DEI is in fact the ideology of victimhood. Back in 1957 in her novel "Atlas Shrugged", Ayn Rand described exactly what happens to a society if this ideology is embraced. She's so spot on it's uncanny. Once you have read this book, every time you hear of a train derailing or a Boeing losing its wheel, you find yourself thinking: "Who is John Galt?".
Professionals sports is the very best example of the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Being a short, slow, white guy is merely a social construct. Short, slow, white guys have been unjustly deprived of being first team all NBA.
The Chief Security Officer at the time of the hack was Susan Mauldin, a DEI hire. She was basically a music teacher and had no understanding of the complexities of cybersecurity. Following the hack, her bio was scrubbed on LinkedIn. After that, she left the company. You'll find no mention of this in any of the top rated Google articles on what happened.
What happens when the Dunning Kruger Effect scales up from the individual to the entire economy? It is one thing for an individual to lack the competence to evaluate their own incompetence, but what happens if an economy becomes disproportionality comprised of such individuals via alteration of criterion for competence? .... Short Answer: A decline of overall system reflexivity (ie the ability for system to meaningfully refer to and affect itself). Declining reflectivity factors significantly into collapse of complexity since complex systems that cannot affect themselves via any number of positive or negative feedback loops will walk their internal contradictions down the path to whatever logical outcomes those contradictions entail.
By extension, given the Dunning Kruger Effect and Narcissism are coextensive, you have established narcissism as a causal factor (if not the causal factor) for collapse of socioeconomic complexity and collapse of complex civilizations.
DEI is the ultimate statism and fascism. It combines corporate and state power for enforcement. It is the reunification of church and state through the mandatory uptake of a state moral program. It is a forced religion.
Equity is the same end result. Thus the same meager subsistence caloric intake. The same all dead at 35. Every conceivable horror so long as equally applied, can and is EQUITY. This as a moral program cannot even outlaw its own hideous functioning. We are caught in the same best case scenario. Like a Stalin communist.
Inclusion simply means , none shall escape. Inclusion is the only argument given for CBDC aka digital id and digital control. The net of Inclusion is not what they think it is.
Diversity is the reason for killing the word of God. Aka die verse. Thus a cult which all must adhere, none shall escape and horrors await.
Fools think power ever ran out for love. This vast assembly of power is for silence and for words that nudge us to our pens
Why are you comparing DEI, which is the logical conclusion of enlightenment principles like tabula rasa and equality and "liberty", to fascism, which was the 20th century rejection of those principles?
DEI reads like communism re-packaged with ‘feel good’ language for current times. I doubt small, family run businesses tolerate this mediocrity - no wonder they got (deliberately?) crushed during covid.
DEI is at best a tertiary cause of doors falling off planes. The primary cause of shitty engineering at Boeing is (white male) execs throwing the (admittedly, also white male) engineers out of management and implementing shoddy engineering practices to cut costs. Last I saw of this narrative nobody had actually been able to make an actual causal connection between DEI and Boeing's engineering failures whereas the casual connection between financiers taking over Boeing and the collapse of engineering process at Boeing is direct.
It's certainly not impossible that DEI was, in fact, partially to blame. Maybe white male line workers still built superior products that could withstand Boeing's newly shittified engineering processes and black female DEI hires could not. But that claim requires evidence.
The correlation between diversity hiring and nothing really working anymore is so strong as to assume causation, barring the presentation of a more probable explanation. The idea that the DEI influence is "at best a tertiary cause" is absurd on its face for pretty much anybody who has worked, especially, with complex systems and watched for decades as the new secular religion of DEI has slowly atomized and delegitimized the very notion of merit and competency in favor of blind, unquestioning belief in tabula rasa and the fungibility of human beings. Which, not incidentally, is one of the more tremulous philosophical perspectives ever conjured in the mind of Man. It is in fact so fucking stupid that only an academic can really, truly believe it. The managerial class simply knows it butters their bread.
