By virtue of being a boss, one is in the position of exploiting people and giving them orders. They might do so nicely, but that reality remains. Giving orders to people means in that capacity one is treating them as things, not people, not equals. That line is the line of class. The middle class, that relatively small group in between the employing class and the working class, is often unable to understand or see that line because its success depends on sucking up and kicking down while thinking it has no class pulsation but is neutral and objective.
The Ds have long tried to cater to that middle class with its rhetoric while doing little to weaken the power of the employing class. Given that the US is mostly working class, it is hard not to see that as a strategic mistake
So, you’re willing to abandon our current kakistocracy for some kind of orderly meritocracy?
Communist 
I actually kind of love it. I think the inertia that would work against its implementation to any degree is ginormous, but I think it would be an excellent place to work toward.
I just ran it by my wife who also likes it, and essentially asked how the culture war issues would fit in, if at all. My take was that randomly selecting members would tend to create – for example – pro-choice and anti-choice participants in roughly the same proportion as the overall population … probabilistically speaking.
And – as a hiring committee – the decision could be made as to how much weight, if any, to give such issues. Like a Supreme Court Justice should be evaluated, there’s a judicial philosophy and temperament that should be more important than ‘how would you decide’ on a given issue.
It’s a total tear-down and rebuild, but I really do support the basic framework. The popularity contest model just plain sucks.
Though we still need a better electorate. The quality of the outcome of your process is still largely dependent on the wisdom, knowledge, commitment, and temperament of its participants. It also has a ‘landed gentry’ overtone to it that I’m not sure can easily be avoided.
I tend to agree with this. Democrats have had multiple opportunities to keep the public informed while in office and have failed miserably. They are insulated and isolated from the electorate. Failure to tell people what is being done on their behalf opens the door to all manner of flim-flam artists to come in and distort reality. Trump was able to tell preposterous lies and they were believed. It doesn’t help that the media is also polarized, with the left focusing on disaster and other bad news while the right focuses on preposterous nonsense. Biden did some good things in office, but few can name them.
I agree with your general concept as I have believed that we have to stop thinking of our government elected officials as our “leaders” who are supposed to magically inspire us.
Along the lines of what you (@Sage_Rat) are suggesting, I’ve always thought of how this process should be no different from how a large condo or residential development hires a property management company.
…I don’t recall ever thinking that. I’ve pretty much only ever thought of them as followers; have I been doing it wrong?
That’s not the way our team works at all. We have a common goal. Our skills intermix. No one tells anyone to do anything. If we, as a team believe something should be done, we do it, as a team.
Pardon the source I’m using, folks, but the greatest fear I see to a worse, dumber electorate is right here:
bolding mine.
OMG round 2 of pure incompetence.
Methinks you are an exception.
Sounds like socialism in one company! Workers’ management of industry! Congratulations! How do we spread that revolutionary success?
Quick questions: how equal are salaries and wages? Who determines what happens with the profits? Who does the cleaning, what are they paid and do they participate in the decision-making?
Sure, but I’d maybe nitpick that slightly to a “concerted obstructionist bulldozing of educational norms.”
Absolutely - that too!
I do think the federal DOE should be shut down. Education should be the responsibility of state and local governments, IMO, which would then have roughly $60B more to spend on it.
Closing the Deptartment of Education would be a disaster for students with disabilities and students who are susceptible to discrimination.
Too often the threat of losing federal funding is what keeps some public schools in line as well as following the IDEA and ADA and other federal laws.
I think the Democrats will have to change in a transformative way similar to how the Republicans have. I don’t think the current Democratic personalities and messaging style is relevant in today’s world. The way that political messaging gets to the general public is by being shared by people on social media. People see a story and proselytize it on their own. People aren’t going to share boring stories about how inflation is slowly going down by X%. They’re going to share salacious stories about how criminal migrants are flooding the cities with drugs.
I see the transformation of the political landscape like the transformation of the History Channel. At one time they showed informative history documentaries, but in their chase for ratings, are now showing shows about reality shock schlock, aliens, and ghosts. The History Channel has changed so much that it’s not recognizable from what it once was. I think the same thing will happen with the Democratic party. To chase voters, they’ll have to debase their messaging and add lots of hype to get people motivated enough to spread the message far and wide on their own. The vocal and engaging personalities like Bernie Sanders and AOC need to come to the forefront to create the headlines which get shared on social media. Harris would have done a great job, but her personality was too sedate to make an impression in the current political environment. The Dems need leaders who create headlines with the same frequency as Trump.
