"Like herding cats" has always been our strength, NOT our weakness....

[Junkdrawer]

Another example:

I worked for an Organ Transplant program that was the very best in the world. It was organized collegiately. Attracted the very best surgeons from around the country. The most research. The most transplants performed. The best outcomes and survivability. Had its own electronic medical record software before EMR software was common.

Then some greed-head decided to cut budgets and organize the place hierarchically. Threw out the custom EMR (which I was in the process of incrementally rewriting as an asp.net best-of-breed app) and went with a weak-tea off-the-shelf Major Vendor app.

Result: all the best people ran screaming. The number of transplants are now 1/4 or less the previous volumes. And survivability is so bad, government regulators would shut the place down if it were not so well connected politically.

But, by God, people now follow orders there. "Chaos" no longer reigns.

Small d democracy isn't just nice, or fair. It's the best way for humans to organize themselves. It elevates human dignity and allows us all to reach our full potential. Did we forget that?