Dimitri Orlov- "America now the vast army of the deeply incompetent"

www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net...


"Our social instincts compel us to think well of our fellow man. In spite of much evidence to the contrary, we think him competent to cast votes, to decide how to spend and borrow money, and how to bring up his own children. We persist in this conviction even as the manifest lack of competence at every level of American society causes it to careen toward ruin. We recoil at the thought of government bureaucrats separating the competent from the incompetent, making those who are incompetent, along with their children, wards of the state, remedying their incompetence through strict discipline when possible, and consigning the rest to a lifetime of manual labor in service of society. Many of us quite justifiably think that the government bureaucrats are themselves incompetent, or worse. Those who no longer trust the competence of either the government or our fellow man instead put their faith in corporations or in churches or even in bloggers and internet newsgroups (pathetic, I know). They may preserve their sanity by doing so, but it does nothing to change the big picture. Presumably, it is better to be a competent observer of collapse than an incompetent one."-Dimitri Orlov

Mr. Orlov"s articles requently appear at "Life after the oil crash.com". He writes about the comparison between the "soft" crash of the former Soviet Union compared to the "Weimar Republic" type hard crash that he believes is in store for the U.S. Anyway I found the article interesting and am interested in your thoughts as well, my fellow ATS members.

I read the paper and find it sadly lacking in substance. Bookish language doesn't equal content.

For all the ills of the American society, I can't say that these are due to "vast incompetence". It's because of competent manipulation of masses into accepting policies going against their own best interests. Deception, if you will.

This guy has never seen how americans pull together during times of crisis first hand.
he's full of crap.

reply to post by grey580


I hope you are right. We shall find out soon enough, I am afraid.

reply to post by buddhasystem


I found it relevent due to my own experiences in the public and private sector. I have experienced the "Dunning-Kruger Effect" en.wikipedia.org... and the "Peter Principle " .en.wikipedia.org...

I have experienced the stunningly incompetent, rise to positions of power, while the functional and competent are unable to advance. Why do we suffer fools so well? In the Peter Principle one rises to a level of ones own incompetence and there stagnates. I have experienced what I have coined as the "Peter Principle 2.0" where one rises to the level of ones own incompetence and continues to rise. The latter I atribute to the fact that those in the upper eschelon are themselves incompetent and being so recognize those of thier own ilk as appropriate for promotion. In addition, fellow incompetents pose less of a threat to the postion of their incompetent superiors. The threat being a perceived move by the subordinate to usurp the position and or influence of the incompetent superior.

Most people, American or otherwise, have always been incompetent beyond a limited scope. In the past, the amount of damage a single incompetent individual could do was much more limited. Now, everything is interconnected through the Web and other complex systems, while greater population density means more people running around bumping into each other in various ways (virtual and otherwise), rather than staying down home on the farm. Thus, incompetence is amplified and projected outwards. The resulting ripples of fail and associated feedback distort and disrupt increasingly distant parties and players.

It should also be noted that systems and institutions in place are generally unable to handle the demands of the new networked world. It's like dropping a jet engine into a Pinto. We are trying to operate with a bizzare mix of tomorrow's technology and yesterday's institutional frameworks.

The best systems will always recognize human incompetence and set up checks and balances to minimize its damages. We are at the point where most of our systems (public nad private) need overhauls to deal with the new reality.