness such as 'equality' over simply accepting what you are and being the best 'what you are' that you can be.
There has to be acknowledgement of both sides.That you can try no matter who you are, but there are standards to be met and these are non negotiable. I came up in restaurants from a dishwasher to a lead line and supervisory worker. I could take out the trash, carry hundred pound sacks of the potatoes and work just as fast as any man in 120 degree environment. And I still had old farts come up to me and said they didn't believe women should be in cooking... And, conversely. I have seen guys who had no business in a kitchen f*ck shit up for everyone.
Unfotutuantely, it is all a case by case kind of thing and our mass produced world doesn't like to have to deal with people as individuals.
What did 35 years in the biz give me? A valuable life skill. I'm not starving anytime soon and know how to make just about anything palatable. Next step is learning the cooking my grandma knew and learning to preserve food.
You can preserve fresh garlic for over a year if you grind it in a cuisinart and douse it in olive oil. I use the leftover olive oil from jars of sun-dried tomatoes that would otherwise go unused. Then you pack it in jars and put in the fridge. One thing to get everyone started on stocking up, LOL.
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..
You are correct - but even more chilling, when the equitables fail exams, screw up on the floors and are called out for these problems - they complain bitterly about prejudice and attempt to cancel anyone at any level who attempt to hold them accountable to "standards."
This completely changes the level of instruction, mastery of concept, information and procedure. Creates a race to the bottom of expertise. The tragedy: The splatter is the patients they treat.
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.
Welcome aboard. And a sincere invitation for all the other cheapskates to do likewise 🤓. Gato puts out some quality stuff. Allow me to trash some others though. I quit Berenson about six months ago. I took a peak a few days ago and based on his recent output, my decision is validated. 😛 Kirsch: I downgraded to a free reader. He does occasionally have an interesting piece, but mostly he seems to be challenging the world to debate him, with no takers so far.
That person actually has a material advantage. In my senior year in college, a bright friend was offered a ton of $$ to attend by Harvard Med. and UCSF, UCSF won the bidding war. He was black, but the son of two doctors, grew up on Park Ave., and went to (iirc) St. Paul's. The institutions in question had to meet nascent quotas but wanted competent students (this was decades ago when the latter outweighed The Message). Academia and government are irredeemably lost, but fields based on competence will find work-arounds while they can. If Gato is right and we're reaching the point where that's no longer possible, we'll move to a parallel economy; in some ways we already are.
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.
Medicine has been at the root of our sick society, at least in the US, for decades. Best healthcare? (NOT) yet the sickest, fattest nation. It took a Plandemic to shine the light on its failure by design.
That has hit home (or more accurately volunteer "work") lately. Staffer, female aged 47, was recently hospitalized for "heart trouble." Office gossip is that she had a stent put in her leg. (I realize that gossip often mangles the facts....but...) Here is a woman with (to my ken) no prior health issues (or she wouldn't have been hired in her position.) I'm not a doctor, but when I hear "stent" I hear "blood clot." How does a leg issue affect the heart? This does NOT sound good.
Example #2: Mother, retired nurse aged perhaps 60. Not one, but two of her adult children (30-something) have new or recurred cancers.
No word on the vaccination status of the victims, but I know that statistically about 70% of Americans have taken at least one jab. 😟
I got a pink slip for vociferously objecting to this type of crap in my corporate systems job. They paid me a 💩 ton of $ to leave, probably the best thing that ever happened to me. More than one way to skin a cat!
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.
Reverse racism is still racism. What's funny about "racism" is that the meaning scumbag Lev Bronstein (Leon Trotsky) intended was totally hijacked for a different purpose.
Interesting. No offense intended: Does that mean those positions aren't really necessary (or not necessary enough to get the 25% pool of traditional hiring) or is the company just so devoted to wokeness it is willing to not function well rather than hire a nonminority?
Extremely necessary. I'm an automation/controls engineer. The one place paid $200/hr for 18 months and the other is paying 15k a month to fill the gap with a contractor.
How woke? Well their pride product makes the news every year about how woke they are.
Ah, so they are filling the gaps with contractors. Sneaky. So they are not willing to let their operation suffer, but they are willing to pay a premium to get contractors and satisfy the silliness on paper only.
CNN had a story recently about junior Whitehouse staffers feeling at sea and unable to move forward because of a lack of direction and support. This is what happens when you hire the entitled incompetent. They believe that once you place them in the position, it is your responsibility to make them smart and capable.
Leadership is necessary tho. Where would I have been if my first chefs just set me to fend for myself in what would have been first jobs? Training is involved. That's why these people are juniors. If they are not getting the training they need, it may not necessarily be their fault.
I don't think so. I think capable people can instinctively, if not immediately, figure out what's going on by watching, copying others, and coming to understand what's needed.
Ain't gonna argue with that. But there used to be a passing of wisdom from one tier to another. Nowadays none of them know shit, least of how how to lead.