At Boeing we do specifically, in fact, have a more probable explanation: the hollowing out of engineering at Boeing by finance-types, as attested to by the recently deceased John Barnett among many others. If you were to imagine two Boeings, one which instituted DEI (like they have today) but not the replacement of engineering management with finance-types, and one which replaced the engineering managers with finance-types (which they did do) but did not do DEI, I would expect the latter Boeing to have more doors falling off planes.
It's quite possible I'm wrong and that DEI was, in fact, at the root of this great evil. That claim, once again, requires evidence. And I think it's not unreasonable that I should expect that some sort of evidence be provided, seeing as how it's a claim that leads the headline.
I remain dubious, but if you actually work for Boeing I will of course defer to your judgement on that specific matter while vehemently disagreeing more generally. I have simply seen too much. That said, you appear to acknowledge that DEI is, at least now, a factor in Boeing's decline. If that is the case, what evidence do you have...? I'm guessing you've observed some things. Observational, deductive and inductive evidence - coupled with a healthy dose of common sense - is the best any of us are going to get: there will be no studies. There will be no peer reviwed data published anywhere. None externally published, anyway. Not for awhile. This stuff is radioactive, which you surely know. What sort of evidence, exactly, are you after? Are you in general agreement with the article but specifically dubious of the extent to which DEI has affected Boeing? - That's how I'm reading you.
I made a mistake in my post - I meant "for Boeing" rather than "at Boeing" and did not mean to claim insider credibility for my post, which I will take fault for. I apologize for the misleading.
>Are you in general agreement with the article but specifically dubious of the extent to which DEI has affected Boeing?
I would say that's quite close to my position, but it's technically even more specific than that: I'm specifically dubious of the extent to which an actual fair observer could blame "parts falling off passenger planes" (which is an explicit reference to the 737 door plug blowout) on DEI. It's something I've heard a lot and do not believe that the claim could withstand examination if let's say a bunch of relatively-neutral people "on the fence about this whole DEI thing or whatever" were to look into it.
My personal experience with my personal role at my workplace is that I do not see any firsthand corrosive effects of DEI, though I only work with a few people directly. As far as I can tell, it's something the HR people accomplish mostly by hiring 1. model minorities across the board and 2. other minorities into lesser roles, though nobody will admit that's what's happening. If our flagship product were to implode spectacularly tomorrow I would be somewhat skeptical that DEI had anything to do with it. It feels closer to a tax than the corrosive enshittification of everything. But I wasn't aiming to make my personal experience the main topic: it's an N = 1.
I find your comments on this thread fascinating and accurate, although you fail to recognise that DEI is an acceleration of the process you've been observing for some time. The root of the problem you are describing really began to emerge at the end of WWII. The Europeans kept their processes largely the same. Americans basically started hiring inexperienced college educated 'yes' men to implement the goals of senior management. They were pissed off with shop floor promotions telling them what they couldn't do.
This was all well and good, provided they left the technical, engineering and operational fields alone. Instead, they would set the college 'yes' men above the engineers to pile on the pressure. The problem is that the finance or accountancy types were extraordinarily arrogant, they conflated general intelligence, which they admittedly had in abundance, with specific knowledge.
To use an analogy, it's quite possible to create a fountain without understanding of Bernoulli's principle, but it would probably consume more energy and be more expensive to maintain. The problem is, if you introduce complexity, you're going to get cascade failures.
I understand what you're saying. There were already a large number of people with a basic lack of competency, working in areas where they lacked the specific knowledge, or were just too ill-disciplined and arrogant to learn it, but the DEI problem exacerbates an already existing problem.
But the bigger problem is far worse- the dark side of DEI is it that it's a deliberate attempt to destroy the competition to the White 10% from Asians. Look at the schools aimed at giving talented kids in the cognitive 5% they are actively destroying, or introducing non-competence criteria like essays. The increasingly liberal White 10% of the socioeconomic spectrum feel threatened by Asian kids who are usually a good deal smarter and conscientious, especially when compared to their lazy 'esteem' based parenting.
The Europeans have a different problem. There are still lots of really great companies in Europe which were all established in the late 19th century. They care less about the fiscal quarter and more about market share. The problem is they are working in a regulatory environment which is toxic for innovation and which imposes hugely destructive energy costs from renewables. One-third of German manufacturing firms are thinking about offshoring. What a tragedy for their country.
