Now another peasant economy will beat you:
China’s coming global energy domination

I think the root of the problem isn’t that the country is falling behind in management skills so much as it is that the whole paradigm of “management” that we have is fundamentally flawed.

You can’t manage what you don’t know how to do, and the whole MBA concept is that management is a separate discipline unto itself, and that anyone trained as a manager can manage anything that is manageable. Which, I will submit, is manifestly delusional.

You want a subject-matter expert running things, no matter what. Look at Detroit–The bean counting types took over, and ran the companies into the ground. Same with Toyota–Back when they were the world-beating car manufacturer, they were managed by car guys, who had engineering or design backgrounds. Then, they hit the crisis, and the accountants took over. You can start to see the decline of the company in the aftermath of that, although I’ve heard rumors that the car guys conducted a bit of a coup against the bean counters.

Doesn’t matter where it is, what industry you look at, or which government agency it is: If the place is run by people who didn’t come up “doing the job”, it is almost guaranteed to be a total cluster-fark.

I think that we’re going to look back at the late Twentieth Century as the era of the MBA, and the industrial/governmental malaise of the period is going to be laid at the door of those over-educated idiots. Every single poor decision I see implemented in most of the companies I buy from is eventually traceable back to the “management gurus” that everyone thinks are essential to running these firms. Look at Sears, for example: Management by MBAs, making “safe” decisions. Now, Sears is on life support, and Amazon is eating their breakfast, lunch, and dinner. How did it happen that Sears shut down its catalog operations just as the Internet was taking off, and then completely missed the implications of what Bezos was doing?

You can’t manage what you don’t understand, and there was nobody there at the helm who really understood retail, marketing, and what the hell business they were actually in. Sears could have dominated the 21st Century in retail, but were too short-sighted and ignorant. Instead, Amazon is going to do what they could have done, and the whole reason boils down to those damn MBAs. Frankly, if I were running a large company, I’d go through the ranks with a sword, and fire every single one of them.

Every big-box store, including Costco, has the same issues. They try to “manage” the unmanageable, and the result is that there’s some central computer in corporate headquarters trying to run every store in the country, paying no attention at all to local conditions. I go into the local Home Depot, and what do I find? The same crap I’d find in one in Alabama, which makes a limited amount of sense for uniformity, but when you consider the differences imposed by climate and local market…? And, add in that the local managers have no input or control over things done in their stores? LOL… There’s little to no wonder that they can’t keep good people working for them.

Had a chat with a Costco manager, not too long ago, and expressed my frustration that there was no way of checking availability or what models were actually in stock at the local branch. You want to know what they have, you have to call the managers and ask them to go out and look at the specific item model number. How much bloody sense does that make? And, try finding stuff in the store–You should be able to go online, look at availability, and find out specifically which aisle the product is in, but… No, you can’t. And, oh-by-the-way, the in-store inventory control is done on an MS-DOS computer and program system that can’t talk to the Internet in the first place, which is why there’s such a huge gulf between the online Costco, and the actual one you walk into. That shit, right there? That’s why I’d sell my stock in that company tomorrow, and start buying Amazon. Piss-poor management with no real idea of what ‘effing business they’re in, and who won’t listen to their employees or customers.

The Washington Post story doesn’t ring true to me. No professor I ever worked closely with would act in such a crass manner. Rich undergraduates would not grovel to raise an A- to an A. Heck, I can not imagine a rich undergrad even taking a course in Latin. The ones I knew were all taking “social studies” and “political science” or “business subjects” and “history” not the hard subjects such as Dead Languages or STEM as what would be the point. They were at the Ivy to get the Ivy Degree and make connections, especially make connections including a suitable wife.

Another part of the story was that there was the Trump bashing including the smearing of his son in law. I consider the piece to be an example of progressive fiction rather than the truth.