When I write "General Petraeus is obviously evil!", your reaction should be "Duh! Tell me something I don't already know!" However, this story was amusing.
General Petraeus is considering taking a job as CIA head. Do you see why this is evil? Do you see why this clearly indicates "General Petraeus is a highly-skilled psychopath!"?
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A common psychopath trick is "Switch jobs every 1-2 years. Then, you can never be blamed for failure."
General Petraeus took over in Afghanistan, after General McChrystal was too honest. Less than a year later, he's leaving for greener pastures.
Suppose General Petraeus was leader in Afghanistan from 2001-present. Then, he would be clearly accountable for failure. Suppose he was the leader in Iraq from 2003-present. Then, he would be blamed.
By switching jobs frequently, General Petraeus avoids accountability. This allows him to preserve the illusion that he's an awesome genius leader. By switching jobs frequently, he avoids the stink of failure.
This is an example of the Principal-Agent problem. A bureaucrat controls resources he doesn't own. If you can get a better job, take it, and leave someone else to take the blame for your failure. It's about exploiting State resources for personal benefit.
That story was amusing. The spin was "Wow! General Petraeus is going to lead the CIA! They're lucky to have him!" The truth is "He failed in Iraq. He failed in Afghanistan. He has to get a new job before the stench of failure taints his image. By continually switching jobs, General Petraeus preserves the illusion that he's a brilliant leader."
This is a common State psychopath trick. If you're a "hot leader", you keep switching jobs to avoid accountability.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Indications Of Evil - General Petraeus
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2 comments:
The corollary of that is that if someone does good work, then you fire him or her and then take credit for the work. The original worker isn't around to contradict you. The manager can then hire new workers and tell them how brilliant he/she is. Often the good work gets done in spite of stupid management and dishonest, lazy co-workers.
Many, many years ago I had worked very hard to do some complex work. The work was difficult enough such that run-of-the-mill people can't do it. I started to show the work I had done around the company and I was just starting to get attention. Then a team leader was appointed and his first order was to ban me from showing my work to other people in the company!
I then got moved to a new group but in the same company. The fools sat on my work for 6 months and then passed it off as their own. However they forgot the big picture and by that time everything around my work had changed, they were too stupid to update it and so it looked like crap 6 months later.
This work could have saved the company a vast amount of money.
Eventually the fools said they didn't have the technical skills to continue with the project and suggested the company hire a contractor for it.
No doubt the contractor would have been paid 2x - 5x the amount I was getting!
A huge waste of time and money.
The company could have had some valuable work. Instead a couple of fools wanted the credit for my work and so messed everything up and wasted a vast amount of time and money.
Corporations, are really a communal form of property ownership.
Due to unallocated property ownership, they suffer same ills as a full-blown communist enterprise.
Short term interest - communal property owners are not interested in long term - due to "the tragedy of commons" (I don't see it as tragedy, I hate commons).
Corporations crowd out privately held partnerships and sole prop. businesses, because the FED is printing dishonest money - so that quantity matter more than the quality of business. In a free market, a corporation could not compete with privately owned business.
Because of dishonest money, everyone lives about as well off as everyone else, the capable worker and the incapable one. Because of that, a productive worker is more of a nuisance, than a good asset. I a free market, there would a very wide gap between useful, productive people and your regular idiot who can't / has no desire to do a good work.
You should really try to work for a sole proprietorship. A corporation is unable / not interested in hiring an honest manager. None of corp managers are truly interested in doing their job right.
I don't think I would see too may objections from serious people with experience, if I say that in today's business no one really gives a fuck about the true quality of his work, as opposed to how it is seen.
I've seen this exact behavior in USSR, just to larger degree, but it's getting pretty similar lately as everything becomes more and more socialized.
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