Back in the day there were big infrastructure projects, the interstate highway system, nuclear fission reactors, USA was once a leader in rail, but now it seems USA can’t build any infrastructure at all, HDI is lowering, life expectancy is not as high as most other OECD countries. Anyone know what happened to cause this?
That’s exactly what it is
I disagree. Great man theory talks about a whole society and implies everyone in each generation is that way. And that its like a natural cycle that happens over and over. Its bullshit.
This is more a natural consequence of nepotism. Its not that there arent plenty of really capable and smart Americans who could be running things. Its that all the rich assholes put their dumbass kids in positions of influence and then died leaving those dumbass kids in charge of everything.
People who dont have to work for things tend to both take those things for granted and not be as capable. So nepotism picks are usually pretty bad at their jobs compared to a merit hire. As nepotism becomes more and more acceptable, because the people in charge now are nepo babies themselves, the issue just becomes worse and worse.
Great Man Theory ascribes history to the actions of individual “great men.”
Failson analysis is no different. It’s just not a material or actionable analysis.
Is it not material? I think its a material reality of capitalism and the way it functions that it encourages power and wealth to be accumulated in the hands of a few people, this then encourages nepotism to ensure this accumulated power and wealth stays in the “in” group. Nepotism then leads over time to the people who hold all this power and wealth to be kind of incompetent.
This isn’t something that just happens randomly. Its a fundamental part of how capitalism functions. Its part of why its always failing so spectacularly. Shortsightedness and the inability to plan for long term goals.
Its the same issue that a system like monarchism had. You have these people born into massive wealth, everything is handed to them, and they never have to work for anything. Then theyre given tons of power. Of course they’d do stupid shit. Its inevitable.
It’s also actionable. Look at a country like China. They make sure the politicians there prove themselves, and work their way up from the bottom. This builds skills they need to later go on to take on larger roles. By doing this China ensures that its policymakers, and politicians are exceedingly competent. This can be seen in how they run circles around the west in basically every interaction.
I also want to point out you are right to simply point out individual people who do incompetent things is not a material analysis, but what we can do is look materially at whether a system is setup in such a way that is encourages competence in its leadership or not in general.
Its an issue of how we view things. Everything that happens has a material reason for why it happened. The tough part is being able to dig into things, and find that root cause, and see it for what it is.