The other thing to consider is the pipeline for excellence. It's become compulsory for scientists to write diversity statements- and a reasonable statement about social mobility simply won't cut it. Engineering will likely follow, although thankfully as a field the process will probably be slower as a result of partial insulation from the private sector. But just you wait- within ten years we will begin to see the types of failures in knowledge or applied knowledge production we've seen in the social sciences and psychology with the replication crisis.
They are actively selecting away from viewpoint diversity. They want to completely eliminate all conservatives from knowledge production. The problem is they are also eliminating scepticism of groupthink.
The other issue is we know exactly why there is shortage of Black engineers. It's called academic mismatch. Sure, the very top elite schools do OK, because there is less of a mismatch. The same for HBCs, because many talented kids are drawn to these schools because of their cultural importance. But for the top 200 competitive schools which don't fall into these categories the results are tragic. 40% drop out, and of those who remain, many transfer to less demanding fields. That's what happens when the superficial virtue signalling needs of the institution are placed over the needs of the student.
100% agree! I am an industrial engineer-serf in a Euro country not afflicted by DEI and i see the same issue at work here.
Gringo-Anglos claim that their techno-Empire is falling apart due to DEI / ESG but the *main reason* for the ongoing technical-industrial degradation is plain old corporate greed. Terminal stage neoliberal capitalism at work, eating its host society from within.
From my experience there are probably at least four issues at play. It's good old corporate greed of course, stifling innovation. Then there's corruption. I see a lot of jobs being filled "manually" to place "certain" people in positions both in government and the private sector - and laws and regulations being used to create positions for those people. Then there are "systems" being put in place inside companies to "change" the culture or to "improve" something. Those can be "lean management" or some other McKinsey-style lunacy. Those often result in new type of managers who don't understand the business they're in and are therefore incompetent regarding that business. This is likely, at least partly, what happened to Boeing. Then there are the virtue signaling efforts in selection, including DEI. Also, corporate greed is often a result of government corruption because it's very common where companies work for the government.
My feeling is that the McKinsey stuff has been decreasing but corruption and DEI-style selection have been increasing massively. The issue is that all these factors tend to create non-competence variables in selection. It can be difficult to separate which process is to blame but I'm fairly sure that DEI and similar systems are causing the biggest problems. In many cases they are not necessarily formally defined - it's just the new way of hiring and everybody seems to agree.
I think we can agree that DEI is a factor in the ongoing "crapification of everything". It might be a more relevant factor in some countries and less in others. And it is definitely interlinked with the other issues you've mentioned.
My main point here is that in order to try to solve the ongoing crisis it is vital to have a correct analysis of the root causes. And this requires a level, objective and in-depth analysis of what is really going on.
I see many people in Substack and beyond that hold onto old fashioned Gringo-Anglo racist fantasies that make some poor brown skinned immigrants the only culprits of the ongoing decline. On a similar note, I also see many people claiming that their leaders are really Marxists bent on Communistifying their sacred body fluids. Yeah, sure.
If these examples of mostly wrong opinions are used as a basis for finding solutions, it's not going to work. It's actually going to blow back catastrophically.
Going back to the business world: in my 20yr experience, one of the most important issues i've found (whether in SME or larger corporations) is the marked decline in leadership quality. A good leader needs to be charismatic, stubborn, egoist, etc in order to succeed climbing in the organization. These characteristics need to be balanced with business acumen, strategic vision, and a certain loyalty to the organization and his people. What i've seen during my professional career is that these "balancing" characteristics are disappearing, fast. Leaving only business leaders with the more sociopathic traits but without the skills to decisively lead and get things done. Leaders that are only good at figuring out the best way to look good in a presentation or at reading the mood of their higher-ups and reacting accordingly. Things like caring about the organization, their people, the image of the company to customers, etc, are totally secondary.
Anyway, I appreciate very much your work, I've been following it since the days of The Saker!