Not to flog it too much, but anywhere I was a cook coworkers came to me to ask questions: "how to do this" or "where is that" or best yet, "What do you do to make a biscuit irresistably flaky?". If the seniors are shit and can't explain things, especially in a place like the whitehouse, we have a problem.
agreed. I am tempted to ask how to make a biscuit irresistibly flaky but can't. I'm doing keto and I suspect it is butter, which I love. Butter is keto and now I'm off on a tangent. See why I can't ask how to make biscuits irresistibly flaky?
Totally agree. This connects to BadCat's main point. Those in the WH aren't true leaders, they aren't even adequate leaders. They can't lead because they are also at sea being incompetent and having "earned" their position thanks to the levels of intersectionality they can demonstrate.
"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.
I've noticed something in my own professional circles and I wonder very much if it's true/common in others' as well. There seems to be this inflation, not of currency, but of "awards" and "honors." It's like recognition has supplanted achievement as the goal. A simulacrum of achievement. Is this just the much-memed "everyone gets a trophy these days" phenomenon brought to bear in the grown-up world instead of only in children's athletics? And when will the bubble burst? When the institutions finally have their bottoms rot out and we suddenly find no one is left to hand out the trophies like candy?
When I was a kid we graduated from high school and after that, for those who went on, from university. Now kids graduate from preschool, from first grade, second grade, etc, and in between there are trimestrial and even monthly best in class. There are no more exams, no one seems to check if kids know what they learned, and then people wonder how come we came to this !
I can attest to this from the years I taught "First Year" (because we do not say "freshman" anymore) comp. @ a university--K-12 has utterly failed the kids. They don't know shit. I've seen kids I reported for plagiarism on the honor roll, because it was an open secret at the university that nothing was ever done about cheating/plagiarism, because the university had such a low graduation rate they didn't want to risk losing another tuition-paying (gov't subsidized-loan-ppaying, I should say) warm body. Got totally red-pilled working there, watching the antics of the POC profs ("White people are so stuck up!" and "I hate white people!" hollered in the halls, by them, which hey, have an opinion, that's great, but methinks if some white person hollered they hated brown people in the halls, top o' lungs, there would be all kinds of complaints filed, based on the 'ready-to-take-offense' culture there....). Plus the guilt-ridden white profs who just couldn't apologize enough for existing. It truly was a bastion of participation trophies (tho yes, there were a couple hard-working and genuinely curious students in every class, it was not 100% a joke...but maybe 95%?). Profoundly disillusioning, and I was already walking in relatively cynical. Left when they mandated the jab.
I hope you found a better and more rewarding occupation !
Michele...I blast through the comments. I enjoyed your comment. Wanted to tell you rather than leave a heart. Who knows who is at the other end of a Heart? At least my heart represents a guy who wanted to acknowledge your comment first hand.
Thanks, Get.
No, it will continue to inflate as a larger pool of people compete for grant money, and an increasing number of those people are unworthy because they are lacking in the ability to use the funds effectively. But if they look good on paper and have a well written grant app, they will get funded. Institutions get overhead costs from that grant money, so they are incentivized to give as many awards as they can to their faculty and students in order to fluff their resumes so that they are more competitive. Once the spice starts to flow, it is easier to keep it flowing. I think this explains what you are seeing, but also the mentality of "everyone gets a trophy".
Absolutely! The company I work at is gagging on "better because of you" awards, almost invariably awarded for actually performing their basic job functions. Or worse, project managers that get the big "pinnacle" awards while not doing any of the actual work on the project.
Meanwhile those that actually keep the wheels from falling off toil in the shadows. But that's OK. I derive my sense of accomplishment from solving problems and keeping things running. Not from some idiot without even a basic familiarity with the work telling me "good job".
I remember supervising a train wreck of an employee. Serious drinking, attendance and performance problems.
She was angry at one point that she hadn't gotten a bonus of any kind (these were performance bonuses). She thought she deserved one because she had "gotten better" at her constant tardiness and absences and uselessness. She complained loudly about it for days.
If it had been up to me, I would have let her go.
I bet she's in charge of something governmental right now.
SpankinRedAss (Love your alias) A few hours ago I was reading this thing I will attach. Did not read all of it. I think the idea of coming up with the perfect way to manage people is a hopeless goal, since there are no perfect employers. Many employers depend way too much on their managers to groom and promote. No manager will groom and promote an employee who is better for the company than the manager is. You sound like a self motivated individual. A rare thing in today's screwed up business world.
This article may interest you.
https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-neuroscience-of-trust?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=LinkedIn&tpcc=orgsocial_edit&fbclid=IwAR0pgYtL_WBakrROyeF48VGFtNhTNfzVSYSj5pDyBc3N8DV1vAz9uwU2L_I
Mine has smelled like it's rotting for years, yet when I look at it in the mirror it seems healthy enough. 🤡
I think The Lancet has done that over and over. Starting back with their derision of John Snow in London.
Bingo. When the alpha male walks into the room, he owns it by his very presence. Formal rank structures are not the source of his social power, they're merely the recognition of reality. Stronk wammen shrilly insisting that everyone respek their autoritah understand this just as well as everyone else does - you can't not understand it, it's instinctive - which is the source of their ressentiment.
