The Toughest Task For A Mob To Solve Is Selection Of An Adaptive Leader Rather Than Just A Tyrant

Commentary by Roger Erickson

Isn't it dumbfounding that the level of policy discussion in our country, has fallen so low - from top to bottom? What we're doing now is just embarrassing compared to what our grandparents were doing in the 1930s.

Maybe any remaining of our grandparents should step in and fire literally everyone younger than 90 from gov policy? Everyone younger seems afraid to do anything of any import. Yet it's more complicated than even that. "Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried." Apparently, a few Luddite/Libertarian billionaires liked the general misfortune, and the rest is lobby & campaign-finance history, bought & sold.

Is there any rational comparison between Marriner Eccles in the 1930s and Larry Summers today?

Why such a stark change in the type of presidents and politicians we, the mob, select? In 1938 George Marshall spoke truth to FDR, and rather than being fired, was made Army Chief of Staff, whereupon he quickly fired what, 60-80% of the DoD Flag Officers? As a necessary prerequisite in mobilizing for looming challenges? [And even that was barely enough. We came within a hair's breadth of failing then, and could easily fail now, by other means! Hoover & FDR also launched the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, & conveyed the Pecora Commission, and hired Marriner Eccles among many other, practically aggressive measures. What have either Bush or Obama done except keep the inept in office? What happened to American audacity?]

There's a simple, stark question here. If, in 1938, we could once euthanize over half the DoD brass on a moment's notice, why don't we have an electorate able to select a Pres & Congress ... who have the wit and courage to recognize and hire competent people ... who can euthanize rentier industries which are more trouble than they're worth?

There's a very ancient & well known formula for productively mobilizing adaptive evolution of a mob or a nation, and we're actively avoiding it.

In fact, we're quite actively putting the crooked & inept in charge of keeping themselves out of jail. This could easily destroy the USA. It may have done so already, even if we don't know it yet.

The more I read about Hoover & FDR, the more it seems that they should be viewed as individuals separate from the bureaucracies they fought. Hoover started many things that FDR enlarged and added to. Luckily, they both did what they did ... over the nearly unanimous objection of both of both party bureaucracies. Their most stellar talent was listening to and hiring the few, most vocal, critics who actually made sense. That's a mark of wit, focus and composure.

It's alarming to consider how close the entire USA came to failing by 1932, and what might have happened subsequently if we had.

It's even more alarming to consider how close we are to failing by other means today, and how little, if anything, we're doing about it.

It seems that the toughest task for a mob to solve is selection of an adaptive leader rather than just a tyrant. That rarely happens. Our mob just in the USA today has nearly 3x the population of 1932. Is our group intelligence growing fast enough to keep selecting adaptive leaders from our rapidly growing mob? Not yet, obviously. Mob growth rate alone makes such selection harder every year. The quality of our selection methods is degrading, not accelerating.

And we're not even focused on that as our biggest task!!! Why is our entire government distracted to eavesdropping on trivia? Why aren't citizens eavesdropping on the level of policy discussion among themselves and those they elect to evaluate as leaders? Whatever our school systems are doing, they are not producing citizens who even ask the right questions. Because of that, we're in critically serious trouble.