I've noticed the same exact thing about managers. Back in the day managers usually grew out of the business they were in. They knew the business and its environment, and they tended to be practical and realistic. There's still a lot of managers like that but their numbers are going down. They have been replaced by "professional managers" who are specially educated to be managers in some business school management program. Management has become a profession, like dentistry or plumbing, which appeals to some types of personalities more than other. This has, in my opinion had two negative consequences: Many professional managers have become isolated from the businesses they work for. Many of them don't even see the need to understand what is going on because management is a specific profession which applies to any business and they tend to see all businesses as similar or the same. You can see them hop between companies in completely unrelated fields like it's nothing. The other consequence is systematic brainwashing in business schools. Management programs are run on fads which usually have nothing to do with business or economic realities and the graduates bring this brainwashing with them and start messing with their companies with ideological fervor - Jack Welch style. Frankly, I sometimes think management should be abandoned as a legitimate field of study and all programs closed in every university.
Regarding what you said about finding the root causes, I agree. I wish I could find a way to carry out an analysis that determines the real root cause of the deterioration we see, but I'm not sure it can be done. I don't disguise the fact that my essays are speculative in nature. Most of them deal with issues that are not clear at all and conclusions are nothing more than a theory or a hypothesis. This one is no exception. Also, I tend to write in a slightly dramatic fashion from time to time and the titles sometimes reflect that. Everybody should always take everything with a grain of salt, and what I write is no exception. An finally, thank you for your kind words!
I was disappointed to find no concrete example of DEI crashing a plane. I had assumed the attention-grabbing title was a reference to the NBCFAE air traffic controller hiring scandal, but as far as I know that hasn't resulted in any crashed planes; and in any case it wasn't mentioned. This article seems to mirror the sort of tenuous theorizing found in social justice academia. Satire?
Geoduck - no organisation - especially an airline - hangs their dirty washing out on a public line for all to see. Believe me - there is a growing problem.
"Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences." Robert Louis Stevenson
Today, we're all sitting around the table considering the losses and damage caused by years of bad choices or refusal to choose. And cultivating irresponsibility destroys the pride of any job. Western societies are barely waking up to this reality.
When I taught English in Russia, I noticed that most of my teenage students were pursuing hard disciplines. Math, programming, engineering, physics, etc.
When I moved back to the U.S., very few teenagers I interacted with were pursuing anything challenging other than sports.
Just my anecdote, but the test scores and college degrees awarded numbers back it up.
I say that as someone who got a history degree that I absolutely regret pursuing. I enjoyed it, but it did not make me employable at all.
NASA is interesting. They chose another moon landing for their “comeback”. Can they do it? When China lands on the moon, it will be a triumph and show the world they’ve come of age. If the US lands on the moon, it will be a big yawn.
Ever heard of David Adair? Genius rocket scientist who had many excellent inventions, which were all stopped by the, what he calls, 'powers that be'...hence, anyone of any good capabilities are not allowed to work together as Human beings are meant to be working together, instead they are 'ruled over' and judged by a nefarious group whose only interests is their own personal ones.
Ideology and incompetence go hand in hand , when the Soviet union collapsed this was the heart of the problem and it is here now , and the outcome will be the same . I agree wth your thesis wholeheartedly
Absolutely correct about what really brought down the Soviet Union, Michael - and now Western corporates & governments are replicating the disaster. To appoint someone to any position other than that of merit is to eventually give that organisation the Kiss of Death. This DEI cult has taken hold in the airline industry in which I spent a lifetime, where Human Resources ideologists are forcing the employment of the unsuitable as airline pilots. The end results will be hard to hide.
DEI is in fact the ideology of victimhood. Back in 1957 in her novel "Atlas Shrugged", Ayn Rand described exactly what happens to a society if this ideology is embraced. She's so spot on it's uncanny. Once you have read this book, every time you hear of a train derailing or a Boeing losing its wheel, you find yourself thinking: "Who is John Galt?".
Professionals sports is the very best example of the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Being a short, slow, white guy is merely a social construct. Short, slow, white guys have been unjustly deprived of being first team all NBA.