I run a small business. Nothing fancy, I paint houses and have seven guys working for me. But I swear you would be surprised how many times I go somewhere where I'm unknown and people call me "boss", "bossman", "chief", "big man", etc. I know this is part of the vernacular and some of it is just happenstance, but it happens almost universally. I asked a buddy about it and he said, "You just have a way of carrying yourself that says confidence and you expect to be listened to. You never ask to be listened to, people have no choice but to listen because you say meaningful things." Sooner or later people need to realize that if no one is listening to you, you're not saying anything worth listening to. Screaming, " I'm in charge, I'm in charge, listen to me!", is the cry of one who is already lost and certainly not worth following. I'm not bragging and this is not even about me, just piggybacking on your alpha male comment to say I think you're right that it's an instinctive thing.
I actually abhor the leadership position and wonder how I got here. I think others might do better. I read once that only he who has well learned to follow may safely lead. So I try to follow only truth. It's the safest leader I know.
I experience the same thing (chief/boss/etc., people deferring to me without my asking them to), despite not even being in a formal leadership position in my professional life. Presence is something you either have or you don't.
I also dislike being a leader. Generally I just want to do my own thing. There's that old saying about those who want power being precisely the ones who shouldn't have it. There's also the old, sadly almost dead, practice of recruiting leadership from those who worked their way up from the bottom, learning the business at every level, and learning how to take orders as a prerequisite to giving them. Seeing the defects of bad leadership from below is a powerful motivator to not be terrible when you're above.
The best leaders are servant leaders. As leader you create the environment that causes those working for to want to do their best. You can find books on servant leadership.
This is an old principle. The chieftain is not the destination for gifts; he's the distribution point.
That’s true even in the realms of dogs and other primates as well, see Jordan Peterson
At the time I entered my profession, a majority of my bosses, male and female, were trained as apprentices in trial by (almost literal) fire, as I was hoping to be. These people commanded authority with their knowledge and working acumen. About midway through my journey, they were all supplanted by people who went to school for 2 or 4 years to get a degree. The result was poor, even laughable management that hired people, not on merit, but because of shared school connections. And people wonder why so many restarurants have the same menu these days and all the food is mediocre...
I struggled on for a few more years in the biz, carving out a niche in a specialty no one had the patience or discipline for anymore but I burned out in the end, just at the time I should have been passing my knowledge onto the next cohort as my teachers did before me.
The Masters of Business Administration graduates are a plague on humanity on par with lawyers and AWFLs.
Hey wait! No! there are those of us who got our masters while working and applying what we learned.
I have no proof for the following, but think it's largely true. What you've just described might be called degree worship or credentialism. There was a time, until perhaps 1950, when a university degree meant something far more than they do today. Partly by the GI Bill, but later by tuition subsidies or even free (e.g. California system) led to a boom in post-secondary education. It became big business and eventually to a large extent, a racket. "Equal rights" further diluted the value of any random degree. Sure, certain disciplines and schools still provided a quality product, but overall, the popularization of the degree necessarily led to demeaning its value. Over the years, I've seen the claim that for various reasons, education (from K-12 through post-grad) has been dumbed down by the equivalent of 4 academic years. Often the comparison is made that Grandpa's H.S. diploma = today's BS degree, etc. Today, people are routinely admitted to MA or PhD programs where two generations ago, they would not have been admitted as an undergrad. In all but the rare rigorous program (perhaps MIT engineering or hard sciences, etc.?) few are weeded out, and they "fail upwards", often getting the sheepskin from what is little better than a diploma mill.
Now to bring this around to employment: by shifting promotion consideration away from seniority at a firm or other true experience, the availability of a large pool of supposedly qualified (After all, she has a degree!) stuffed shirts made it much easier to meet goals that had little to do with a firm's viability: such as to meet the latest affirmative action targets required by the government, or simply to get one's niece or son-in-law a cushy position, set for life, if she wanted it.
And that concludes my mini-lesson, yet another instance of how traditional values get watered down or discarded when they may interfere with short-term gains.
What passes for education these days...🤦♂️🤦♂️
The little ♥️ thingummy is not working.
Lol. It's ok. My wife of 37 years and our 11 children give me all the validation I need. But your kindness is appreciated.
It does - hit the refresh button and you'll likely see your heart. If not, push the heart button again.
I believe you can only heart a person once a thread.
You can heart as many comments as you like. Hit your refresh button and then come back to the comment you hearted. It should show up - if not, push the heart button again.
Haha! I also tried to give you a heart but it's not working. It seems to be just you, as others I've hearted show up.
"I also tried to give you a heart but it's not working. "
Sounds like myocarditis. Have you been anywhere near a covid vax?
Lol! Pureblood here, heart's in great shape.
Same here...also in the trades and interestingly I find that most of those I’m surrounded with who saw through the ‘plandemic’ are also in some sort of leadership capacity, self-employed, owners or higher responsibility employees.
Resentment is a huge component of the left's mentality. Check out the book by Robert Schaeffer (sp?) "Resentment Against Achievement".
Without resentment there is no left, basically.
Excellent comment. You don't even need the qualifier "basically". The left is Pride embodied.
