Inconsequential

Systems seek to render competition irrelevant. When the bureaucracy and its minions determines which ideas will have the advantage, competence stands little chance against connections, cronyism, or conferred status. All that really matters is how well you can work the system.

The "smart" people have figured this out a long time ago. My father-in-law told me how impressed he was with the intelligence of Tim Kaine, Senator-elect for my home state of Virginia. (He claims to have talked to Kaine at some event a few years ago.) The (former) Governor has it figured out. He's going to the center of power to curry favor and garner tremendous personal wealth by manipulating the output of the saps who insist on actually doing things. A guy I work with is pursuing a similar path. He's leaving behind doing things for managing things. He loves to drop little nuggets about the budgets he's working on and the presentations he's putting together for different managers. It's clear that he wants to get in a position where he has power in the system. I've seen him doing things for managers, running meetings, putting slides together, gathering information, all in an effort to show that he's capable of managing the system.

Of course the system will carry on regardless of who's at the wheel. It doesn't really matter if is this guy gets to manage a group or whether that role falls to somebody else in the organization. The capabilities of any one person in a system are largely drowned out by the complexity of the organization. The limits imposed by the structure of the system dictates how well a particular company will perform in the marketplace. Systems don't die (ie, big companies going bankrupt) because a bad manager was put in charge. Systems die when people stop buying the thing that the system has been built to deliver. Hostess is still the best in the world at making Twinkies. People just don't eat them anymore. There is limited value in working outside of the system to accomplish something new. The new is difficult to merge into an established system. It's better to spend your time integrating yourself into the hierarchy that controls access to the levers of power. Merging with the system ensures that you'll be able to stick around and maybe get a few perks that fall to the system's power positions (substantial for Tim Kaine, largely inconsequential for my colleague)

I have a strong aversion to simply fitting into the system. I'm fortunate to work in R&D. As much as managers try to make the development of a new pharmaceutical product routine and predictable, there will always be unexpected problems to solve. I get out of the system by working on these problems. It's becoming much more difficult to avoid encroachment of the system into other areas of my life. A bigger government means that a greater and greater portion of my life will fall under the purview of one bureaucracy or another. Eventually, there may be no way to escape the system. What I want for my children, my life, my career will mean nothing in the face of a system that requires complete and absolute conformity and compliance.

The success of the US rests (or maybe I should say rested) in its unique ability to nurture the human spirit. In the US, you are (were) free to pursue those things that make you want to get up in the morning. Warren Buffett can advise somebody to take the job that they would take if independently wealthy because there are virtually unlimited opportunities. The parts of the system that make those opportunities possible are rapidly closing. The lose of those opportunities leaves more people subject to the system. That means more people are no longer free to exert their individuality. They're just another part of the system now. No more or less important than the other guy in the system. They're inconsequential.