Great article. I'm reminded of the Equifax 2017 data breach.
https://www.csoonline.com/article/567833/equifax-data-breach-faq-what-happened-who-was-affected-what-was-the-impact.html
The Chief Security Officer at the time of the hack was Susan Mauldin, a DEI hire. She was basically a music teacher and had no understanding of the complexities of cybersecurity. Following the hack, her bio was scrubbed on LinkedIn. After that, she left the company. You'll find no mention of this in any of the top rated Google articles on what happened.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/equifax-ceo-hired-a-music-major-as-the-companys-chief-security-officer-2017-09-15
What happens when the Dunning Kruger Effect scales up from the individual to the entire economy? It is one thing for an individual to lack the competence to evaluate their own incompetence, but what happens if an economy becomes disproportionality comprised of such individuals via alteration of criterion for competence? .... Short Answer: A decline of overall system reflexivity (ie the ability for system to meaningfully refer to and affect itself). Declining reflectivity factors significantly into collapse of complexity since complex systems that cannot affect themselves via any number of positive or negative feedback loops will walk their internal contradictions down the path to whatever logical outcomes those contradictions entail.
By extension, given the Dunning Kruger Effect and Narcissism are coextensive, you have established narcissism as a causal factor (if not the causal factor) for collapse of socioeconomic complexity and collapse of complex civilizations.
DEI is the ultimate statism and fascism. It combines corporate and state power for enforcement. It is the reunification of church and state through the mandatory uptake of a state moral program. It is a forced religion.
Equity is the same end result. Thus the same meager subsistence caloric intake. The same all dead at 35. Every conceivable horror so long as equally applied, can and is EQUITY. This as a moral program cannot even outlaw its own hideous functioning. We are caught in the same best case scenario. Like a Stalin communist.
Inclusion simply means , none shall escape. Inclusion is the only argument given for CBDC aka digital id and digital control. The net of Inclusion is not what they think it is.
Diversity is the reason for killing the word of God. Aka die verse. Thus a cult which all must adhere, none shall escape and horrors await.
Fools think power ever ran out for love. This vast assembly of power is for silence and for words that nudge us to our pens
Why are you comparing DEI, which is the logical conclusion of enlightenment principles like tabula rasa and equality and "liberty", to fascism, which was the 20th century rejection of those principles?
DEI reads like communism re-packaged with ‘feel good’ language for current times. I doubt small, family run businesses tolerate this mediocrity - no wonder they got (deliberately?) crushed during covid.
Great piece. Very well framed
DEI is at best a tertiary cause of doors falling off planes. The primary cause of shitty engineering at Boeing is (white male) execs throwing the (admittedly, also white male) engineers out of management and implementing shoddy engineering practices to cut costs. Last I saw of this narrative nobody had actually been able to make an actual causal connection between DEI and Boeing's engineering failures whereas the casual connection between financiers taking over Boeing and the collapse of engineering process at Boeing is direct.
It's certainly not impossible that DEI was, in fact, partially to blame. Maybe white male line workers still built superior products that could withstand Boeing's newly shittified engineering processes and black female DEI hires could not. But that claim requires evidence.
The correlation between diversity hiring and nothing really working anymore is so strong as to assume causation, barring the presentation of a more probable explanation. The idea that the DEI influence is "at best a tertiary cause" is absurd on its face for pretty much anybody who has worked, especially, with complex systems and watched for decades as the new secular religion of DEI has slowly atomized and delegitimized the very notion of merit and competency in favor of blind, unquestioning belief in tabula rasa and the fungibility of human beings. Which, not incidentally, is one of the more tremulous philosophical perspectives ever conjured in the mind of Man. It is in fact so fucking stupid that only an academic can really, truly believe it. The managerial class simply knows it butters their bread.
At Boeing we do specifically, in fact, have a more probable explanation: the hollowing out of engineering at Boeing by finance-types, as attested to by the recently deceased John Barnett among many others. If you were to imagine two Boeings, one which instituted DEI (like they have today) but not the replacement of engineering management with finance-types, and one which replaced the engineering managers with finance-types (which they did do) but did not do DEI, I would expect the latter Boeing to have more doors falling off planes.
