I'm not a great fan of Ayn Rand. Her naïve belief in the heroic entrepreneur led to some pretty mediocre literature, void of the subtleties and nuances that characterizes real life. However, she was right about one thing. When things start to fall apart at the systemic level, idiots take over. This is well illustrated in Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, where at one point a competent train operator is asked to perform an impossible task. When he refuses to do what he's told to do, an incompetent and useless subordinate steps up to the challenge. He promises to do what the competent holds as impossible. He takes charge of the operations. He does what he's told to do, and the result is of course a complete disaster.
I was reminded of this the other day when I came across this article about the recent cold spell in Germany. Unsurprising to anyone, winters in Germany can get both cold and snowy, and this has a tendency to coincide with little to no wind. This is not a new insight. It has been known for millennia. However, the green lobby in Germany has nevertheless pushed through an agenda of renewable energy based on wind and solar power.
The only reason this winter hasn't been a disaster in Germany is the fact that a few competent individuals are still at large. They have ensured that there are enough coal-fired power stations in Germany to weather the coldest days of winter. The idiots are not yet in full control. But this may well change. If Ayn Rand is right in her assessment of the underlying mechanisms involved, there may soon be a purge against the last vestige of resistance. Coal and nuclear power will be closed down for good. Only imported electricity will then be available to Germans in coming winters. Electricity will be both expensive and unreliable, possible to the point of blackouts.
Further evidence of idiots rising to the top can be seen in other, less dramatic ways. My wife bought a new printer a few weeks ago. It's supposedly very smart, but it's been a headache from the start. It's by no means an improvement on the one we used to have, even though it's of the same brand.
My son got a Lego set for his birthday two months ago. It required us to download an app on a smart phone. Without it, we didn't even have instructions to assemble the thing. But the app was too big for his tablet. If it wasn't for the fact that my son was smart enough to look up instructions on YouTube, the thing would still be in its box. Lego used to be all about assembly of independent modules. No part was directly tied to any other part. But now, with idiots in charge, Lego requires us to have all sorts of accessories before we can play with their stuff. It's as if Lego has forgotten what it's all about.
On a more terrifying note, we can mention the Boeing Max debacle where common sense was pushed aside and silenced in favour of smart apps and the like. As we all know, it didn't end well. Here too, people were asked to do the impossible. The competent were pushed aside, and idiots rose to take control.
This is the basic mechanism of what we're seeing. But it's nothing new. All organizations have a tendency towards this kind of decay. It has always been like this. However, the scale of the current insanity seems to be greater than it used to be, and the reason for this may be found in the way the entire economy is currently manipulated by central banks.
Easy credit allows for bullshit jobs to persist for longer than they would otherwise exist. These bullshit jobs generate in turn all sorts of needless overhead for everyone else. Competent people resent this and leave. Easy credit also has the effect of detaching economic planning from the reality of real world constraints. It's possible to make a profit by being clever rather than competent. This too is something that competent people resent. But management loves it, so they promote the clever at the expense of the competent, and pretty soon we're in the situation we're currently in. Products and services deteriorate at an alarming pace, spurred on by a combination of political correct thinking and clever trickery. All enabled through easy credit.
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| Coal-fired power station |
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