You hear the egalitarian, clarion call everywhere.
"Everything should be equal. Everything should be equally distributed. We should strive for equity."
It's like: Wrong.
Especially if you're a conservative - WRONG.
What we want are JUST hierarchies of competence.
Not everyone's a neurosurgeon, you know?
If your father has a brain tumor, you probably want a hierarchy of competence for neurosurgeons.
So you can pick the one that's the best, so that he might not die.
That's what a hierarchy of competence is for.
For the postmodernist, there's no hierarchy that isn't based on power - well, because they think the world runs on power.
And that's why they're willing to use power to get what they want. Because it's the only thing they believe in.
But a valid hierarchy of competence, it's... God, we need those things, man. We need the best plumbers. We need the best contractors.
We need the best... we need the best carpenters. We need the best lecturers. There has to be a hierarchy of quality.
Not only so that we know who the best are and to reward them properly,
but so that we can reward them, so they keep being the best.
It's like, you know, if you have a great...
educator, if you have a great leader, if you have a great thinker - you want to reward them,
so they keep thinking, and they keep educating, so they can tell you something!
It's not a reward for their intrinsic being. It's a calculated move on your part, to suck everything out of them
that's valuable as fast as you can. That's what a hierarchy of competence is for.
And the idea, that hierarchies of competence don't exist is... it's so cynical.
It's such a pathologically cynical idea. And it's actually quite patently untrue, because here's an interesting tidbit from the psychological literature:
Let's say you want to determine what the best predictors are for lifetime success in a western society.
Well, what would you hope for? How about intelligence?
There'd be a good one.
Let's hope the smart people occupy more positions of complexity. Right? Because they're smarter!
Would you want it any other way? Okay, and then so... and that's great.
The #1 predictor of accomplishment in western societies is intelligence.
So that means the system works. What's the #2 predictor?
Conscientiousness. Well what's that? It's a trait marker for hard work.
So who gets ahead?
Smart people who work hard.
Now, that doesn't account for every bit of the difference between people in terms of their
hierarchical structure, because hierarchies aren't perfect.
They're corrupt. People get to the top sometimes because they're psychopathic,
although believe me, a hell of a lot less than you'd think.
Because a sychopath has to keep moving from place to place, because once he reveals himself
as deceitful and untrustworthy, he has to go find new suckers to fleece.
So the idea that, you know, "there's no distinction between a CEO and a psychopath",
It's like, that's only made by someone, who:
A) knows nothing about psychopaths,
B) knows nothing about CEOs,
and C) has something fundamental against the entire capital structure.
Because it's simply not true. Corrupt? Sometimes. Greedy? Sometimes.
Short-sighted? sometimes running companies that are doing their best to augur themselves into the ground.
And so you know, it's bad people running a dying organization. But generally speaking, it's not the case.
Our hierarchies of competence are reasonably functional. And not only are they functional, they're valuable.
We need to know who the competent people are, and we need to reward them.
And even more importantly, we need to tell young people:
"Hey, there's some hierarchies of competence out there. Like a thousand of them!"
"Go be a plumber, man! But be a good one, you know? Be an honest one, be..."
I had a plumber once, you know...
[slight audience laughter]
It was the night... it was the night before we were putting drywall in our house.
We were redoing a house, and he had put in all the plastic piping, you know,
and I was gonna test the joints, these are supposed to be glued together,
with his pipe glue, right?
And I said - I told him I had to test the joints, and he said:
"Well you don't have to test my joints, they never leak." And I thought "Yeah? That's okay. How about if I test them?"
So I went up on the third floor and filled the pipes with water,
capping them in the basement, like you're supposed to. Like half an hour later I had two inches of water in the basement.
There were 30 leaking joints, that was the night before the drywallers were supposed to show up.
So well, so he wasn't particularly competent, that's the point of that story.
But even more so, he had put a bunch of the plastic pipe outside
where the drywall would be, so it would have been sticking through the wall, so I spent a frenetic night, you know,
sawing through plastic pipe and regluing joints, so that...
well, so that the dry wallers could come in.
What's the point? If you're going to be a plumber, man, be a good plumber!
Because otherwise all you do is go out there and cause trouble.
We don't need people to cause more trouble, we need people to solve problems, you know.
And so you can be a tradesman, and you can be... you can make a lot of money as a trades person.
It's a bloody reliable, honorable, forthright, productive way of making a living.
And there is a hell of a lot of difference between a working man who knows what he's doing,
and one who doesn't. Both in terms of skill and ethics, right?
And when you work with someone who knows what they're doing, it's a bloody pleasure.
They tell you what they're gonna do, they tell you how much it will cost, they go and do it. It works, and you pay them.
Perfect! Everyone's happy. And that's what happens when you have genuine hierarchies of competence.
And so you listen to these panderers of egalitarianism and equity, and they fail to recognize completely,
that there are differences in rank between people. It's not such a terrible thing, man.
Maybe you wouldn't be a great lawyer, like it's certainly possible.
Most people aren't. But that doesn't mean there isn't something you could be great at.
There's lots of hierarchies to attempt to climb, and if you fail in one - go try in another!
But the point is, you're still trying to aim for the top - and what the hell are you going to do if you don't try to aim for the top, you know?
Flap about uselessly and whine about your life? it's not helpful!
It'll just make you miserable, you're not reliable to anyone, you can't help out in a crisis.
It's like, so you tell young people (and this is another message for conservatives) like:
"I don't care what you're gonna do, but go out there and make something of yourself, for God's sake! Be an honest person and work!
And get to the top of, whatever it is that you want to get to the top of." You know?
"And then stand up for yourself like a respectable human being, and be a bit of a light on the world, instead of a blight."
You know, and you can tell young people that. And they haven't been told that by anyone now!
And so, the young men are so hungry for that, that it's painful to watch.
They're so relieved when someone finally comes up and says: "hey, you know,
you get your act together a bit, discipline yourself,
see if you can learn to tell the truth, concentrate on something for a year or two,
you could be a bloody world beater."
They think: "Really? That's possible? Wow, that would be... that would be interesting!"
"That might make life worth living!"
It's like: "yeah, it might, so why don't you go do it?"
That's what the damn universities were supposed to be teaching people, they've forgotten that.
I went to Harvard month ago, month and a half, you used to teach there, and I talked to a bunch of students.
You know, and I told them: "It's not easy to get into Harvard, you know?"
"Like you're a valedictorian, if you're at Harvard. And not only are you a valedictorian,
you're way better than most people at at least two other things, or you don't get in."
And so that gets... I don't know what the acceptance rate is, like 5% - and believe me, not everybody applies.
So it's a very selective school. And so, why am I saying that? It's like, these are high quality kids,
so I told them what I just told you. It's like:
"Here you are at Harvard. Like, get yourself educated, man, read some books, learn to talk, learn to think,
make yourself into something, get the hell out there and make the world that put you here,
happy that you were put there, in that great institution."
You know, and they came up to me afterwards and said:
"God, I wish someone would have told us that, when we were in our first year"
It's like, Jesus! Why didn't someone tell them that? For God's sake, it's supposed to be the greatest university in the world!
Is it so difficult to figure that out?
Well, it is, if that isn't what you want to have happen in the university,
you wanna make cringing milksops who whine about being victims, while they're going to Ivy League institutions!
Jesus, it's pathetic.