TheMarketForIdeas

I continue now with the other remaining two classes of incompetency (or, equally, of incompetents), which give themselves the high title of expert. In other places and moments, I have spoken about the conceptual distinction between the politician (expert of purpose) and the expert (politician of means). Therefore, I wait for an expert to pronounce his/her opinion about the means (ways, strategies, programs, and so on) able to objectify purposes that, themselves, are proposed by politicians. Unfortunately, (too) many politicians talk about means, as well as (too) many experts talk about purposes. Although, of course, it doesn’t exist such a categorical separation between politicians from experts – so there is not a net line between the two categories –, thus, it is a good thing that everyone be careful to talk about its „reserved” field. 

In the present intervention, I shall examine two types of incompetent experts: a) the impostor incompetent and b) the justiciary incompetent. 

(a) the impostor incompetent

An impostor is an individual who stays in a position – either elected or appointed – for which s/he is not endowed with the required competence (instruction, education, experience, expertise, and so on). Such situations are inevitable and, as consequence, are found in many cases, in politics, administration, armed forces, science, art, and business. In some fields (e.g., business), we may find at work a self-testing mechanism and the incompetents are rejected sooner or later, but in other fields (e.g., politics, science, art) such a mechanism either does not work well or is deliberatively blocked through a kind of clique. The incompetence, as such, is not, of course, a crime where and when it happens because of… Gauss’s bell of incompetence distribution (as well as of any other one). But the impostor incompetence is, instead, a moral crime, since the impostor incompetence is incompetence about which its holder is aware. So:

- the impostor incompetent holds his/her position, although s/he knows well s/he is not at all qualified to hold it (Nota bene: the imposture exists if and only if the impostor is aware of his/her imposture, otherwise, we have to do with a banal incompetent);

- consequently, the impostor incompetent is plainly responsible for occupying the place deserved by a competent person and, this way, compromising (at least) the performance done by that (structural) place;

- to hide his/her imposture, the impostor incompetent will always exaggerate the non-essential prerogatives (e.g., administrative ones), so hiding the real problems to be approached and solved;

- to this end, inversely than is generally indicated, the impostor incompetent will block specialty initiative in the field concerned, based on imaginary pretexts related to aspects such as (non)urgency, (non)relevance, etc.;

- thus, the impostor incompetent will never upset his/her superiors (of course, under the condition that the superiors concerned to be, at least, incompetent if not even… impostor incompetents).

Now, let us imagine that such an impostor incompetent, as described above, sits on the high chair in a TV studio to explain this and that problem to us.

- firstly, we would see him/her taking over always and in a second, as a chameleon, the ‘colour’ of the chairman/chairwoman in that studio – s/he is very talented to accurately identify the… expected (usually, the local political correctness) answer/position in any given theme in debating. By the way, this capability does not require a great effort, since it is an… adaptive one, cumulatively selected by the environment, so being a condition of surviving as impostor incompetent;

- secondly, we must be sure that no opinion we shall hear from s/he, but only an aseptic spin around the subject in case – no matter it is talking about social justice values or about a truck crash (for example, s/he will drastically and vehemently condemn the criminal fact that the water provided to citizens contains… hydrogen!);

­- thirdly, all his/her positioning will be expressed with a worry face, as if discussing the drafting of the European Constitution;

- fourthly, whether, accidentally, another interlocutor deviates from the impostor incompetent previous opinion expressed, seeming to be more closed to the correct evaluation of the state of affairs, the impostor incompetent will vigorously move his/her head, in order to show that s/he wanted to say exactly the same (this moves will be done so that the camera record them, of course).

(b) the justiciary incompetent

The justiciary incompetent is an incompetent who is absolutely convinced that the contemporary human society is very lucky to have s/he as a member. Consequently, as an invited expert by TV studios, s/he is full of responsibility no matter what subjects are put into debating, or for no matter what question is addressed to him/her. All negative states of affairs, as evoked by the moderator or by interlocutors, are without precedent, and, without any doubt, will lead us to catastrophes. As for him/her, s/he has attracted attention many times and for a long time, even when the error in question was not yet so clearly outlined but, as nobody is prophet in his/her own country, that’s where we are now, that is, when we are in the 12^th hour. The opinions delivered by the justiciary incompetent are characterized by the following:

- the justiciary incompetent will show that the solution (to any problem, no matter its nature, size, intensity, and consequences) must be radical – at least, s/he would proceed radically if s/he were required, in order to cut the bad’s roots;

- does not accept nuances, gray areas, second chances, excuses, unforeseeable elements, force majeure, deception of good faith and the like – error humanus est, sed puniendus est (obviously, the expression in Latin is relatively… rare);

- the justiciary incompetent is surprised by the lack of lucidity (Nota bene: s/he refers, of course, to the historical and political lucidity) of his/her contemporary individuals who temporarily occupy the decisional positions in the state and society;

- his/her more fiery speeches, the incompetent justiciary can even make an appeal to so radical solutions that s/he evokes… the dictatorship – e.g., all those who lead (or could lead, as it seems) the society into the fence, should be gathered on the stadium and simply shot. At the raising of the eyebrows of the moderator of the show, the justiciary incompetent will say that s/he talked, evidently, in a figurative sense;

- at any rate, the justiciary incompetent will end the show by bearing a physiognomy like the one of a giant who is obliged to live in a country of pygmies.