Stop this incompetence shit.
I'm terminally tired of hearing the idiotic nonsense, sometimes attributed to Heinlein or Einstein or Lincoln or Churchill or Plato or any of the usual attributees:

Always assume incompetence rather than evil.

Dangerously wrong.

When you're talking about an ordinary decision by an ordinary person, then you can start with incompetence or inadequate knowledge.

When you're dealing with a decision by a large corporation or government, you MUST assume

MAXIMUM INCOMPREHENSIBLE UNIMAGINABLE EVIL

and your assumption will ALWAYS be correct. EVERY FUCKING TIME.

Since I happened to be reading a Collectible Auto article on the design of the Edsel, let's take the Edsel as an example.

Looks like incompetence, so it would make sense to assume incompetence.

No. It was evil.

Designers produce a wide range of attempts. Even excellent designers like Brooks Stevens or Virgil Exner produce timeless classics and weird shit at different times.

A large company always invites proposals from dozens of inside and outside creators. The horrible choice was not made by a designer, and we know for a fact that it was evil. McNamara hated the Edsel and wanted it to fail, so he allowed and encouraged the worst possible designs.

Bad decisions result from intentional sabotage** or crime by management. In the current holocaust, normal public health data was easily available to the governments. The governments could have simply continued using normal procedures, which were working normally. There was NO REASON to think that the regular way of handling a flu epidemic would fail.

The governments chose instead to use bizarrely wrong theories and models produced by Neil Ferguson, whose record was UNIFORMLY BAD. Unlike a Stevens or an Exner, Ferguson didn't produce some classics and some weird shit at different times. He was ALWAYS WRONG. The governments KNEW he was always wrong, and his particular brand of RELIABLE INFINITE WRONGNESS was just what they needed to "justify" a universal holocaust. They knew that Ferguson couldn't possibly predict reality.

** Sometimes the sabotage is internal, such as a hostile takeover or LBO or feuding among executives, aimed at destroying the company or the government. Sometimes the crime is committed by the entire corporation or government acting in unison to destroy the world.

Labels: Editors, endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 11:54 AM