While I’ve lately been amused and disgusted at the behavior of the system and it’s enforcers, I’ve also been reading. One of the thinkers I’ve revisited is Thomas Hobbes, and his work Leviathan.
In case you’re joining late, we have all been learning some important lessons about American police officers. We have learned what they will and will not do for you. Specifically, the typical pig cop will:
- arrest you (with maximum violence) the minute a wimminz tells him “I’m scared.”
- jail you for being late on your child support or alimony payment.
- kidnap your children on the order of a divorce court judge.
- beat your ass for merely looking askance at him.
The typical pig cop will not:
- show up if you have an actual problem, for example, if violent looters are stealing all your stuff.
Of course, the typical pig will disarm you, if you attempt to defend your stuff, so that the looters can rob you blind. We have seen that play out multiple times on this blog.
For those of y’all unfamiliar, Thomas Hobbes was a political philosopher who wrote about the social contract. None of us have signed an explicit contract with anyone, but the contract still exists.
What is the contract? It’s a quid-pro-quo bargain. Being part of civilized society includes a man giving up some of his natural rights. For example: I agree to keep my lawn mowed, to drive the speed limit, and to not to enrich uranium in my washing machine. In return, I supposedly get privileges, such as having a fire and police department which will come around if I’m being looted and burned out of my home by a mob.
Many of us are now coming to realize that the contract has been broken.
90%+ of the people I read on Twitter and blogs are arguing about whether police are racist. Some argue that they are:
Some argue that they are not:
Are police are systemic racists? I have an opinion on that, but I’m not going to state it, because it misses the point. The problem is much bigger than whether or not cops are racist. It matters, sure, but it isn’t the primary problem:
Why has the contract been broken?
Recently here and at Jason’s blog, I have ranted about bureaucracy as society’s primary source of actual evil. In this article in the National Review, a former LAPD officer had this to say:
This is a typical bureaucratic formula (and also the Peter Principle). Often, the real talent in an organization lies towards the bottom of the hierarchy, where it goes permanently underutilized and underappreciated. This is where the ‘good guy’ cops are ineffectively trying to make it work and (inadvertently?) making it worse. A few days ago, honeycomb gave a similar justification: “I would have played along. because I would have been in a position to make a difference.”. But, when an organization gets like that, it can’t be saved, and you can’t save it. You probably don’t want to be a part of that, even if it is your livelihood! So, it is very interesting and unusual that Minneapolis City Council members are considering disbanding their police force.
Over at Red Pill Aware Male, Rob writes about joining the military. On officers he notes:
Like police departments, the military is another bureaucratic organization where ‘leadership’ means being a bureaucrat or politician: sustaining the organization for its own sake and pursuing goals other than the purported mission. A bureaucracy can’t fulfill the social contract, because it prioritizes a system over the individual, the mission, and the reason the system exists in the first place. At best it can stumble along for a while in a close approximation before wandering off. Restoring the contract requires the old system to be replaced, as gradual reformation is almost never successful.
Often, the real talent in an organization lies towards the bottom of the hierarchy, where it goes permanently underutilized and underappreciated.
BINGO.
This is what characterizes almost ALL organizations in the West today, whether governmental, corporate, or non-profit. We seem to have reached a nadir in our civilization where accomplishment of anything tangible, productive, and meaningful is not only no longer valued, but actually and actively discouraged. This certainly is characteristic of bureaucracies in their sclerotic and (usually) terminal stage.
Related and of interest. Teddy Spaghetti links this from his blog:
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/groups-taking-photos-of-homes-with-police-cars-in-driveways/
Feeriker says We seem to have reached a nadir in our civilization where accomplishment of anything tangible, productive, and meaningful is not only no longer valued, but actually and actively discouraged
Yes. Have you noticed how a corporation with at least 30 workers treats their managers versus the productive workers?
Yes, I am aware and agree that managers do something valuable. Without wise direction and a unified effort by the productive workers, the results of the group will be poor. I have worked in leadership roles; I particularly found it valuable to be able to direct the productive workers to use higher-quality practices, to increase the value of our results.
The problem I see is the respect and remuneration that corporations give to the two groups.
If a know-nothing manager thinks idea A is great, and the experts in the group of productive workers that he leads think it is a stupid idea, what happens? The managers I have thought of as “the worst” were those who had no issue with going against the expert workers, frequently not even stopping to ask for a reality-check from his expert workers.
