Now, that’s perfectly true, and it spells out the difference. Over here, you’ve been confusing the jerks and the idiots, getting rid of them so the system can work properly. Over in Russia, on the other hand, you’ve left the jerks and the idiots all alone to do their dirty work, and you’ve just added to the confusion where necessary, so that the system will break down of its own weight.
“But, after all,” Lou said, “things look pretty bad over here, too. Look at the papers.”
Everybody, Malone thought, has been telling me to go and look at the newspapers. And when I do look at them I find all sorts of evidence of confusion. Teachers resigning, senators and representatives goofing up bills on Congress, gang wars cluttering up the streets with cadavers and making things tough for the Sanitation Department, factional fights in various organizations. Now, all of that looks pretty horrible in the papers, but do you know something? It isn’t horrible at all.
It’s pretty damn good, as a matter of fact.
The teachers who are resigning, for instance, are the nincompoops who’ve got to be pruned out so that competent teachers can come in. And, with the higher salaries, more and more competent men and women are going to be attracted to the job. The universities are going to be freer and better places to work in; they won’t be monopolies any more.
“Monopolies?” Lou said.
In restraint of knowledge, Malone thought. The old monopoly was in restraint of trade, and legal action helped to kill that kind. The monopoly in restraint of knowledge took a little more killing, but you’re doing the job quite nicely. And not only in the schools.
The factional fights are having the same result. Look at the AAAM, for instance. That organization is a monopoly, pure and simple. Simple, anyhow. And what the factional fights are doing to it is just breaking up the monopoly and letting knowledge free again.
And then we come to Congress. Senators and representatives are having a terrible time, some of them. There’s a fight going on between Furbisher and Deeks because Deeks has discovered some evidence against Furbisher. Who’s having the terrible time?
All of them?