It's quite possible I'm wrong and that DEI was, in fact, at the root of this great evil. That claim, once again, requires evidence. And I think it's not unreasonable that I should expect that some sort of evidence be provided, seeing as how it's a claim that leads the headline.
I remain dubious, but if you actually work for Boeing I will of course defer to your judgement on that specific matter while vehemently disagreeing more generally. I have simply seen too much. That said, you appear to acknowledge that DEI is, at least now, a factor in Boeing's decline. If that is the case, what evidence do you have...? I'm guessing you've observed some things. Observational, deductive and inductive evidence - coupled with a healthy dose of common sense - is the best any of us are going to get: there will be no studies. There will be no peer reviwed data published anywhere. None externally published, anyway. Not for awhile. This stuff is radioactive, which you surely know. What sort of evidence, exactly, are you after? Are you in general agreement with the article but specifically dubious of the extent to which DEI has affected Boeing? - That's how I'm reading you.
I made a mistake in my post - I meant "for Boeing" rather than "at Boeing" and did not mean to claim insider credibility for my post, which I will take fault for. I apologize for the misleading.
>Are you in general agreement with the article but specifically dubious of the extent to which DEI has affected Boeing?
I would say that's quite close to my position, but it's technically even more specific than that: I'm specifically dubious of the extent to which an actual fair observer could blame "parts falling off passenger planes" (which is an explicit reference to the 737 door plug blowout) on DEI. It's something I've heard a lot and do not believe that the claim could withstand examination if let's say a bunch of relatively-neutral people "on the fence about this whole DEI thing or whatever" were to look into it.
My personal experience with my personal role at my workplace is that I do not see any firsthand corrosive effects of DEI, though I only work with a few people directly. As far as I can tell, it's something the HR people accomplish mostly by hiring 1. model minorities across the board and 2. other minorities into lesser roles, though nobody will admit that's what's happening. If our flagship product were to implode spectacularly tomorrow I would be somewhat skeptical that DEI had anything to do with it. It feels closer to a tax than the corrosive enshittification of everything. But I wasn't aiming to make my personal experience the main topic: it's an N = 1.
I find your comments on this thread fascinating and accurate, although you fail to recognise that DEI is an acceleration of the process you've been observing for some time. The root of the problem you are describing really began to emerge at the end of WWII. The Europeans kept their processes largely the same. Americans basically started hiring inexperienced college educated 'yes' men to implement the goals of senior management. They were pissed off with shop floor promotions telling them what they couldn't do.
This was all well and good, provided they left the technical, engineering and operational fields alone. Instead, they would set the college 'yes' men above the engineers to pile on the pressure. The problem is that the finance or accountancy types were extraordinarily arrogant, they conflated general intelligence, which they admittedly had in abundance, with specific knowledge.
To use an analogy, it's quite possible to create a fountain without understanding of Bernoulli's principle, but it would probably consume more energy and be more expensive to maintain. The problem is, if you introduce complexity, you're going to get cascade failures.
I understand what you're saying. There were already a large number of people with a basic lack of competency, working in areas where they lacked the specific knowledge, or were just too ill-disciplined and arrogant to learn it, but the DEI problem exacerbates an already existing problem.
But the bigger problem is far worse- the dark side of DEI is it that it's a deliberate attempt to destroy the competition to the White 10% from Asians. Look at the schools aimed at giving talented kids in the cognitive 5% they are actively destroying, or introducing non-competence criteria like essays. The increasingly liberal White 10% of the socioeconomic spectrum feel threatened by Asian kids who are usually a good deal smarter and conscientious, especially when compared to their lazy 'esteem' based parenting.
The Europeans have a different problem. There are still lots of really great companies in Europe which were all established in the late 19th century. They care less about the fiscal quarter and more about market share. The problem is they are working in a regulatory environment which is toxic for innovation and which imposes hugely destructive energy costs from renewables. One-third of German manufacturing firms are thinking about offshoring. What a tragedy for their country.
