Posted on 02/09/2023 5:29:36 AM PST by MtnClimber
Have affirmative action hiring practices caused overall competence to plummet? The record appears to show exactly that.
For no good reasons whatsoever, competence was allowed to die on the vine in order to give the less competent a leg up. Not equality but superiority rules the hiring, firing, and education of Americans. Worse, many of those who were affirmatively hired do not do as good a job as those whose excellence was obvious. You can see it in customer service, which for many businesses is abysmally incompetent. There is a resentful casualness in those who are hired to serve others that would not have been acceptable even two decades ago. The competence level one deals with on a daily basis is on life support.
While there are pockets of the competent in places like Florida and some Southern states, much of America is being run by children with no sense of responsibility or pride in accomplishment. That is because there is little real accomplishment in their lives; children get passed through the public education system having to learn little of value. Instead, they are taught perverse sexual practices and aberrant lifestyles. They are taught how to be activists but are not taught to be competent breadwinners.
It is harder and harder to find good computer techs to service the average home computer user. Instead, salespeople are sent out to do the most basic installations, utterly lacking the sophistication to handle a complex computer problem that may come up. Training in many fields is rudimentary. Surgeons and physicians are being put through university because of their skin color, not necessarily their competence. Ditto pilots. Do you want to fly or get operated on by these hires? I'll pass.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Government is creating this.
As we drown in this myriad of government regulatory stupidity and advice, just remind yourself, it’s all for social justice and equality, to save the planet, for public safety and national security. I hope that makes you feel better.
Correct. Recently stayed at a nicer downtown hotel in San Luis Obispo, California. Staff of younger wokesters who were dull and kept the place dark as a dungeon to “save the planet”. Weird vibe from each and every one of them. On the plus side, the rooms DID come with a little “intimacy box” which included breath mints, sanitary wipes, and sex lube (yes). Bizarre, disturbing place packed with 30-somethings.
If I had to pay for someone to repair everything that needed work in my house, I'd be living in a cardboard box.;-)
I don't consider myself particularly handy but, in the last two months, I have replaced my HVAC thermostat, fixed a ceiling fan (broken switch), replaced drain pipe under the kitchen sink (leak), and stripped wallpaper and painted a bathroom. I might even have forgotten some other less noteworthy repairs.
My wife and stopped to check on a young girl who had a flat tire. There were three boys with her. High schoolers. NONE of the boys knew what to do. My wife and I changed the tire and showed the boys how to do that. When we were finished, my wife asked the boys for their man cards.
Yes, and that's good, but who's going to take over the US military whose stated mission is "diversity and inclusiveness," NOT NATIONAL DEFENSE?!??
I took my entire furnace apart last summer and cleaned it out with a hose, then put it all back together. Being able to fix it isn’t the issue.
If I had some guy locally I could pay to come in and change the filter, so I didn’t have to mask up and risk 3 days of sneezing, I sure as hell would pay the dude and probably send him a Christmas card every year too.
The Peter Principle was an observation that individuals were promoted to their level of incompetence. They were competent through the level prior though. Laurence Peter observed the phenomena but wasn't promoting it as something to follow.
The Peter Principle existed centuries before it was hashed out in a publication by Laurence Peter.
From Wikipedia:
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's 1763 play 'Minna von Barnhelm' features an army sergeant who shuns the opportunity to move up in the ranks, saying "I am a good sergeant; I might easily make a bad captain, and certainly an even worse general. One knows from experience."
Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) wrote that "there is nothing more common than to hear of men losing their energy on being raised to a higher position, to which they do not feel themselves equal."
Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) virtually enunciated the Peter principle in 1910, "All public employees should be demoted to their immediately lower level, as they have been promoted until turning incompetent."
“Is this guy saying he can’t change his own air filters? Surely not.”
Some filters are in the house and very easy to change. Others are in the overhead crawlspace with the air handler and involve some pretty high tech hardware that keeps the air ducts clean and virus free. I have that stuff. I can change the filter, but it is rather involved. Since my AC company services that stuff every six months, they also change the filter at that time.
