In this post I’m going to use “smart” in a very broad sense. Any positive talent or ability gets included
– ability to get along with people is “smart,”
- able to effectively speak in public is “smart,” – able to solve
problems in astrophysics is “smart,” etc.
I think any type of smartness – if we could measure it - is distributed in the classical
bell-shaped curve, i.e., Gaussian, among the population. The point being is that there is not an
infinite reservoir of any particular type of smartness.
This point
comes to mind when people complain about a profession, for example, “Why
doesn’t the school board just fire the dumb teachers and get smart ones?” “Why do they hire bad policemen?”
The answer, I
believe, is that the supply of people with the requisite “smartness” isn’t big
enough. They - police, teachers,
bureaucrats, physicians - all get
trained, of course, and know the basic skills but “smartness” is that quality
that enables you to effectively perform using what the training teaches
you. So the next time a bureaucrat in a
government office gives you bad service, you should be thankful that the
“smart” person became your doctor instead of the bureaucrat.
The best
bureaucrat (in this example) got promoted and doesn’t serve the public – the “Peter
Principle.”
So there may
not be enough “smart” people to fill all of the positions requiring “smart”
people.
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