The other thing to consider is the pipeline for excellence. It's become compulsory for scientists to write diversity statements- and a reasonable statement about social mobility simply won't cut it. Engineering will likely follow, although thankfully as a field the process will probably be slower as a result of partial insulation from the private sector. But just you wait- within ten years we will begin to see the types of failures in knowledge or applied knowledge production we've seen in the social sciences and psychology with the replication crisis.
They are actively selecting away from viewpoint diversity. They want to completely eliminate all conservatives from knowledge production. The problem is they are also eliminating scepticism of groupthink.
The other issue is we know exactly why there is shortage of Black engineers. It's called academic mismatch. Sure, the very top elite schools do OK, because there is less of a mismatch. The same for HBCs, because many talented kids are drawn to these schools because of their cultural importance. But for the top 200 competitive schools which don't fall into these categories the results are tragic. 40% drop out, and of those who remain, many transfer to less demanding fields. That's what happens when the superficial virtue signalling needs of the institution are placed over the needs of the student.
100% agree! I am an industrial engineer-serf in a Euro country not afflicted by DEI and i see the same issue at work here.
Gringo-Anglos claim that their techno-Empire is falling apart due to DEI / ESG but the *main reason* for the ongoing technical-industrial degradation is plain old corporate greed. Terminal stage neoliberal capitalism at work, eating its host society from within.
From my experience there are probably at least four issues at play. It's good old corporate greed of course, stifling innovation. Then there's corruption. I see a lot of jobs being filled "manually" to place "certain" people in positions both in government and the private sector - and laws and regulations being used to create positions for those people. Then there are "systems" being put in place inside companies to "change" the culture or to "improve" something. Those can be "lean management" or some other McKinsey-style lunacy. Those often result in new type of managers who don't understand the business they're in and are therefore incompetent regarding that business. This is likely, at least partly, what happened to Boeing. Then there are the virtue signaling efforts in selection, including DEI. Also, corporate greed is often a result of government corruption because it's very common where companies work for the government.
My feeling is that the McKinsey stuff has been decreasing but corruption and DEI-style selection have been increasing massively. The issue is that all these factors tend to create non-competence variables in selection. It can be difficult to separate which process is to blame but I'm fairly sure that DEI and similar systems are causing the biggest problems. In many cases they are not necessarily formally defined - it's just the new way of hiring and everybody seems to agree.
I think we can agree that DEI is a factor in the ongoing "crapification of everything". It might be a more relevant factor in some countries and less in others. And it is definitely interlinked with the other issues you've mentioned.
My main point here is that in order to try to solve the ongoing crisis it is vital to have a correct analysis of the root causes. And this requires a level, objective and in-depth analysis of what is really going on.
I see many people in Substack and beyond that hold onto old fashioned Gringo-Anglo racist fantasies that make some poor brown skinned immigrants the only culprits of the ongoing decline. On a similar note, I also see many people claiming that their leaders are really Marxists bent on Communistifying their sacred body fluids. Yeah, sure.
If these examples of mostly wrong opinions are used as a basis for finding solutions, it's not going to work. It's actually going to blow back catastrophically.
Going back to the business world: in my 20yr experience, one of the most important issues i've found (whether in SME or larger corporations) is the marked decline in leadership quality. A good leader needs to be charismatic, stubborn, egoist, etc in order to succeed climbing in the organization. These characteristics need to be balanced with business acumen, strategic vision, and a certain loyalty to the organization and his people. What i've seen during my professional career is that these "balancing" characteristics are disappearing, fast. Leaving only business leaders with the more sociopathic traits but without the skills to decisively lead and get things done. Leaders that are only good at figuring out the best way to look good in a presentation or at reading the mood of their higher-ups and reacting accordingly. Things like caring about the organization, their people, the image of the company to customers, etc, are totally secondary.
Anyway, I appreciate very much your work, I've been following it since the days of The Saker!