So, it’s possible that one might want their AC company to change the filters.
Sounds like it. It may depend on where those filters are located. If it's an attic mount, they may be in the attic at the unit, they may be in a vent in the ceiling. It could be an accessibility issue. Mine is easy to get to and I buy the second cheapest basic filters I can get my hands on and change them monthly. But I live in New Mexico, and the wind blows a lot, it's dry here, and the dust re-settles after you dust within minutes. I'm only slightly exaggerating.
Irony of ironies pure “meritocracy” would mean that the Asians would dominate the white man in many elite positions - non-Jewish white folk have been a minority of Ivy League schools for at least the past 30 years.
Depends on where the filters are located.
Mine are in the attic and inconveniently positioned due to the home architecture. Need acrobatic abilities to change them.
There is an old story about Governor Reagan discussing the removal of race-based admissions policies for the California university system. An aide explained to him that if the admission system were “race blind” then about half the students accepted to the schools would be Asian. Reagan said: “So what?”
“Biggest problem is that there’s a limited number of competent (i.e., private and/or home-schooled) employees to hire.”
In addition even if a “competent” company could recruit and train competent employees, the government would intervene to force “diversity” in the workforce or an outside social justice organization would set up the company for a discrimination lawsuit.
Free market capitalism naturally destroys incompetent companies. Competitors steal customers from the incompetent companies by taking advantage of the incompetence. However, when the heavy hand of government intervenes in the marketplace, the forces of competition are distorted. Incompetence is subsidized by government and competence is penalized. Excellence is not rewarded and choices are reduced. The society becomes conditioned to the equality of mediocrity.
I said it is possible some lack the skills. Neither of us know in this case.
I think of Jefferson Davis as a good example of the Peter Principle. He was very good at the positions he held before he became President of the Confederate States of America.
While Socialists and "sensitive" employees in the workforce behave like crabs in a bucket, they're not responsible for the massive attack on competency.
The biggest opponents of competency aren't slackers but those with power who vehemently oppose potential competition that might upset the order.
If one becomes so competent as to improve or develop something with significant impact, those in power will either shut them down or buy them out to prevent a new player from upsetting the game.
After a 40-year career in the Military and Federal Government, I can assure you that the premise of the article is absolutely true. Diversity initiatives have just about ruined American excellence.
Here’s my latest example. The IRS is FULL of Affirmative Action hires. I E-filed my return and mailed them my due taxes and the first quarter’s estimated tax in March 2022. I then mailed them three more Quarterly Estimated Tax payments; each time the check was mailed ONE MONTH EARLY.
The IRS has to date not cashed a single check from 2022. Not one.
The Gibmedats went home for COVID quarantine and apparently never came back, while still drawing full pay. They still have MILLIONS of unprocessed 2022 returns.
I mailed them a letter explaining all this in December. I got a nice form letter reply, telling me they need another two months to investigate my problem.
Ain’t Diversity Grand?
I think we all know the answer. It will be a more competent military from a less divided country. Unfortunately that is reality.
That is the parents' fault. A tire is so reliable today that it almost never goes flat unless it pick up a nail. When I was growing up, tires went flat regularly.
Before I let my kids (a boy and a girl) drive, they had to learn how to drive a manual shift, change the oil, replace the air filters, replace a battery, and change a tire. The first and last one really pissed off my daughter. Well guess what, 6 months later she and her boyfriend got a flat tire. My daughter walked her boyfriend through the process. She was tickled pink.
“When we were finished, my wife asked the boys for their man cards.”
Awesome riposte but I bet the kids had no idea what she meant.
A bit of humor involving our family ... when teenagers, my sons and a few of their buds once argued that any guy with an electric chain saw (vs. gas powered) should have his ‘man card’ either revoked or a hole punched in it. Three hole punches and the man card was revoked. Interestingly when cleaning up after the Great Texas Ice Storm last week we found out that one of my sons friends did indeed have an electric chain saw. Much ribbing ensued.
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