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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23245 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 2025

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No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man--the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it. Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indifference, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him [...]

this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift--these are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting "the bounce" Saturday night holds many a worker to his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate--and do not think it necessary to. [...]

"You see that bookkeeper," said a foreman to me in a large factory. "Yes; what about him?" "Well, he's a fine accountant, but if I'd send him up-town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four saloons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for."

"A Message to Garcia", Elbert Hubbard, 1899.

I sometimes wonder if I've just been very lucky in my professional career, or if people are actually significantly more competent and professional and capable as a baseline than they used to be.

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