David Kellam

I was sent an e-mail today containing the phrase “over-regulating malevolent piece of shit” with reference to the recent IR legislation. It reminded me of former thinking. N.B. not “got me thinking”. Au contraire, the following is a complete thoughtless rant that hopefully bears some resemblance to former engagement in thought

I’ve been thinking more about politics lately, not from an informed academically sound study perspective, but from a “I know what’s wrong with this – it’s simple” perspective. It’s filled with mediocre and incompetent people. We live in a capitalistic society, yet the people making all the decisions are those with artificially deflated salaries. Talk about lack of incentive. They’re only ever going to get people who are either mediocre or believe very strongly in a cause to fill positions in government, non-profits or academia. My argument is that it’s more of the former; substantially.

So the problem with the structure we have for capitalism is that it’s not capitalistic enough. I’d say the same about both the labour party and the liberal party – the liberal party ARENT LIBERAL ENOUGH. And likewise for the labour party. Labour, STOP PRETENDING YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT ECONOMICS. You dont. Liberal, STOP PRETENDING YOU GIVE A CRAP ABOUT SOCIAL POLICY. YOU HAVENT A CLUE. Right, now we’ve got that settled, let the market (voters) decide which portfolio of assets (choice of party over time; balance of power, etc.) to invest in. This incumbent-favouring centralism is just a prime example of MEDIOCRITY. The incentives are all wrong.
Stand for something. Be different. Be confident.

I liken it to marketing. Read Seth Godin – very good. I figure there’s 1% of products that are truly “worthy” of attention in any given market. Whatever. So what do the other 99% do? They engage in marketing, which is to say, they try to flog a dead horse. They rely on exclusive distribution (e.g. Coke, anything sold in a supermarket), consumer mindspace, etc. to get their message across. Then something that is INTRINSICALLY worth buying comes along: nudie juice. Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Whatever. They dont spend a DIME on advertising. The product is the advertising. Their fans raving about it is their advertising. In Godinspeak, they “sneeze”. These products have huge profit margins, but smaller markets. Implication? You need to work harder to identify and exploit more market inefficiencies. Difficulty for a lazy golf-playing senior executive? High.

So the world is full of mediocre and incompetent people. So what do we as a populus do? We put them in charge. Likelihood of getting out of such a mess? NFL. Not frickin’ likely.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.