In an older post, I wrote about how the current generation of political “leaders” in western countries are parasitic PMC-types without any redeeming qualities. What makes this phenomenon especially interesting is that other institutions and areas in the west have seen an identical degradation in their abilities, and over same period of time. This manifests itself in numerous and diverse ways ranging from the inability to build large-scale physical infrastructure or perform scientific research which leads to real advances in quality of life to delusional bureaucrats trying to ban automobiles with internal combustion engines or mandate incredibly stupid policies on topics ranging from farming to hiring people in corporations. While there are those who want to believe that this is all part of a carefully orchestrated masterplan to “destroy the west “, the diverse and ever-expanding list of institutional fails and delusions is much easier to explain if you are willing to accept the possibility that this the result of a systemic trend with considerable support from a significant part of those societies.