I've noticed the same exact thing about managers. Back in the day managers usually grew out of the business they were in. They knew the business and its environment, and they tended to be practical and realistic. There's still a lot of managers like that but their numbers are going down. They have been replaced by "professional managers" who are specially educated to be managers in some business school management program. Management has become a profession, like dentistry or plumbing, which appeals to some types of personalities more than other. This has, in my opinion had two negative consequences: Many professional managers have become isolated from the businesses they work for. Many of them don't even see the need to understand what is going on because management is a specific profession which applies to any business and they tend to see all businesses as similar or the same. You can see them hop between companies in completely unrelated fields like it's nothing. The other consequence is systematic brainwashing in business schools. Management programs are run on fads which usually have nothing to do with business or economic realities and the graduates bring this brainwashing with them and start messing with their companies with ideological fervor - Jack Welch style. Frankly, I sometimes think management should be abandoned as a legitimate field of study and all programs closed in every university.
Regarding what you said about finding the root causes, I agree. I wish I could find a way to carry out an analysis that determines the real root cause of the deterioration we see, but I'm not sure it can be done. I don't disguise the fact that my essays are speculative in nature. Most of them deal with issues that are not clear at all and conclusions are nothing more than a theory or a hypothesis. This one is no exception. Also, I tend to write in a slightly dramatic fashion from time to time and the titles sometimes reflect that. Everybody should always take everything with a grain of salt, and what I write is no exception. An finally, thank you for your kind words!
Still a good read though, and infinitely plausible.
I was disappointed to find no concrete example of DEI crashing a plane. I had assumed the attention-grabbing title was a reference to the NBCFAE air traffic controller hiring scandal, but as far as I know that hasn't resulted in any crashed planes; and in any case it wasn't mentioned. This article seems to mirror the sort of tenuous theorizing found in social justice academia. Satire?
Geoduck - no organisation - especially an airline - hangs their dirty washing out on a public line for all to see. Believe me - there is a growing problem.
"Success" has been redefined by global reserve currency status for the $US.
"Success" is whatever "we" say it is... until it's not, which is coming soon.
It is a strange "rainbow coalition" of politically correct Americans which is lately "empowered" to shout down rational voices.
Survival-stress changes all that when it hits.
"Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences." Robert Louis Stevenson
Today, we're all sitting around the table considering the losses and damage caused by years of bad choices or refusal to choose. And cultivating irresponsibility destroys the pride of any job. Western societies are barely waking up to this reality.
Thank you for this excellent analysis.
What a marvelous and eye opening analysis. Thank you!
Outstanding post, Gaius!
Harrison Bergeron is coming true…
💯 I was in fourth grade when I read that and I had a weird feeling it was going to come through in the future and it certainly has
When I taught English in Russia, I noticed that most of my teenage students were pursuing hard disciplines. Math, programming, engineering, physics, etc.
When I moved back to the U.S., very few teenagers I interacted with were pursuing anything challenging other than sports.
Just my anecdote, but the test scores and college degrees awarded numbers back it up.
I say that as someone who got a history degree that I absolutely regret pursuing. I enjoyed it, but it did not make me employable at all.
Same
See NASA.
Werner Von Braun has long since passed away.
NASA was his project, after he did so well with V-2 rockets in Germany.
He was a very talented human.
NASA is interesting. They chose another moon landing for their “comeback”. Can they do it? When China lands on the moon, it will be a triumph and show the world they’ve come of age. If the US lands on the moon, it will be a big yawn.
Ever heard of David Adair? Genius rocket scientist who had many excellent inventions, which were all stopped by the, what he calls, 'powers that be'...hence, anyone of any good capabilities are not allowed to work together as Human beings are meant to be working together, instead they are 'ruled over' and judged by a nefarious group whose only interests is their own personal ones.
Ideology and incompetence go hand in hand , when the Soviet union collapsed this was the heart of the problem and it is here now , and the outcome will be the same . I agree wth your thesis wholeheartedly
Absolutely correct about what really brought down the Soviet Union, Michael - and now Western corporates & governments are replicating the disaster. To appoint someone to any position other than that of merit is to eventually give that organisation the Kiss of Death. This DEI cult has taken hold in the airline industry in which I spent a lifetime, where Human Resources ideologists are forcing the employment of the unsuitable as airline pilots. The end results will be hard to hide.