Unfortunately there is that pesky thing called human nature.
Resentment is, approximately, being pissed off about a real or imagined wrong one has suffered. A lesser known but related word is resentiment, which I've seen only in Nietzsche. It means, again roughly: hating one's station in life, but realizing one has little or no power to improve it, e.g. an enslaved or subjugated people. As with normal resentment, often a scapegoat is needed, even if the intended target cannot possibly be at fault by normal, rational standards.
Investment tip: find public companies that have recently appointed an “equity” (usually female) CEO. Short them. See IBM and HP, among others. It’s not guaranteed, but you will beat the market.
It’s not that a woman necessarily can’t do the job; it’s more about how those who get to the C-suite actually accomplish that feat.
I get accused of “sexism” for this very practical investment advice, but I don’t make the market. The money talks.
I think this phenomenon illustrates the Bad Cat’s thesis rather well.
As a professional trader / investor, I would respectfully suggest not doing this investment strategy. There is an investment maxim:
The markets can remain irrational much longer than you can remain solvent.
Shorting is dangerous business amidst high inflation and corrupt institutions. Rather, buy puts (put spreads even better) at levels you can afford to lose, if that's your strat.
Thank you; a very important practical distinction. I was sloppy in wording my attempt to convey the concept of “bet against”.
No worries. Let me know how it goes if you pursue it and Good Luck!
We have a female CEO. Not only is she gung-ho to win, but when asked about female role models, the first words out of her mouth were "Margaret Thatcher!"
I think we will succeed with leadership like that.
I get the generalization, though. Anybody promoted for the wrong reason is likely to fail.
Exactly. I see no reason that a company can’t have every success with a woman at the helm, and as a father of a daughter, I am delighted when women in general, and my daughter in particular, are successful at whatever they choose to do.
Sadly, I have seen those promoted for the wrong reasons, and it breaks my heart. I saw this just recently. The newly-minted “manager” gave a presentation to a bunch of call-a-spade-a-spade engineers at which he proudly trotted out all the de rigueur vocabulary in syntactically correct sentences that didn’t really convey much meaning, and then was unable to answer even rudimentary questions. People were, mercifully, polite about it, but I felt really terrible for the poor guy because I sensed everyone was thinking the same thing I was. I honestly hope he grows into the position. But it was not a strong start and it was obvious the fellow had been promoted beyond where he should have been. I think his chances of being happy doing what he is doing are not good.
My last boss was amazing. She was my supervisor for about 20 years and she knew how to motivate me (and keep me happy), she was sharp as a tack and knew my job (having done it before) and she was an absolute bulldog protecting me from the bullshit coming down from on high. I doubt I will ever see such a good boss again, male or female.
Agreed. Shorts can be a zero sum game. And downside risk with shorts is there's no floor or support levels if a stock rebounds - theoretically a stock price can keep rising forever. In other words with a short you could lose much more than 100% of the original investment. I learned this the hard way during dot com bust.
Although in theory I can short, my funds (and my gut) do not allow. I have two years of using (mostly) puts betting against (and so far) losing. Ask me how my Russian stocks are doing that I bought shortly before they were suspended. 😡 I've gotten this whim that I could be a fantastic investor, nay, speculator, if I could figure out how to invest in precisely the opposite of what I do. 🙂
My advice: You should be good on the Russian stocks. You have to wait for some resolution to the sanctions to trade them on our markets. However, you MIGHT be able to transfer them to some overseas exchange that is not sanctioning. I imagine those stocks have bounced back and you would be in profit in most foreign currencies. I know the Ruble shot way back up in spite of being blocked from trading on Western markets.
Patience is key! Considering the artificial price suppression, you should be fine.
I'll buy them myself if we can figure out how to transfer to my account!
Use the Costanzo method. And if you're feeling randy, then do it all on margin...;)
Added to that - during a major crash, you will see some of the biggest upmoves in the market, mostly due to shorts taking profit and triggering upside stops. So if you're timing is off, you are fcuked.
So true. And then it's humpty-dumpty in a million pieces on the ground. I think that's where we're headed.
Isn't it easier just to copy Pelosi?
Along the same lines, ever since Affirmative Action (equity) was put into effect, I will not use a doctor, lawyer, etc, who is a potential recipient of such policy. I want my hired experts to have earned their knowledge, not gained a degree thru ethnicity or skin color.
That’s the unfortunate unintended consequence.
You can apply similar logic evaluating a person's competence by their skin's melanin content. Absent any other data, this actually is a fair rule of thumb to assess an individual's competence, or more likely, that Peter Principle example of being promoted beyond where one's qualifications dictate. Of course, you will be called "racist" if anyone finds out. And that's probably a condemnation far worse than "sexism."
An often overlooked irony, black humor as it were 😏, of the whole "diversity" craze is this: by holding minorities to low standards, they actually perpetuate traditional stereotypes! The statistically rare, but truly qualified minority's talent may go unrecognized, because cynical observers will lump him in with the rest of his ilk, under the depressingly correct assumption that any randomly chosen member of that group is probably of mediocre quality with make-believe credentials and training.
