Get an ugly friend

I had a boss who from my estimation wasn't a very good boss. He wasn't a bad guy, in fact he cared a great deal about his employees, but from an objective standpoint I think he wasn't a strong organizer. He lacked the big picture perspective, preferring to put out fires rather than build a well functioning machine. Eventually, the shit hit the fan at my company and there was a house cleaning. The CEO got fired, some other folks were asked to leave, and my boss was one of them.

What's amazing to me is that it took so long for him (and the CEO) to get fired. Objectively they were doing a bad job. But the thing is that they were rated subjectively. At a certain level it's difficult to determine if someone is actually doing a good job. When you have fifty engineers doing the same task, it's easy to grade them against each other. But when you have one guy doing a unique job, how do you know if someone else could have done it better?

The only way we know socialism is a terrible system of government, is that we have capitalism to compare it to. When there is only one system, one way of doing things, no one can compare it to what doesn't exist. Capitalism is far superior to all other forms of social organization. If we want to promote capitalism and the free market, it's not enough to extol it's virtues. We must create an island where the benefits can be seen. America used to be that island, maybe we should start looking elsewhere.