The Broken Conveyor Belt

My dad swears up and down that Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture talks about society's conveyor belt. After several attempts to read the ground-breaking anthropology treatise, the detailed, intimate descriptions about the rituals of various "primitive" cultures bored me to death. Maybe the conveyor belt is in there, but I am never going to get through the entire book to confirm one way or another.

In any event, dad and I were discussing the state of American society, as we are prone to do while working on tax returns. The theory I advanced was the destructive nature of the stock market; the conflict between being a citizen and a shareholder; the uncertainty of collecting a pension the value of which is inexorably tied to the whims of a corporate czar. He disagreed. The problem with America today, he said, is that "the conveyor belt is broken."

"Look at Egypt", he went on. "Your mom and I left because it is corrupt, because no one there who earns anything does so because of his merit. He earns it because of his family name and connections. The conveyor belt only works in one direction. A chosen few are allowed on the conveyor belt to the top. Once they reach the top, they lock the gates tightly so no one can follow."

Very true about Egypt. It is not a meritocracy. It is a corruptocracy. You can be the world's biggest imbecile and it does not matter. You can be a minister of government or the head of a corporation. The only questions that matter are who do you know and how much of your soul are you willing to sell. Merit shmerit.

"There was a time in America where the heads of big business were talented people with vision. But not anymore. Now we hear the stories of corrupt CEO's who bankrupt one corporation, leave with their golden parachutes and are hired to run another corporation into the ground. The conveyor belt takes them to the top, but it does not remove the incompetent and take them back down. You cannot have an efficient system when you have corrupt, untalented people at the helm of the ship. "

Dad has a point. The conveyor belt has to work in both directions. Up and down. Move the talent to the top and dump the stupids to the bottom. What we have now are untalented people who hold on to their positions at the top by obfuscation, fear-mongering and corruption. Instead of fixing problems, they hire PR companies to manage sentiment about the problem. Bandaids. There are no ideas, no vision.

We are ruled by our inferiors. They have locked the gates to make sure intelligent people are excluded and to protect themselves from being ejected. That is called tyranny.

The conveyor belt is broken.