Tragically true. There have been many minorities that have achieved a lot, yet are diminished by pushing in-your-face diversity. The curse of low expectations harms society.
You might want to watch IBM as it has recovered from some earlier misadventures.
Yes. The first step in IBM’s rehabilitation was saying goodbye to Ginni Rometty.
"You don't lead by hitting people over the head--that's assault, not leadership." -- D. Eisenhower
We have seen this scenario a lot lately.
The sports analogy is so obvious--and lethal. This is what Vonnegut foresaw in his dystopic story, Harrison Bergeron. What is also literally lethal is a world where mechanical engineers can believe that 2 + 2 = 5. Who is going to redesign and rebuild our crumbling physical infrastructure while our cultural intellectual capital is crumbling? Jocalyn's favored affirmative action recipients. LOOK OUT BELOW!
Diana Moon Glampers!
Now we'll have a fifty page intersectionality chart to decide how to tune your limiter.
We're losing the old cohort of engineers who can build things with a slide rule and a piece of paper to write on. Kids these days can't do crap without a computer and AutoCad.
my Dad taught me how to use a slide rule when I was 5. coolest thing ever
I miss the slide rule. I might find one and play, maybe an abacus. Thanks for the idea
"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." - Margaret Thatcher
Amen
See potus and especially the vp office!
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.
well, the good news is that in most cases, we don't really need them at all.
markets and cooperative parallel structures already exist and will rapidly evolve if we get these dead hands off the controls of the world.
imagine how schools might flourish if there were no such things as a department of education and we funded kids, not systems.
imagine the vibrancy of an energy sector without absurdist rules and regulations driven instead by markets and property rights.
these folks have set themselves up to be utterly routed as the bar to look better is now so low that even a half free market could step over it and never even have noticed that it was there.
but the citizens will notice. and they will learn whom and what trust.
this is the cycle by which another generation is inoculated against collectivist malthusian stupidity and doctrinal obsession.
it's a shame that such lessons are never durable and recede as times once more get good, but that's human nature for you...
Substack is a great example. I personally have spent more with them in the last year than I have EVER with mainstream media outlets.
one day soon, the idea that legacy media was ever "mainstream" will be almost impossible for children to believe.
As will the idea that vaccines were ever considered safe!
or effective. Well, effective in poisoning which was the intention.
Mainstream is already a misnomer. Regime, legacy, mass, corporate, and controlled are all much more appropriate descriptors.
Regime - nice.
You forgot Dinosaur!
Yeah but the five-year-old in me likes dinosaurs.
Now that MSM means something other than ‘mainstream media’ perhaps LaMe for ‘legacy media’ will do.
Your constant optimism is both a source of hope and amazement. Thank you.
Couldn't have said it better. LIKE
As a 58 year old child it already is to me!
there's a mainstream media? Hadn't heard of it.
Agreed; it has also helped me sustain my sanity, substack that is. Although many will say I use the term sanity with reckless abandon
Quibble: the only people who should be funding students are their parents. There should be no "we" involved.
The biggest budget item in my state is for government-run and -controlled "education." I'm tired of my money being stolen to pay for the schooling of other people's kids. They need to pay for it themselves.
while i agree with you in an absolutist sense, i don't believe it's a jump that can be made in one leap.
it's neither politically nor functionally feasible.
but vouchers are. they start the ball rolling and allow the structures that will make education affordable and excellent to be built.
it let's people get comfortable with removing this role from the state.
and from there, the next jump to eliminating the state's role in education altogether becomes possible.
Sure. Real freedom wasn't built in a day.
But I think it is always important at least to STATE what the ultimate goal should be rather than immediately "settle" for what is politically feasible now and not even bother to mention what SHOULD be done. Not doing so seems to be pandering to the lowest common denominator rather than attempting to challenge people to be their best.
(That's a big problem with the NRA, for example, vs GOA. The folks at the latter state what we should be doing then get the best deal they can.)
Vouchers may be better. Maybe. But they still come with government control. He who pays the piper…
Incrementalism is fine, in some contexts. You break the chains one at a time.
But ultimately slavery can't be reformed. It can only be abolished.
I think it's a mistake not to make that goal clear from the start.
Not only a mistake but deceitful. Endpoints are important, essential. My sense is WEF has a clear endpoint, at least the “A” players do. I do believe this group has “hired” B & C players. Possibly no fair to include WEF in the scenario.
Being clear about goals is really essential. At the moral level, it's what differentiates us from the WEF. They need to trick people into adopting their policies, because if they just came out and said 'we want to enslave everyone' no one would go for it.
Agreed.
Without clear goals, how do we know where we’re going or when we’ve arrived? With obscured ends, in the best case, we may end up in the general neighborhood where we want to be. In a worse case, we’ll lose our way and find ourselves in a bad situation.
(I couldn’t find my original reply. Apologies if this is basically a duplicate.)
In our state, the money follows the student.
which state?
NC
Indeed; Washington where I'm from is certainly not the only state where provision of basic primary and secondary education is mandated for the state to perform.
