Doug Bast

Donald Trump ran for office for three reasons: 1) stay out of jail 2) exact revenge on his enemies 3) line his pockets Everything else he says is bullshit.

Your body is perfectly designed for this planet.

The kryptonite to bureaucracy is high intelligence and "inexperience". When we grow up in systems that cage us, our sensitivity to the absurdity of the bureaucrat weakens. We are like frogs slowly boiling to death. So that by the time you hit every gate on the way up, you're just an obedient slave. Because your success was contingent upon making the system happy. Smart but “inexperienced” people scare the hell out of a bureaucracy not because they’re reckless, but because they’re not conditioned. If you grow up inside a system long enough, you stop seeing it clearly. The delays start to make sense. The process starts to make sense. Even the nonsense starts to feel normal. That’s how it survives. Not by being right, but by being way too familiar. It doesn’t happen all at once. It’s slow. You learn what not to question. You learn what gets rewarded. How to operate inside the lines etc. By the time you’re senior, you’re competent, experienced, and effective but you’ve also adapted to the system you’re supposed to improve. We don't necessarily call it corruption, just conditioning The people who haven’t gone through that process see things differently. They walk in and ask simple questions. Why does this take so long? Why are we doing it this way? Who decided this makes sense? Those questions sound basic, but they’re dangerous. Over time, the system trains those questions out of you. That’s the cost of staying in it. We say we value merit, but we build gates. Step by step, box by box, long enough for people to internalize the system before they’re ever in a position to change it. Most never do. They don’t even realize it. A popular military example is of course George Marshall. Who didn’t follow the clean, predictable path people pretend is required. He was elevated because of clarity, and when he got there, he changed the Army. That’s the difference and the proof because clarity beats conformity. This doesn’t mean outsiders are always right or that experience doesn’t matter. It means something simpler. A system becomes very comfortable with people who understand it, and very uncomfortable with people who can still see it. Over time, it starts protecting itself more than its purpose. That’s when it needs to be challenged. Not by the most experienced, but by the ones who haven’t forgotten what doesn’t make sense. Want to trim down the bureaucracy? Put people in charge at echelon with absolutely toxic levels of common sense. But it takes courage to place those kinds of people. A courage that is in short supply.