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No need to explain to shooter that he has no idea himself how to run a business, let alone a government, now that you've taken him to the woodshed in such fine style.
The trouble is, of course, that neither do the people he seems to admire. It's amazing to me that they're no more competent than he is, but the limits to their competence are visible all around us. For example:
General Motors. (When the fenders fall off, increase the advertising budget. When the marginal utility of increased advertising begins to diminish, hire lots of lawyers and lobbyists, and character assassins to go after Ralph Nader. Blame the unions for shoddy attention to detail. Thirty years later, wake up astonished to find that the Japanese have already eaten your lunch.)
R. J. Reynolds. (When the pesky government and its scientists discover that tobacco is killing people, and that you've known about it for some time, hire lots and LOTS of lawyers and lobbyists. Hire even more cowboy actors to claim that smoking is the last remnant of the free range, as threatened as the bald eagle. Hire your own scientists, too, and pay them well when they conclude that the evidence everywhere around them is inconclusive. Deny everything. When that all starts to go south, diversify.)
Enron. Hang around a lot. Talk smack to everyone and lay a fog of enthusiastically technical bullshit on the rubes -- hell, it sounds so good, why not believe it yourself -- and lay money, lots of it, on the Republicans. When it seems likely that somebody downstream is about to start asking too many questions, stop answering the phones, pull down the shades, and sell your own shares. Your reputation for philanthropy will keep the wolves at bay just long enough, right? No Republican would dare haul you into court, right?)
And I haven't even gotten started on the defense industry, or mentioned outright bribery. Impolite as it may be, one does have to ask how all this has worked out for the aforementioned geniuses and titans of industry. Is shooter really all they have left? As my hillbilly grandmother used to say, that's pitiful, just pitiful.