That's a traditional conservative dream. But as you say, it is simply not politically possible. In fact the nation's public "education" system is a textbook example of an institution captured by special interests. In the case of education, it is the teachers, their unions, and allied government education administrators. These are all but untouchable and thus immune to any substantive change. As with any system, once established, is first priority is to survive and, if possible, to grow. Educating children is an incidental.
If the above is a reasonable view, then it follows that no reform of the system is possible absent a catastrophic destruction or weakening of the existing system. Since there is so much legal framework holding all this together, it would probably require a literal revolution or other complete change of government to dramatically alter it. I don't think the next election is going to do the trick.
I have no children and have paid for crappy education for other people’s children for decades. I’d gladly donate to what I consider an excellent school because I do believe the education of children impacts our future as a society. But it would never be a government school with unions involved.
agree 10000000%
government schools with unions = garbage
To add insult to injury, they call it “investment.”
Hmm - I'm open to that argument, but I'm not in agreement. This is punitive to the poor, which also harms society in general.
Obviously, handing the power of all education decision over to the state is a recipe for whatever the fcuk we have now - a dumpster fire of a society trying to wage war against half the planet and half its own people with idiots believing women have penises and gene therapies will vaccinate well if we just vax harder.
But there has to be SOME middle ground. I have no problem paying taxes for legit education to genuinely benefit society and the less fortunate.
Maybe a local level? Or an opt-in system with some better choice? idk.
What I think is punitive to the poor is them having no escape from horrendous government schools. Whenever poor parents have a chance to leave gov schools and migrate to private schools, they scramble to do so.
You and anyone else are welcome, as you suggest, to opt in to give as much of your money to whomever you want. You or anyone else have zero right forcibly to take other people’s money. That’s called “theft.”
Okay. Whatever.
I never said anything about taking your money, princess. Calm down.
So, let me get this straight - get them out of bad government schools and leave them to never learn to read or write unless someone bothers to teach them cause they can't afford private schools.
Is that the plan, Scrooge?
Your “answer” reflects the same lack of intellectual integrity that the mask, vaccine, and lockdown advocates have exhibited for the past 2+ years.
At least I see you for who and what you really are.
Bye.
That's more or less what I see happening, too. Agile self-organizing networks stepping in to get the job done, and doing it better and more cheaply.
We might not be able to remove the incompetocracy from power, but we can remove power from them.
Agree, we are in the process of removing power from the "incompetocracy". (Love that term - thank you). Our ostensible rulers, our acknowledged lords and masters, still labour tirelessly at their tasks, 'dumbing down' education, imposing 'equity', eliminating constitutional rights, and transiting their societies into totalitarian states.
The downside is - real power now resides in the nameless, faceless, bureaucratic state. Who are the puppeteers pulling the strings of the Bidens, Turdos and Johnsons of the world? And what is their long term goal? Are they really stupid enough to believe that they, personally, are somehow exempt from the economic and social chaos their incompetent minions are loosing on the world? Undoubtedly, there will be a reset. There always is. But I suspect the transition to whatever comes next will be cataclysmic.
They kinda are...They all have fully stocked bunkers in New Zealand. BUT, they do need servants...And someone on another substack said something about gasoline down the airflow pipes???
"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."
~ Thomas Sowell
That's arguably a case for, not against, youth rights. What could be more dangerous to liberty than subjecting those "barbarians" to so many years of submission to arbitrary authority? Is that why 2020 happened?
https://www.youthrights.org/about/what-are-youth-rights/
No argument here. I advocate the complete separation of education and State.
Interesting site, was not previously aware of it. I think I could get behind what they propose, but working to have the State change one arbitrary age requirement to another does not strike at the root of the problem.
When the political winds change, all of the progress can be easily erased.
The root problem is the State having power over things like drinking ages, compulsory indoctrination in its "schools", etc., etc., ad nauseam.
That is the real fight.
I'm glad I introduced one more person to the idea of youth rights. Anti-youth ageism is so pervasive nowadays that we supporters of youth rights can feel like voices crying in the wilderness. If my phrase "not against" sounded a bit defensive, that's the reason why.
"When the political winds change, all of the progress can be easily erased."
Yes, that can happen, but the good news is that politics is downstream of culture. Respect for youth rights at the *cultural* level would be relatively durable. Hypothetically, gays could suddenly lose their newly won permission to marry each other through a change in political winds, but it seems very unlikely given the ongoing decline of homophobia in the culture.
What is "the real fight"? Since culture guides politics, I think the real fight at any given time is what will most likely move the Overton window in a favorable direction. Because of the Overton window, we can expect the culture to become a tiny bit less ageist whenever any government allows sixteen-year-olds to vote, for example. Every little bit helps.
'imagine the vibrancy of an energy sector without absurdist rules and regulations driven instead by markets and property rights.'
Operative word there is "absurdist". I grew up in LA in the 60s where you couldn't see more than a block for the smog. Some regulation is actually useful.
I am all in
💕
I would argue that those "dead hands" will fall off by themselves. No need for us to do anything but not play their game.
Agreed let the competents rebuild from scratch and (unequally) hire other competents.
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.