And how do other workers and managers respond, when they see that a manager says idea A is great, but his expert workers disagree? In a sane company, the productive workers who are highly skilled and experienced would have more respect and weight in decision-making than the ignorant manager.
Note that I do not have a problem with ignorant managers. One of my best managers had zero skills in the area they were managing… so they asked the expert workers for advice and acted merely as a coordinator; the direction for the group came from other managers. I thought this “ignorant manager” was very effective at giving day-to-day assignments and coordination for the group.
And what is the relative pay rates of expert productive workers and managers? I have yet to hear a reason why a manager coordinating and leading the efforts of 20 people deserves remuneration 35 to 50% higher than his best workers. Or a VP to have triple the remuneration of the best workers under him.
I do not claim leadership is of no value; see above. But most* management has a few major roles, none of which require high-level expertise:
– coordinating workers on the agreed-upon tasks and priorities (resourcing, training, sequencing of tasks). This is a medium skill task.
– Anticipating risks. This is more a function of open-mindedness and knowledge. For the right type of person, this is at best a medium skill task; he just needs to allocate regular time to consider the landscape and act upon it
– collaborating and obtaining agreement with other leaders / owners. This is a medium skill task; thoroughness and charisma are more important than skill or intelligence
– personnel management; dealing with Karens, sick employees, divas, training, hiring/firing, scheduling. This is a low skill task. Maturity is more important than high intelligence or high skill.
In my view, the best workers should be paid significantly more than their immediate manager/coordinator. A manager simply does not add that much value.
*One major exception can be the CEO or VP who is a visionary; who sees a new direction the group can go that will drastically increase their sales or increase the value of their products. Such a person is worth a large amount; but such a person is also easily recognized, due to the increase in sales during his tenure. Unless a leader can point to increased sales or increased value, I would refuse to label him as a visionary or agree that he “deserves” any more than his best productive workers.
A manager who sees efficiencies that will reduce costs can be valuable as well, but much less than a visionary. A cut-cutting manager can, at best, reduce costs by 100%. A visionary can bring in 1000% higher revenues. Both are good for the group, and can justify higher wages.
@JPF
One of the most influential works in my field is The Mythical Man-Month (from 1975). The concept, which is not restricted to software engineering, is that management requirements scale non-linearly with the number of workers. Brooks’ Law famously states:
In theory, the more talented a manager, the more likely he can make adding manpower have a linear benefit. Such a manager is well worth the remuneration he receives, not because he is doing the work, but because he can extract the maximum output from those he manages. Even though the ‘real’ work is done by someone else, the larger the endeavor, the less likely that those people will be able to do the work effectively. Regardless, such people are exceptional, especially in a lower IQ environment. Moreover, as Brooks notes, many projects are inherently inflexible. No matter how good your management, the coordination required cannot scale linearly and management brings only marginal benefit.
But let’s say you have one of those talented managers. In a typical bureaucracy, such a person won’t be able to be effective anyway. This is one reason why you feel a manager adds minimal value. But what about a non-bureaucratic hierarchy? Well, then he has a shot, but as you note, once you exceed the small business threshold (say, 30-50 employees), it is very difficult to find this. The irony is that the best managers are most necessary in a business environment (non-bureaucratic, lots of employees) that mostly doesn’t exist.
In my professional life, at IBM, my current job….or even when I was employed by The Salvation Army……..volunteering with organizations like the Scouts (wasting a ton of time doing this btw….almost ten years).
Most people in “real leadership” usually just got there because they use big words, have an ego the size of god, and know how to say the right things, or just know “when” to say them.
I am sure the same works with women, or “game” or in sales, or demanding a favor…or even expecting one.
This is not to say I have all the answers, nor was qualified for leadership in any capacity. The answer is probably not for the most part.
With that said, the “leadership” I have served under over the decades and seen in any capacity at work, committees, or volunteering usually was lackluster. Uninspiring. Dead. Oh yes, I was “expected” to work and do what-I-was-told by these self-appointed leaders…and I did, but that did not mean I respected their leadership, or even liked them.
That is their mistake. Leaders for the most part honestly believe they are always right, well-qualified and if people do their requests concerning the job or task it means they are respected and liked.
Leaders have to make tough decisions. Most don’t. Most make a decision and then blame men like me who are powerless in the world, or respected organization of “why” their brilliance didn’t work or was just bad.
Ironic. A man like me who is genetically weak, a loser, a beta. a pussy-worshiper, blue pilled cuck (according to the ‘leaders’)…………..somehow is responsible for the failure of the church, the failure civic organizations, the failure of the mating game, the failure of men in general, the failure of th this nation, and the reason for why the world is the way it is………..