My point is that it’s incredibly naïve to think that everything that is wrong with America is due to the insidious influence and incredible power of the propagandists, that if only the people weren’t being led astray the light of truth would dawn in their eyes and they’d wake up to how wrong they’ve been. It doesn’t even give the people the backhanded compliment of at least having enough agency to have actually chosen the positions they took; that really the people are sheep who’ll follow whichever Pied Piper is best at luring them. Frankly it sounds like the revisionist view that Hitler and the Nazis somehow hypnotized the entire German nation, when the modern view is that yes, Hitler and the Nazis were what a lot of Germans really wanted or at least saw as better than Communism.
IMO, the argument that a federally-administered service “should be the responsibility of state and local governments” nearly always winds up playing out as “state and local governments should be able to fuck over members of their constituencies whom the people in charge don’t like.”
Thing is that even Socrates and Plato, thousands of years ago, noticed that this would be an issue with democracies, the candy-man is likely to get more votes than the doctor advising proper remedies.
Actually, the rich class financed the Nazis and pressured government to give them the government. Pointing out the significant part of people that were misguided to vote for Trump does not remove the strength of the money that came to things like Xitter (x, formerly twitter) that misinformed a good number of voters.
Nah. We are just people that want to get our jobs done. We have pride in doing it right. Job one in my department is providing data to the public. But let me make it clear that we sometimes have to work weird hours. I worked Friday night, and some on Saturday. That’s a just the way it is when your involved in IS. It’s accepted. We adjust hours as needed.
I could probably snoop and find out, but I don’t care. It’s none of my business. We all make good money though.
There are no profits. I work for County Government. We create data gather data. We also issue permits, we make sure things are safe. That’s our job.
I work from home now, so my wife and I do the cleaning 
But for the office spaces, it’s contracted out. I don’t have any involvement in that.
There is that, and speaking of meritocracy:
https://www.ift.org/news-and-publications/digital-exclusives/why-dei-matters
Some have said that instituting the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace, out of compulsion, results in mediocrity, not meritocracy. However, in the absence of diversity and inclusion, it is exceedingly difficult in most human endeavors to proclaim that someone or something merits designation as “the best.” In other words, without diversity and inclusion, meritocracy itself is a meritless myth, and any merit bestowed cannot be deemed equitable.
Science, resplendent in objectivity, is not immune to these pernicious failings when it comes to a lack of DEI principles in our workplaces. Years ago, I was told by my university advisor that my pursuit of a degree in science “was (for an African-American man) socially deviant behavior.” My inclusion in the program challenged the contemporary orthodoxy and the closely guarded cultural hegemony within the sciences. The diversity that I brought to the program was received with a resounding chill.
I know others with similar stories.
I would argue that the presence of differences within a given community (diversity) and the practice of ensuring that people feel a sense of belonging (inclusion), coupled with ensuring that processes and programs are impartial, fair, and provide equal possible outcomes for every individual (equity), is foundational to creating an environment in which meritocracy, not mediocrity, thrives.
Examples abound. For instance, I think most will agree that pugilism is the ultimate measure of meritocracy. Mano y mano, as it were. I don’t think, however, that there are many who subscribe to the notion that Jack Johnson’s inclusion in boxing ushered in an era of mediocrity. Rather, I think, most would agree that his inclusion added diversity to the sport, which may have exposed mediocrity masquerading as the champion.
There are countless stories about American icons that illustrate this point. Despite segregated working conditions at NASA, Katherine Johnson and her team were instrumental in the monumental success of America’s manned space flight program. John Glenn, the celebrated astronaut, did not see their work as mediocre. Rosalind Franklin played a pivotal role in elucidating the structural geometry of DNA. Yet, because of her gender, her brilliant contributions to the field are underreported. In the world of tennis, thanks to Althea Gibson’s courage and masterful game, we now celebrate Venus and Serena—the antithesis of mediocrity. And, during World War II, the U.S. government made Herculean efforts to desegregate and make the armed services more inclusive*.* Gradually, honors and promotion to positions of leadership were opened to all service members. These actions resulted in exceptional leaders, including General Colin Powell, General Lloyd Austin, and Admiral Linda Fagan. No mediocrity in these ranks.