A Playground for Incompetent Sociopaths

Here's another example of where we can shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, that's democracy for you." From Zero Hedge and Charles Hugh-Smith, "Does Our System Select for Incompetent Sociopaths?"

Natural selection isn't only operative in Nature; it is equally operative in human organizations, economies and societies. People respond to whatever set of incentives and disincentives are present. If deceiving and conning others is heavily incentivized, while integrity and honesty are punished, people will gravitate to running cons and embezzlement schemes. 

What behaviors does our Status Quo reward? Misrepresentation, obfuscation, legalized looting, embezzlement, fraud, a variety of cons, gaming the system, deviousness, lying and cleverly designed deceptions. 

Let's connect the pathology of power and the behaviors selected by our Status Quo. What we end up with is a system that selects for a specific category of sociopaths: those whose only competence is in running cons.

In a sense, every system incentivizes sociopaths whose only skill is running cons. A con is all about satisfying the external signifiers while acting exclusively to enrich oneself. When the external signifiers are not indicators of success or achievement or completion that is the problem. That is, when what looks good is the same as what is good.

A well-formed system has little interest in the intentions of its workers. Whether the individual is trying to make a name for himself, impress women or, incredibly, simply takes satisfaction in a job well done, the system's interest is whether the worker is accomplishing the system's goals or not.

It hardly matters if a king fattens himself at the public treasury if he's created an overflowing economy.

As we know, there's no hope of creating a perfect system. The signifiers are supposed to be a description of how well things are functioning--what we hope for is accuracy. There's is always some wiggle room between the representation and the reality, which is where the con lies.

The question, again, isn't how to prevent the system from being gamed--it's how to minimize the possibility that it's gamed, how to minimize the damage that comes from being gamed, and how to best repair that damage. In other words, a robust system.

The progressive solution to the problem of poor administrators is to install a better class of person in the role. In a nation of nearly 360 million, how can we know whether a potential administrator is a better class?

Well, we go back to looking at external signifiers. You know who sounds smart and moral and compassionate? Someone who went to Harvard Law School, maybe showing his leadership by editing their Review. Someone who's worked among the people, out in the community, maybe organizing them. Someone who knows how hard the system can be on some people, maybe by virtue of his race.

In a massive centralized system, all we have to go on are the signifiers, the reports and the credentials. The most important order of business is making sure everything looks good. The name of the game is marketing--"Look, the number of unemployment claims is down and nine out of ten doctors agree that our policies are great!"