These officials and politicians reach these positions because they've sacrificed their souls for notoriety and increasingly worthless fiat currency. I will not shed a tear when they end up swinging from the lamp posts.
This current dumpster-fire-of-incompetents administration was all I could think of, though examples abound. It’s classic clown show.
Such a pity that none of them will ever be held to account for their failures. While the vaccine mantra has now subsided given the arrival of real result data, they refuse to admit error. We can hope that the damage is not long term and that competent leadership will arrive. There have to be honorable people within those institutions who can rise.
I share your optimism, but only if we can get a good administration that knows what time it is, such as Desantis. I'm not even sure it could happen under Trump. If we continue to have Dem admins, thngs will only get worse.
I can hope that others beyond DeSantis rise to the cause. I do hope Trump decides to back others. We need a free Florida to prosper to show the way forward.
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 fireman example is classic. Used to get in arguments with feminists back in the 90s, after Canadian fire departments started using different standards in order to meet equity targets. It amazed me at the time that it was more important to them to have more firemenesses than it was to know they had a reasonable chance of their unconscious bodies being hauled out of burning buildings.
After an additional 20 years of this, ideologically induced mental illness no longer amazes me. Now I'm just enjoying a cold beer while I watch the building burn, with them trapped inside.
Never thought that things are that bad that someone would unironically advise it's better to emigrate from Sweden to Romania. And I should know cause I am from and still live in Romania. ;)
Realty is essential. But I do want to have the opportunity to engage. There are many preconceived notions. Some of them have been dispelled. I don’t want to be told that I cannot try. I know you are saying that.
I know as an older female (XX) I won’t bench as much as a male. It frustrates me, very much but it is a realty. I do pretty well and I haven’t reached my limit.
Too true - when we stopped teaching children that you can both aspire to be all you can be - Per Aspera Ad Astra so to speak - and in the words of Eastwood: "Man's gotta know his limitations", we broke every generation thereafter.
Male/female example: when hiking, my natural gait and pace is much more mile-devouring than my wife's so I generally wind up about half a mile in front of her and can have mini-breaks while she catches up. Of course, I can lurch along at her pace too but that doesn't make her move faster.
So instead I scout ahead, marking nice spots for a break, putting marks to show where I went, where there's fresh water and so on. Meaning that when we make camp, it's me who does most of the work, except raising the tent - that kind of thing is where she excels.
So we achieve that much vaunted ewuity and equality and whatnot by complementing eachothers strenghts and compensating eachothers weaknesses.
Which is how it should be: voluntary, natural, spontaneous and free of coercion. (And trying to "corece" my wife to do something she won't, well... duck and cover 'cause all the trees in the Lady's forest ain't enough to hide behind.)
well said. Reality, compassion, & communication go a long way
Never having been a highly motivated sort, I've accumulated little praises of sloth here and there in life. One of my favorites is this obscure Grateful Dead tune (first stanza):
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gratefuldead/dupreesdiamondblues.html
I don't think anyone ever said "girls can't apply to be firefighters." They said, "here are the standards," and it turned out that 99% of females could not meet them.
Similarly, I can try to give birth all I want. It's never going to happen. Biology is what it is and there's no sense being 'frustrated' by it unless you privilege illusory ideological silliness such as 'equality' over simply accepting what you are and being the best 'what you are' that you can be.
There has to be acknowledgement of both sides.That you can try no matter who you are, but there are standards to be met and these are non negotiable. I came up in restaurants from a dishwasher to a lead line and supervisory worker. I could take out the trash, carry hundred pound sacks of the potatoes and work just as fast as any man in 120 degree environment. And I still had old farts come up to me and said they didn't believe women should be in cooking... And, conversely. I have seen guys who had no business in a kitchen f*ck shit up for everyone.
Unfotutuantely, it is all a case by case kind of thing and our mass produced world doesn't like to have to deal with people as individuals.
What did 35 years in the biz give me? A valuable life skill. I'm not starving anytime soon and know how to make just about anything palatable. Next step is learning the cooking my grandma knew and learning to preserve food.
You can preserve fresh garlic for over a year if you grind it in a cuisinart and douse it in olive oil. I use the leftover olive oil from jars of sun-dried tomatoes that would otherwise go unused. Then you pack it in jars and put in the fridge. One thing to get everyone started on stocking up, LOL.
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..
You are correct - but even more chilling, when the equitables fail exams, screw up on the floors and are called out for these problems - they complain bitterly about prejudice and attempt to cancel anyone at any level who attempt to hold them accountable to "standards."
This completely changes the level of instruction, mastery of concept, information and procedure. Creates a race to the bottom of expertise. The tragedy: The splatter is the patients they treat.
I have a childhood friend who's married to one of them.
ugh! what an image! and juxtaposed with the medical profession! Bravo! totally works
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.
Welcome aboard. And a sincere invitation for all the other cheapskates to do likewise 🤓. Gato puts out some quality stuff. Allow me to trash some others though. I quit Berenson about six months ago. I took a peak a few days ago and based on his recent output, my decision is validated. 😛 Kirsch: I downgraded to a free reader. He does occasionally have an interesting piece, but mostly he seems to be challenging the world to debate him, with no takers so far.
