Have you noticed that when things go wrong no one is to blame?
In 2018 there was a Royal Commission into the banking industry in Australia. The Royal Commission found out that every bank in Australia was doing things that were at best irregular and at worst criminal. Massive fines were issued and the banks were put on notice that they had to lift their game. But no one went to prison. Charging dead people’s accounts for financial services that they could never have asked for because, well they were dead, is a crime. It’s called fraud, but when a big financial institution does it, it’s apparently not a crime, because no one went to jail.
In September 2020, Westpac, an Australian bank was fined $1.3 Billion Dollars. The largest fine in Australian history, because it once again was more interested in profit than in stopping child molesters, drug cartels, and various money laundering operations from operating. But no criminal charges, because no one is responsible.
When the Australian government decided to stop international travel into and out of Australia in 2020, it had returning international travellers quarantined in hotels. The Australian Army looked after the organising and security for these hotels, except in Victoria. In Victoria the security was given to a private security company. Now that it has proven to be a disaster, no one wants to accept responsibility. The Health Minister resigned, but even in her resignation letter she rejected responsibility.
The lack of responsibility is a major problem and it is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. But I don’t believe that those who think they are our betters do consider it a problem. It seems to me that this is by design. Liberalism wants life to be lived without consequences. But at the same time Liberalism really likes bureaucracy, it has a passion for the impersonal. It seems to think that the personal is the problem and that organisations are the answer. Because in an impersonal organisation no one can be to blame because no one is responsible. No one person makes the decisions.
It means that fighting back is quite hard, because no one is to blame, no single person is responsible, that means that everyone is innocent. It means that the most inhuman and vile acts can be sanctioned because there is no one to stop it. People are encouraged to group think, to act without thinking, to simply go along with the flow. Because no matter what happens everyone is innocent, because no one has made the decision.
Big organisations allow this to happen because they are systems. But there are several things that can be done to stop it. Firstly, you make leaders instead of managers. Secondly, you make people responsible, so if your subordinates make a mistake, you’re responsible. You can achieve this by breaking up big organisations. A corporation is not owned by one person, but a company owned and operated by the owner is.
One reason that we are going down the tube is because no one wants to accept responsibility. We should not accept that no one is responsible. We need to hold those responsible to account.
Originally published at Upon Hope. You can find Mark’s Subscribestar here.