The real blame lies with them. They who have all the answers, the best plan, the foolproof methods, the biggest penis, the higher IQ……whatever.
I’ve had more real wisdom spoken to me by a former gangster named Jose at Narcotics Anonymous who did hard time for pushing heroin in his hood than I ever got from a boos, and def by any man in the red pilled ‘sphere
Despite your self-deprecation, you express..in three sentences..the heart of the matter.
In a non-bureaucratic system, individuals are authorized and able to act correctly, adjusting to each situation as required. In a bureaucracy, they must follow a script and ultimately decisions are made by committee or someone else. Tough decisions are often avoided, while correct individual initiative may be punished. In the former system, responsibility is clear and owned. In the latter, it is muddled and disowned: responsibility is always for someone else, up and down the entire chain of command.
Non-bureaucratic hierarchies tended to produce villains, easily identifiable and addressable sources of evil. But the bureaucratic hierarchies are evil in a different way: they inherently produce great evil, but (allegedly) no one is to blame. Moreover, the predictable evil is predicated on “good intentions”. Due to ‘plausible’ deniability, bad outcomes are written off as mistakes, rather than the expected logical result. Participants are either all ‘good guys’ or a few rare ‘bad apples‘ messing it up for everyone else.
Underlying this is the denial, avoidance, and rejection of truth. This is also known as moral inversion: good is called bad, bad is called good. Examples are legion.
Example 1: Are the bureaucratic leaders generally good leaders? No, they are not. Yet, the system says they are and strives to make more of them! It lies by promoting attributes that make them objectively bad leaders, while suppressing the good ones.
Example 2: When a bureaucracy fails to do something correctly, it lies about who is responsible. Scapegoating is standard procedure.
Example 3: It lies about and rejects what works: “If a know-nothing manager thinks idea A is great, and the experts in the group of productive workers that he leads think it is a stupid idea, what happens? The managers I have thought of as .the worst. were those who had no issue with going against the expert workers, frequently not even stopping to ask for a reality-check from his expert workers.”
Example 4: A bureaucratic system that lies in the name of social justice when it uses taxation, wage appropriation, divorce, and the judicial system to disadvantage fathers and married couples and to give advantage to single mothers.
Example 5: A bureaucratic system that lies about truth through a ‘consensus’-based system of peer review and political mobilization of tentative or incorrect results (e.g. Lancet published study on HCQ). This is joined with a suppression of dissent and financial conflicts of interest.
Derek wrote, Such a manager is [valuable…] not because he is doing the work, but because he can extract the maximum output from those he manages
Agreed. This is similar to the visionary I mentioned, who seeks new methods or markets to increase the value of what the company provides. The good manager maximizes the value of the productivity; this might involve firing disruptive or ineffective people (e.g. affirmative-action hires), providing boundaries, training, guidelines, removing obstacles, etc. I had this in mind with my “personnel management”, but you are correct to call it out on its own.
The Mythical Man-Month: Famous book that I have not yet read. Think I’ll change that; thanks for the link.
Your comments on group size are important. Large groups are difficult to effectively manage.
Partly because large groups tend to have a stifling bureaucracy, as the owner recognized earlier that he could not effectively manage many people, but also did not want to surrender control of his company to many managers, so the owner made “rules” to be followed by all managers. This keeps control of the company with the owner, but reduces the wisdom with which elements of the company are led.
Even without bureaucracy, large groups are difficult to manage in a hands-on manner. Not a new idea, but I like to have “groups within groups”; each small group has a clearly defined small set of goals or small area of responsibility, and the leader for that group only has enough workers to perform the work for his small area; the leader may only be part-time. The VP / CEO is then responsible for deciding where the group-of-groups should go, and assigns the goals to the various small groups. The small group leaders have some freedom to act as they choose.
But this assumes that you can find enough managers that you trust and who are wise.
I re-read your linked Intelligence and Dysgenics post; very good. It is interesting that God would be considered “mean” by our current morality. For example, God provided laws to force charity for the poor in very few ways:
– a tithe every third year; not to be government- or church-controlled, but rather given by each productive worker under his own supervision and authority. 10% every third year means only 3.33% a year of profits or revenue
– allowing the poor to harvest the edges of the fields, and to harvest after the owner has harvested each crop once.
