The Rot Comes from the Top

7 thoughts on “The Rot Comes from the Top”

1. When any organization fails, it is always a management failure—always, always, always.

   I remember conversations over the years about problems with this or that product, or this or that service group, and hearing people complain about careless workers making cars or surly clerks at stores or bad meals/service at restaurants, and my response was always very simple—whatever is happening is being allowed to happen by bad management.

   If employees are careless or uncivil, it’s bad management that allows it. If cars or other products are poorly made, it was bad management that approved those designs, allowed the poor work habits, and failed to enact proper quality controls.

   As far as the bunch running the current regime goes, I doubt there are many of the top people who could competently manage the relief shift at any fast food restaurant.

   Some may oppose state overreach and excessive power for all sorts of esoteric and philosophical reasons, and I share many of those positions, but my main objection is very basic and fundamental—these political types don’t know what they’re doing, and never have.

   The history of the state in human affairs is an almost unrelenting tale of repressive stupidity coupled with irrational superstition, all enforced at the point of a sword, or rifle, upon ordinary citizens whose overwhelming desire is simply to live, work, and raise their families in a decent fashion.

   This latest fiasco is one more painfully predictable example of pols who will promise anything to get and keep power, but can’t, ever, perform up to even the most minimal standards of competence.

   All the cronyism, payoffs, and other sundry corruption is what truly powers the entire system.

   Anyone who desires and expects the state to competently solve major societal problems, or perform major societal functions, in a competent, honest, and efficient manner is either deluded or so foolish as to be beyond the boundaries of rational adult discourse.

2. Great minds think alike. Today’s G-File newsletter from Jonah Goldberg (sorry no url) picked up on the hooker metaphor also:

   So yesterday Barack Obama in effect borrowed a line from Darth Vader. He told the insurance companies, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

   Now one doesn’t have to have sympathy for the insurance companies — I don’t — to still acknowledge they’re being screwed. If you’ve ever watched a mob movie you’d understand that bad guys can betray other bad guys.

   I’m not saying that the insurance companies are outright villains, but they are fools of a sort. Like a prostitute who agrees to go to bed with a total stranger for a certain price to do a certain thing, the insurance companies are suddenly balking when the John decides to get creative. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. We didn’t say anything about a capuchin monkey and a salad spinner!”

   That, in a nutshell, is the problem when Big Business and Big Government get into bed together. The government, like a Toronto mayor in a stupor, thinks it’s free to take whatever liberties it can get away with. Big Business keeps telling itself, “Just one more degrading act and this will all be over and I can take the money off the bedside table.”

   But the john will always have more money and at least one more degrading act to go along with it. And at some point, it’s very hard to suddenly draw a line and say, “I was fine with the capuchin monkey, and I said okay to the thing with the salad spinner filled. But this thing with the chocolate sauce and Anthony Weiner in the corner saying ‘Can you hear me now?’ No way. What kind of a girl do you think I am?”

3. What he said.

   Mike

4. To use Lenin’s term, “Useful fools”

5. A consultant with whom I was talking several years ago, a specialist in corporate turnarounds in really tough situations, remarked that in every case he’d seen where a business failed, the ultimate cause was management ego.

6. In the service they have a saying, ‘There are no bad outfits, only bad officers’.

   [“The trouble started when one of them stiffed a prostitute.” Interesting turn of phrase. :-P]

7. Thanks for the Jonah Goldberg reference. It’s reassuring to know I’m not the only one with a mind in the gutter.

   I thought it was about the chocolate syrup and the donkey. Hmm…donkey…Anthony Weiner…donkey…Anthony Weiner…

   Yep, Mr. Goldberg’s mind is in the same gutter.

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