* Getting a check for “disability” is the new “American dream.” Florida is crawling with former NY firefighters and cops collecting disability while waterskiing or remodeling condos. They’re otherwise fairly agreeable chaps (hardworking, politically conservative). Same goes for ex-military. If you drove a truck during Desert Storm or something you can now claim a 25% impairment to your back and get a check from Uncle Sam. No one speaks out against this sort of thing because a) “Support the Troops” and b) nearly everyone believes that an MRI showing a “herniated disc” is proof of a real injury (it isn’t).
* Our society has dedicated a large portion of its energy and resources to creating and promoting “firewatchers” from among our female populous. We have combat watchers, and crime watchers, work watchers and thought watchers.
A vast army of female watchers infest our halls of academia. Entire “disciplines” on campus are composed of a plurality of women whose intellect is below average, and the supermajority cluster about average, far below that required for college level learning. The advanced and terminal degree holders which emerge from that stew, cluster at the low edge of intellect required for basic degrees in real and challenging areas of learning. Yet hold tenure, and sway the content and direction of scholarship in general.
PMAFT has busied himself pointing out and criticizing the emergence of female tech-watchers who are now infesting STEM and attempting to drive its content and direction. He correctly predicts the dead hand of feminism grinding the gears of technological progress to a halt. As the scholarship-watchers have done to the humanities and the pseudoscience disciplines already.
* If you can’t be fired why move around some poor employees to a bad team or try to motivate others to work so they can belong? Do you just have some abstract reason to get your job done when nothing whatsoever will be different if you don’t get the job done? Is it like the people with hobbies, they just want to build a great miniature train set for their own personal satisfaction?
Whenever I had a job I exerted effort because it was important to my employer (generally involving directly or indirectly satisfying a customer who could take their money elsewhere) or I could forward my career by helping my employer function better or at least I could keep my job as long as my employer made money with my assistance. I worked to satisfy other people’s wants and needs. The money I earned could be used to satisfy my wants and needs as long as other people worked for the same reason.
Of course in government work, the customer pays at the point of a gun with no choice (taxes), and you produce whatever you want. Why bother to drive your workers to produce – nothing will be different if they do not produce except you work harder than you have to for no reason. I don’t understand these other incentives like higher status positions – why not give them out by lottery.
* Pensions and disability are a scam as currently constituted.
Double and triple dipping should be banned. You should get one pension, period. And disability should be contingent on the idea that one really cannot work, so working-at least in a similar capacity should be barred.
Teamster truckers used to be barred from barred from commercial driving of trucks whole retired. That was to keep Teamster retirees from competing with active Teamster drivers. An exemption was made for being a truck driver school instructor or a school bus driver in a rural area if the district was not Teamster or one they wanted to be.
In my area, the cops all retire in twenty years and then go to work as court bailiffs or parks and recreation security and get a second pension. Plus social security and lifetime medical. This should stop.
* I’ve been a French civil servant for three decades. There’s a one year probationary period in France. If you’re unfit for the job, the probationary period can last up to one year longer. It’s almost unheard of for someone to be fired during their probationary period (and after the probationary period, it is simply impossible). A French civil servant can be fired only for “faute lourde“, that’s to say, committing a crime while on duty, or being not only utterly incompetent, but also seriously antagonizing every one else (in other words, being a sociopath. I’ve known a few). Absolute incompetence is not a faute lourde.
The system works fairly well, actually. It’s great to go to work every morning, knowing that even if you perform poorly you can’t be fired. You can work serenely, which actually increases performance. Performing agents are given higher status positions (but usually, not higher salaries). It’s incredible how people can work their asses off for status.
I was for several years in charge of a team of people who had, for some reason, incurred the wrath of their bosses. I managed to make them work by playing on their need for inclusion: if you want to really belong to the team, you must do your work. Every team leader did exactly that. It works best, of course, with the losers who have no life outside of the workplace. It also works well with married fathers, who are usually proud enough to resent being labelled lazy. There are people who won’t work for any reason, and you can’t fire them. Punish them by having them sent to work in a unit headed by a psychopath, especially a female psychopath.
The worst of the worst are those who are incompetent, lazy, and who think that if they don’t get promoted, and faster please, it’s because of institutional racism / sexism / antisemitism, etc.
Lazy, incompetent bosses think that everyone else is like them, therefore they don’t trust their subordinates. They’ll always be on your back because they are very insecure. And, being lazy and ineffectual, they’ll go for the easy targets: the guys who actually work, because those are the workers whose self-esteem depends on their hard work being acknowledged.
A friend of mine, a white guy, had the silly idea of getting transferred to one of the French Caribbean islands, in order to be closer to his Venezuelan wife’s country. He was appalled by the laziness and incompetence of the local, Black civil servants. Actually, it was him who felt excluded: who’s that white guy who wants to make us toil? He lasted a couple of years and asked to be sent back to continental France.
I think that the private sector will devise methods to select good workers. Hire people for short term contracts, and only renew the contracts of the workaholic few. People who are natural workaholics work their asses off even when they know that they can’t be terminated even if their productivity decreases sharply.
Angela Merkel thinks that the riff-raff of the Third World will turn into superb German engineers and factory workers, when they have a chance to get a German education. Nope. They’ll turn Germany into what it’s already becoming: a decadent nation which cheats on its customers and lives off the reputation of former, smarter generations. So, what will they get in the end? Multiculturalism, which works so well in Syria. All the Germans of the future will have, is a country dependent on imports for energy and food, and whose two-digit IQ workforce can’t produce top-notch products anymore, let alone conceive them. Looks like poverty, crime and ethnic tensions to me.
