Unnecessary people 10 Oct 2010 I was kind of musing on the road to ruination we are all skipping merrily down the other day when it occurred to me that there are some well-defined classes of people whose activities are the major reason why things are a mess. And the next thought was: who could we do without, and who would we be better off if they were on Ark B? My suggestions: Marketers and public relations professionals. Board members. Education administrators (by which I mean the bureaucrats who make the make-work the rest of us have to administer). Around 90% of health bureaucrats. Political commentators and all journalists who interview other journalists, even on news broadcasts. Sports commentators. Sports administrators (hey, people will play and follow sport if it’s interesting enough). Arts funding bodies (ditto). IT policy makers. Economists (the ones that do the academic kind of economics who end up running things for governments). Social workers. Counsellors. Pick a variety, it’s all the same. Military strategists in times of peace. Anyone who teaches any of the above. Ministers and departments in national governments for: Telecommunications (who can ride that tiger?) Transport (ditto) Sport (see above) Tourism (if you’ve got it and it’s worth visiting, why do you need a government department?) Ageing (you’re going to do it no matter what, and if they aren’t providing you health or welfare services, then the problem lies in the health and welfare departments) Mental health (these departments are better thought of as departments opposed to the treatment and care of the mentally ill) Social inclusion (whatnow?) Any ministry which deals with issues that are unknown before about five years ago (they’re made up for political purposes in that case). Eliminating these people [i.e., their professions; possibly not the individuals themselves. They could be retrained to do something useful, perhaps] would free up trillions of dollars, and make those who actually do the “coalface” work on which they all parasitise free to provide the actual services. And next, let’s kill all the lawyers… Humor Politics Rant Social evolution
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While acknowledging the risk of prejudice in selecting the passenger list for Ark B, might I offer: Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach. Those that can’t do or teach, administrate.
I looked through your list, and you forgot to include philosophers. An oversight you will quickly correct, I’m sure.
Why not add hairdressers? They were on the original B ark (although I see telephone sanitisers aren’t on your list).
Social workers – seriously? I’d prefer that we try to help people with mental illness and people struggling to cope with their crappy lives. When we help them adjust, we all benefit, i.e., fewer problems later.
>…you forgot to include philosophers. Let’s not forget that science grew out of philosophy. Granted, many philosophers are full of sh*t and full of themselves. Philosophers serve an important function though – challenging assumptions, i.e., we benefit from brilliant insights amidst a whole bunch of blather.
And next, let’s kill all the lawyers… Ah, but who would then get off the leaders of the mob that lynched you for doing away with their jobs?
Let’s not forget how important it is to have philosophers to make us question our own worth. When they aren’t doing this with their philosophy, they are doing it by stealing our women* *This happened to a neighbor of mine, and his response was “She left me for a PHILOSOPHER????!!!!!!!”
Along with philosophers (who as a breed are certainly less useful than, say, sports commentators), I’d add people authors of vanity works. Oh dear, this is looking like a internetty memeoid fail!
And next, let’s kill all the lawyers… A noble sentiment, with certain notable exceptions, and one echoed in the movie Jesse James (1939) by the character of Major Rufus Cobb: Paragraph: If we are ever to have law and order in the West, the first thing we gotta do is take out all the lawyers and shoot ’em down like dogs.
Not sure what your problem with social workers as a group is, but when if they do their job well, they provide essential services. Maybe you are thinking of the rotten system that makes them necessary. Or the [insert expletive here] parents whose kids have to be relocated.
It’s not that they do their job well when they do it properly; it’s that the entire profession can be dispensed with, IMO, and often does more harm than good. But this is a personal anecdotal experience thing. I will not elaborate on it, but this is, after all, my blog to be prejudiced on.
I think you forgot the hat tip to Gilbert and Sullivan (“I’ve got a little list”, Mikado). Well, okay, your list is different. But the idea of a such a list goes back at least to them.
Well, at least Neil Rickart got in with a needed citation, but where are the specifics? What kind of grade do you expect to get with generalities? Actually, I’d rather keep the ni^h^h banjo serenaders. I like banjos. And I must spare the children who are up in dates and floor you with ’em flat, in the interest of class solidarity. But we still have apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind, Such as — What d’ye call him — Thing’em-bob, and likewise — Never-mind, And ‘St— ‘st— ‘st— and What’s-his-name, and also You-know-who.
I somehow can’t help but being confused by the notion that it is the people (or the professions) that are the problem. Basically none of those listed above are doing something that is bad for society by necessity. It is only when all things come together in the immensely complex process of society that they don’t look good. We shouldn’t be dispensing with professions, we should be dispensing with the social processes that incentivize and select for non-optimal behaviour.
Aren’t status and stigma part of the social process that selects for “non-optimal” (or antisocial/parasitic) behavior? My main complaint with this sort of list is that it is easy to write off as just snarkiness. For instance, I think that some marketers do worthwhile work (identifying the market value of a service and matching supply with demand), so to really stigmatize anti-social marketing, we need to distinguish it from pro-social marketing.
I bet you could move to someplace where there are not a lot of those listed. Somalia and the Haitian refugee camps come to mind.
Yes, I could. I could also hope to live in a society where people do what they need to do but not overburden social resources by make-work and bureaucracy for its own sake. Hoping for the latter does not imply a social anarchy or failure of civilisation, and it is a false dichotomy to suggest that it does. I’m not a libertarian, and that is not what I’m suggesting.
Maybe Jim is suggesting that “All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites“. Of course, the inevitability of parasitism does not mean that the productive members of a community cannot limit the resources claimed by those parasites.