– justice that is blind to both being rich and being poor
– laws that forbid lending, or curtain it. E.g. loans are cancelled after seven years, which means most poor people would not get a loan at all.
If your family cannot survive with these minimal supports, then you are allowed to die out. How many Christians would agree with God, that allowing families with poor leadership to die out, is a good thing? I admit, God never directly said those words. But the effect of God’s laws is obvious. And God even threatened to eject the people from the land, if they choose to disobey him (e.g. Lev 20:22-23). Bad choices=your line dies out.
Or Exodus 20:5-6: I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You had an evil leader/father who hated God? Do not be surprised that your life sucks.
But the bureaucratic hierarchies are evil in a different way: they inherently produce great evil, but (allegedly) no one is to blame.
Great quote from Derek. If a person is unable / unwilling to be held to account for their actions, then I don’t want that person to have any control over my life, work or family. Only exception is God.
Example 4: A bureaucratic system that lies in the name of social justice when it uses taxation, wage appropriation, divorce, and the judicial system to disadvantage fathers and married couples and to give advantage to single mothers.
+1 Essential point. And without a “central-command” structure, such as a bureaucracy, such stupidity cannot be forced onto the entire organization.
I added a long-winded comment to the YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=CXSz0bA9CiE&feature=emb_logo) that Derek referenced in his “Intelligence and Dysgenics” post, to the effect that we need to stop subsidizing all families regardless of their own choices. Allow foolish families, such as mothers who eject their husbands, to starve — not out of hatred for them, but to limit the continuation and growth of foolishness and stupidity in the population.
In both this post and on Derek’s post “Intelligence and Dysgenics”, LastMod has made comments about stupid smart people (such as the comment on this post about “higher IQ” and getting better advice from an addict).
It is important to be able to identify when “smart” people are making dumb leadership decisions, as LastMod has done here.
If I can put words into LastMod’s mouth a bit, I like to distinguish between wisdom/foolishness and intelligence/stupidity.
An intelligent man might be capable of performing calculus or understanding some difficult concept/process. But that man may still be foolish. An example would be an intelligent man that refuses to ask for advice, instead choosing to try to research and figure out everything for himself — what a waste of time. Ask the lawyer for legal advice and for what is permitted. Ask the front-line worker what is interfering with their productivity.
“Intelligent” people have destroyed our economic potential, with many of the ideas the Derek listed above, such as social justice priorities.
No, people have agency. Their own. They will be the first to tell you how smart / brave / amazing / creative / exceptional / talented they are……in everything and anything….and when thought, theory, though or idea doesn’t work they never or almost never take action for their “leadership” it is always “my fault” or “because of this group, or that group…because of the Union….because someone “else” (who is always WAY beneath them) is somehow responsible for thrarting their brilliance.
In leadership, even in so called “good” organizations have seen this over and over again. An observation is also, the better looking a person is….the more they seem to get away with concerning these matters.
the bible, that everyone has read…knows by heart evidently tells us to have our “yes mean yes, and our no mean no” sadly, most of those in leadership in the christian world cannot even follow this.
in our culture, we assume because someone has a talent or is exceptional in one area…they must be exceptional in everything. Sure, met a decent engineer in my life does that mean the engineer is good at everything? In the sphere this is a “yes”
In the Scouts, our local council paid the “executive” a whopping 175K a year to run it. Benefits too. The excuse was “we will not be able to find qualified people if we pay less”
Baden Powell (who founded the Scouts) never took a salary for running, building and growing this organization from the ground up. Scouting will tell you why they are bankrupt is because of the lawsuits……….multiply 175K times 200 councils….other paid staff, pensions, perks, and everything else……most of the money in Scouting goes to this. Yet, these “brilliant, amazing leaders” won’t take one OUNCE of blame for their failing organization
My beloved college, which closed after 185 years. Brilliant people who can’t run and balance a budget have all the solutions. They went on to other high paying jobs. The janitor. The repairman, the maintenance staff, the dorm directors, the support staff have to go look for work in an area with little or no job opportunities. They get no “cash out” or “pension” or reward for the mistakes of the brilliant leadership from above.
I am not saying the guy on the bottom has the solutions, because he probably doesn’t but I am tired of myself and other paying for the bad decisions of the “elect” and supposed brilliant people who will spend most of the day telling you that they are.
