Indeed. I’m of the mind that everyone is competent at something else the Creator is not, which is impossible.

An entire book could be written on how government intrusion results in the misallocation of individuals to jobs to the detriment of the individual and thus to society. A big example would be over-sized government itself which crowds out employment from the private sector.

When will people learn that every “problem” does not require the hammer (actually gun, tasser and filthy prison) of government?

(1) If it is in a government contractor (Lockheed … Blackwater) padding expenses in a “cost plus” contract), it is insidious and a derivative of theft. In fact, there are often incentives for padding expenses. Governments and their contractors have incentives to INCREASE their budgets.

(2) If it is in a politically connected company (like General Motors or Goldman Sachs), they run to Congress or the Federal Reserve for protection, anti-competitive rules, and bailouts. The history of FDR’s “National Recovery Administration” with their cartelized “codes of fair competition” were basically Mussolini-inspired legalized protected monopolies to destroy efficiency and rob consumers in the name of saving jobs.

(3) Normal free-market business failures – picking the wrong stocks, for example. Or Joe’s Diner does not serve as tasty food as Sam’s Diner – these inefficiencies are wrung out by the corrective “invisible hand” of the free market. Incompetents are PROPERLY run out of business, Joe becomes a waiter to Sam, and the government is not involved in any violation of the properties or liberties of its citizens.

Sadly, our “public schools” and cultural decay have elevated ineptitude into a national pastime – e.g. Hasan’s promotion.

I would bet the farm that the government is behind most of that as well.

Consider that most of the students in ghetto “high schools” (some right near here) are basically sub 3rd grade level illiterates – yet they get AUTOMATICALLY PROMOTED by inept teachers. These two links contain an exam that was required to GRADUATE 8th grade and prior to entering high school given in Kansas in 1895. Interestingly enough, the test is real and snopes.com apparently attempts to “explain” why the test is rather irrelevant:

see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2307857/posts and

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp

Notwithstanding that some of the test is archaic, the point is that neither teachers, students, employees, or managers are held to any realistic standards of competency OR ethics OR accountability these days. People are often automatically passed and promoted rather than confronted. The iconoclast who shouts that the Emperor has no clothes is shunned and marginalized so that the consensus of mediocrity can reign supreme.

There’s incompetency in the private sector but it rules supreme throughout the government.

No truer words have ever been written