In any society, some people have to do actual work. Ground has to be plowed, seeds have to be planted, grain has to be harvested. Ores must be mined, refined, shipped, and processed. Things have to be put together, moved around, and taken apart.
A lot of people don’t like having to work. They want to be Overseers. Overseers do inspecting, counting, managing, regulating, analyzing, reporting, and enforcing. In Communist countries, there got to be so many Overseers that no actual work was being done.
More Overseers are never received well by the people who actually do the work. The endless Overseers that Communism imposed were disliked with increasing intensity. As workers’ hated of Overseers grew, and as they got angrier at being demeaned by them, some began to sabotage what they were doing. No one can sabotage more cleverly than an angry, oppressed worker. So, more Overseers had to be hired to inspect every single nut, bolt, wire, military decision, propeller, newspaper article, legal decision, connection, and crankshaft. Each process of assembly had to be Overseen. Soon, lower-level Overseers began to be oppressed by Overseers who oversaw their work, and they developed an “I’ll show ’em!” tendency to ignore sabotage. Soon, low-level Overseers and workers joined in silent campaigns of sabotage that wrecked every over-regulated occupation.
When saboteurs were caught, they had to be shot or gulaged. That meant more Overseers. “We need more Overseers!” was the perennial plea of every department head during budget allotments. Soon, Uber-Overseers were examining even the upper-level Overseers, who began to disappear with disconcerting regularity.
Eventually, there just weren’t enough people to do the real work. As the number of Overseers increased, more sabotage kept more trucks from moving, planes from flying, and ships from sailing. When trains went off the rails, the quickly-accused track-layers blamed the engineers, the engineers blamed the poor quality steel, and battalions of armed, thick-booted Overseers were sent to “get to the bottom of it all.”
Those workers who weren’t actively sabotaging were drunk as often as possible, and made mistakes on a scale that no number of Overseers could stop. Naturally, more Overseers were hired to keep workers from getting liquor. As more Overseers were employed, the worse things worked. Soon, a ‘tipping point” was reached, and production collapsed.
After Russian Communism fell apart, those who could do actual work prospered. But, the desire to be an Overseer is mankind’s permanent curse. Soon, the Overseer Mentality resurfaced, with a new name and color. Environmentalism replaced communism, and green replaced red.
Only the Overseers remain.
The Environmentalists have made a brilliant step forward. They did not try to stop sabotage. Instead, they began the institution of sabotage on a huge, heretofore undreamed of scale. In the early days of Communism, Lenin and Stalin had real enemies to fight. They needed vast manufacturing operations, with real and necessary standards, to produce tanks, planes, artillery, and other endless armament. When Communism collapsed, there were no enemies to fight, so manufacturing became unnecessary to the left.
Now, environmentalists believe that all production of anything is both unnecessary and injurious. Sabotaging entire nations became the goal. Efficient nuclear reactors were politically sabotaged, and replaced with silly windmills. Coal-fired generators, which were reasonably clean and efficient, were closed down. Steel mills were closed.
Environmentalists agree: “We have learned much from the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have gotten beyond trying to compete with free countries. Now, in the name of our newest, falsest idol, ‘Less’, we clean up and clean up and clean up until everything has been scrubbed away.”
