The bad drive out the good
2 December 2024
The bad drive out the good - this is important not just for money but for the employees at an institution. Good management attracts talented, hard working employees who will be loyal to the institution even after the managers leave. When good managers are replaced by incompetent or corrupt managers, the best employees think about leaving. When they do leave, the institution suffers. Over time, a higher percentage of its employees are not so good but stay because they cannot easily get another job.
Eventually, the upper management will leave or be forced out as their incompetence becomes too painful. However, it may take many years to undo the institutional damage they caused.
Heather Cox Richardson wrote about recent Trump incompetent appointees:
Over the holiday weekend, President-elect Trump continued to name the people he wants in his incoming administration. His picks seem designed to destroy the institutions of the democratic American state and replace those institutions with an authoritarian government whose officials are all loyal to Trump.
. . .
The people who work in governmental institutions—and therefore the institutions themselves—are rather like the ballast that keeps a ship upright and balanced in different weathers. Nonpartisan government officials who clock in to do their job keep the government running smoothly and according to the law no matter whom voters elect to the presidency.
It is precisely that stability of the American state that MAGA leaders want to destroy. In their view, the modern American state has weakened the nation by trying to enforce equality for all Americans, making women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities equal to white, Christian men. But they have been unable to persuade voters to vote away the institutions that support the modern state.
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