I find your lack of Harrison Bergeron references disturbing...
complain to dianna moon glompers about it.
My only regret is that I have but one upvote to give for this comment (although I think her last name was “Glampers”).
I find your mixed metaphor with Star Wars amusing.
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.
That person actually has a material advantage. In my senior year in college, a bright friend was offered a ton of $$ to attend by Harvard Med. and UCSF, UCSF won the bidding war. He was black, but the son of two doctors, grew up on Park Ave., and went to (iirc) St. Paul's. The institutions in question had to meet nascent quotas but wanted competent students (this was decades ago when the latter outweighed The Message). Academia and government are irredeemably lost, but fields based on competence will find work-arounds while they can. If Gato is right and we're reaching the point where that's no longer possible, we'll move to a parallel economy; in some ways we already are.
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)
Theme occurs on other [science] fiction. "Examination Day" by Henry Slesar. As with everything else in the universe, there is a Wiki page.
Love that story.
terrifying
So many fields where you can see this happening; journalism, law, comes to mind and, sadly, now, medicine.
Tech. Big time.
Medicine has been at the root of our sick society, at least in the US, for decades. Best healthcare? (NOT) yet the sickest, fattest nation. It took a Plandemic to shine the light on its failure by design.
and then they tell us to stay home, avoid breathing air and take toxic jabs
That has hit home (or more accurately volunteer "work") lately. Staffer, female aged 47, was recently hospitalized for "heart trouble." Office gossip is that she had a stent put in her leg. (I realize that gossip often mangles the facts....but...) Here is a woman with (to my ken) no prior health issues (or she wouldn't have been hired in her position.) I'm not a doctor, but when I hear "stent" I hear "blood clot." How does a leg issue affect the heart? This does NOT sound good.
Example #2: Mother, retired nurse aged perhaps 60. Not one, but two of her adult children (30-something) have new or recurred cancers.
No word on the vaccination status of the victims, but I know that statistically about 70% of Americans have taken at least one jab. 😟
Only because education blazed the way.
Refresh the tree of excellence with the pink slips of sacred cows
I got a pink slip for vociferously objecting to this type of crap in my corporate systems job. They paid me a 💩 ton of $ to leave, probably the best thing that ever happened to me. More than one way to skin a cat!
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 depends on your understanding of his job description. He's doing the job he was assigned to do, it seems to me.
Break Canada's spirit. It's in his genes though. It will be Northern Cuba before long
If what you mean by assigned to do by the WEF then I completely agree.
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.
Reverse racism is still racism. What's funny about "racism" is that the meaning scumbag Lev Bronstein (Leon Trotsky) intended was totally hijacked for a different purpose.
Interesting. No offense intended: Does that mean those positions aren't really necessary (or not necessary enough to get the 25% pool of traditional hiring) or is the company just so devoted to wokeness it is willing to not function well rather than hire a nonminority?
Extremely necessary. I'm an automation/controls engineer. The one place paid $200/hr for 18 months and the other is paying 15k a month to fill the gap with a contractor.
How woke? Well their pride product makes the news every year about how woke they are.
Ah, so they are filling the gaps with contractors. Sneaky. So they are not willing to let their operation suffer, but they are willing to pay a premium to get contractors and satisfy the silliness on paper only.
There was a time when many of us believed 1984 was fiction, perhaps a warning, but it would never happen.
Then, Idiocracy, the movie, and most thought the same; not going to happen. Well:-(
The above sums up the Biden administration perfectly; look up and down the cabinets, heads of agencies, branches, etc…complete tumult
CNN had a story recently about junior Whitehouse staffers feeling at sea and unable to move forward because of a lack of direction and support. This is what happens when you hire the entitled incompetent. They believe that once you place them in the position, it is your responsibility to make them smart and capable.
Leadership is necessary tho. Where would I have been if my first chefs just set me to fend for myself in what would have been first jobs? Training is involved. That's why these people are juniors. If they are not getting the training they need, it may not necessarily be their fault.
I don't think so. I think capable people can instinctively, if not immediately, figure out what's going on by watching, copying others, and coming to understand what's needed.
then they're not ready to work in the White House...not a place for juniors.
Ain't gonna argue with that. But there used to be a passing of wisdom from one tier to another. Nowadays none of them know shit, least of how how to lead.
Not to flog it too much, but anywhere I was a cook coworkers came to me to ask questions: "how to do this" or "where is that" or best yet, "What do you do to make a biscuit irresistably flaky?". If the seniors are shit and can't explain things, especially in a place like the whitehouse, we have a problem.
agreed. I am tempted to ask how to make a biscuit irresistibly flaky but can't. I'm doing keto and I suspect it is butter, which I love. Butter is keto and now I'm off on a tangent. See why I can't ask how to make biscuits irresistibly flaky?
Totally agree. This connects to BadCat's main point. Those in the WH aren't true leaders, they aren't even adequate leaders. They can't lead because they are also at sea being incompetent and having "earned" their position thanks to the levels of intersectionality they can demonstrate.
one earned her position, at least at the start, as mistress to a powerful kingmaker in LA