Europe Holds its Nose for Bush Bank Nominee:
Giving Wolfie the Nod
by Ape
Giving Wolfie the Nod
by Ape
March 30th, '05
steve bell-the guardian
"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." - The Peter Principle
U.S. Under-Secretary of Defence, Paul Wolfowitz is being touted favourite in the mainstream for the #1 job at the World Bank. The man also known as Bush’s “Architect” of the war in Iraq will, if the craven media mavens are right, now be rewarded his efforts with the sceptre to the world economy. -{lex}
The management theorist and creativity champion, Laurence J. Peter’s ‘Peter Principle,’ harpooned the dominant belief, most comfortably ensconced among they populating the stratospheric regions of the social melange, of an intrinsic meritocracy determining the pecking order. Operating invisibly, their ‘Jack Principle,’ as, “I’m alright, Jack!” fell like a stone before the eloquence of Peter’s simple observations of the general trend of hierarchical mobility within organizations of people.
Barely described, The Peter Principle observes: the capable in their given vocation move up and away from their studied milieu, while the under-achievers tend to be tolerated more often than dismissed. The effect is a picture of organizations manned by the least able leading a spiral down a pole of ever tightening circles of mediocrity; thus creating a culture of incompetence ultimately ruining its own enterprise.
While many may view Paul’s mounting of the World Bank’s Poobah throne a promotion, for Wolfie it means a further degree of separation from his accustomed fire-side proximity to the lap of power. So, he’ll the head of an international organization controlled from Washington. So, what?
I suppose it’s fitting Wolfowitz be the one to parachuted into the rubble “his” war has made of America's, and so the World economy. Peter would not be surprised. Since day one, the pirate administration has been busy disassembling every existing international institution; diminishing those institution’s relevancy, and generally dissing the very idea of Internationalism. It’s a rich irony now to see the Major Domo of the recent, and continued chorus of denigrators of ‘World Community’ and its manifestation through institutions like the World Bank, finding himself sequestered to just such a marginalized corner of the Empire. Or is it less irony than design?