Knew an old farmer in Glenville, New York State. He was a small dairy farmer. It had been in his family since 1840-something. He died in the 1990’s…anyway…….while all the dairy farms of Upstate New York were going bust in the early 1960’s…he held on. Not because he was the biggest, but he had just common “horse sense” on how to run a business. He also didn’t depend on “state subsidies” that were common in the 1950’s in New York State to stay afloat. He knew his land. He knew how to read pattersn of weather and just probably had good organizational skills.
He also spoke six languages fluently and was a translator in World War II. No purple hearts. No medals of honor, no decorations by the Captain, or Colonel….he just did his job, served and put his skills to use at that time.
His grandson runs it now, and it still is doing okay in an area where all “farms” now are hobby farms or agri-business dairy owned by the producer of said regional dairy.
What I always admired about him was that he always owned up to and for everything he did and said. No, he wasn’t a churchman or some devout christian.
Dairy farms in California are going broke and bust and are suppposedly managed and owned by people who are “smart” and “intelligent” and are “Trump supporters” but still want that federal subsidy from the Dept of the Interior to “keep the familiy business alive”
JPF. I have been wrong in my life more times than right. Personal decisions, life in general…….I can at least admit this. I have been on the recieving end of “you don’t run things around here” a gazillion times since I started working at the tender age of 16.
Well, even now…….I am the “boss” so to speak, and I do run things at my job now and I still get it from higher ups in the chain. That has been a harder lesson these past two years. I figured I would finally get some pull on areas I was good or exceptional at. I honestly believed there would be at least some trust and acceptance of my abilities. The infamous “they” still lecture me about “you don’t run things around here” and of course when a grandious scheme doesn’t work, I am asked “why didn’t I speak up…we’re all a team here!”
I have had much good sense to defer day to day operations in my position to people who can do them, or I show and teach them….and KNOW they may “fail” or “drop the ball” because they need the training, confidence and help to succeed and grow in their respected position.
leadership in the modern world is “look at me, look how amazing I am”
I’ve always paid the man or woman a tad of respect who built themselves up from nothing……..or the person who indeed “made bad choices or mistakes in life” and has turned around through faith, or thrift, hard work……a real promise to change and does so than a degree, so called expertise or behaving as if all men arte fools compared to themsselves…..and if I just behaved as they did, well……I would be better off.
Thankfully I don’t take to fools kindly because I played that role for a mighty long time. Nor will I participate ina circle jerk of hero worship. Be it a pastor, a business leader, an innovator, a christian who says “looks don’t matter” and then basically go on every post and claim they somehow do. Whatever.
I have a strong solitary nature combined with low intelligence, and below average looks. People think I am bitter, or strange or odd, or just a loser. That’s great. That’s fine.
I will not take the blame for their piss poor leadership, teaching, training, or advice or ideas. A man like me has zero control if their amazing gifts fail. Dalrock and others spent a lot of time calling out a lot of men that were “well beneath them” in intelligence, looks, ability, gifts, skills and then proceeded to blame these “low status” men for wrecking the faith but somehow writing brilliant works and poetry and hookdwinking the whole west into churchianity, chivalry, feminism and not really understanding the bible and turning it into female goddess worship.
If more time was spent in the sphere on the how not the why and more time on walking deeper and teaching instead of scolding ANYONE that dared posed a question maybe this red pill thing would be more of an influence instead of a “Victorian parlor society / hen clucking” about who is the real man in the room.
“A friend” works as an entry level QA inspector for a large bureaucratic multinational corporation. And has noticed that the only people who ever get promoted in the department are those who do not actually care about quality. Only once has a person with reasonable concern for quality been promoted above entry level. That man was a Black with a degree, and lots of prior management and military leadership experience. The only competing candidate who didn’t care about quality, had no education, had failed out of the military, and had many write-ups for inspection failures, and falling asleep on the job. But I still don’t think the man who cared about quality would have been awarded the position if he hadn’t been Black, and the company hadn’t feared legal repercussions. I could say lots more, but I don’t want to get “my friend” fired.
[L]eadership in the modern world is .look at me, look how amazing I am.
Yup, pretty much. Everywhere.
This also ties in with Sharkly’s friend’s observation about only douchebags getting promoted above entry level. People who are conscientious and who know what they’re doing expose the douchebags who in the main populate management as the useless, clueless douchebags that they are, usually devoid of any management skills whatsoever, to say nothing of their lack of skills knowledge of th he workers they supervise.
Apathetic douchebags at the working level, while definitely a threat to productivity and product quality, are generally not a threat to management’s ego and the facade of invincibility they project. This why management values them over productive workers, whom th hey routinely treat like shit.