Society Has Finally Risen To The Level Of Its Own Incompetence

Wilmott.com ^ | April 8, 2009 | Paul Wilmott

[reaganaut1]

The Peter Principle (named after Dr Lawrence Peter) is the idea that people “rise to the level of their own incompetence.” Originally it was proposed in a humorous book published in 1968 but has since become accepted as giving genuine insight into how humans interact. According to Wikipedia “It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their ‘level of incompetence’), and there they remain. Peter’s Corollary states that ‘in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties’ and adds that ‘work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.’” This is related to the concept that everything interesting happens at the margins. The same is now clearly true of larger organisms, and I am obviously thinking of western society as a whole. The evidence is unambiguous: Bonus-bewitched bankers destroy institutions that had been around for centuries, politicians rescue their rich friends and ensure they get handsomely rewarded for their catastrophic failures, then people protest peacefully at the G20 summit where the police are the aggressors.

This has been made possible by ‘progress’ thanks to technology, the Ponzi scheme that is the world economy, the lawyer-led victim culture, the abandonment of common sense because of political correctness, the advance of globalization so that we are all tied together in one giant global-village/shopping-mall and the ubiquitous career politicians having no productive real-world experience but who know how to crawl their way to the top, lining their pockets all the way, over the bodies of the hard working and what are now called the ‘coping class.’

[reaganaut1]

The rant refers to the U.K., but the U.S. is not much better and is headed in the same direction. Both countries need to change course.

[Arthur McGowan]

Government schools were imposed on the U.S. in order to destroy the Republic. The original Republic had citizens who were religious, literate, and independent—all qualities hated by the anti-Constitutionalist statists from the very beginning.

Any “plan” to restore liberty in America MUST include the abolition of government schools, or it is a fraud.

[Brett66]

I was thinking this the other day, guess I’m not the only one...

[Ditto]

Government schools were imposed on the U.S. in order to destroy the Republic. The original Republic had citizens who were religious, literate, and independent—all qualities hated by the anti-Constitutionalist statists from the very beginning.

Do you include Thomas Jefferson among those statists? He was the first major proponent of public education not just for the few, but for all.

Until 30 years ago, public education in this country ran a gamut from acceptable to outstanding. Things changed with the combination of Federal bureaucrats and 60s Hippies like Bill Ayres grabbing control of the educational establishment. Today, very few public schools are even acceptable, and virtually none are outstanding.

Get rid of the Lefty educrats who have polluted the system and tell the Feds to butt out, and we can once again have a decent public schools.

[Dick Bachert]

We have the same problems here.

Steny Hoyer can be seen employing a new technique he learned from speech coach Barney Fwank.

[melsec]

I have finally found an explanation for 95% of the bosses in my workplace. The other 5% are people who are on their way out because they refuse to cooperate with the 95% who keep their jobs by sticking together and not highlighting each others incompetence.

Mel