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January 21, 2009
Ignorance and incompetence lead to reward....
It's widely held that ignorance increases with the distance from the actual work front up to the executive level, with a concurrent rise in pay; but, until now, we've had only anecdotal evidence of such. Well, finally, a formal proof is to be had.
1) Axiom - Knowledge is Power
2) Axiom - Time is Money
3) Power = Work / Time (Classical Physics)
4) Knowledge = Work / Money (substitution)
Therefore, Money = Work / Knowledge.
Thus, for any given amount of Work, Money approaches Infinity as Knowledge approaches Zero!
This is obviously true of the Civil Service in particular where the higher the position held, the greater the lack of knowledge of the function or service actually provided by the person managing the department. This can be proved by reference to any set of meeting minutes produced by any gathering of Civil Servants and which are all remarkable only by their lack of any detail of the actual discussion of any subject and by reference to the paucity of any workable solutions to any of the nation's problems they are tasked with solving or administering. For Civil Servants, knowledge of the function is unimportant, the really important thing to know is who can advance your career and who will scupper it, who your rivals for any post are and what hidden mess your predecessor might have left to explode in your face. That is real knowledge and real power in this day and age. Who needs to know what they are actually doing? Only the grunts that work for you.
In short, the obvious key to success today lies not in what you know but in who. Not in what education you may have, but in where you got it and who you met in getting it. Total Ignorance is obviously a far better rewarded state than any other.
Posted by The Gray Monk at January 21, 2009 01:19 PM
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