Have affirmative action hiring practices caused overall competence to plummet? The record appears to show exactly that.

For no good reasons whatsoever, competence was allowed to die on the vine in order to give the less competent a leg up. Not superiority but "equity" rules the hiring, firing, and education of Americans. Worse, many of those who were affirmatively hired do not do as good a job as those whose excellence was obvious. You can see it in customer service, which for many businesses is abysmally incompetent. There is a resentful casualness in those who are hired to serve others that would not have been acceptable even two decades ago. The competence level one deals with on a daily basis is on life support.

While there are pockets of the competent in places like Florida and some Southern states, much of America is being run by children with no sense of responsibility or pride in accomplishment. That is because there is little real accomplishment in their lives; children get passed through the public education system having to learn little of value. Instead, they are taught perverse sexual practices and aberrant lifestyles. They are taught how to be activists but are not taught to be competent breadwinners.

It is harder and harder to find good computer techs to service the average home computer user. Instead, salespeople are sent out to do the most basic installations, utterly lacking the sophistication to handle a complex computer problem that may come up. Training in many fields is rudimentary. Surgeons and physicians are being put through university because of their skin color, not necessarily their competence. Ditto pilots. Do you want to fly or get operated on by these hires? I'll pass.

I had a running battle with my heating and air company for four years. I have told this service company at least two dozen times to please schedule 4x annual AC filter replacements because my spouse and I suffer from allergies. Not once have they done what I asked. The last time after I vociferously complained, the "service manager" called to apologize with renewed promises to fix the situation. He didn't. Finally, I canceled them with a lengthy explanation mainly having to do with competence. Few seem to care.

Not that many businesses in 2023 go out of their way to please customers, and many of their employees have a slumped demeanor which makes me think they'd grunt if I engaged them in conversation.

But a few businesses I have dealt with recently go out of their way to keep in contact and ask if there is anything that can be improved in order to keep my patronage. Those are the businesses I use. For example, Instacart is stunningly competent. During COVID, Instacart became wildly popular for stay-at-homes because they deliver food and goods to your home for a small fee. In the two years plus that I have used their service on a regular basis, it has dramatically improved, and because they solicit your satisfaction level and then make it right, no questions asked. I can see the competence and appreciate it. The user interface is amazingly competent, and the delivery people are almost always polite, fast, and mostly competent, shopping for quality items.

While I hate to admit it because of their wokeness, Amazon does a stellar job of cataloging purchases, delivering at lightning speed, making returns easy, and tracking preferences. Say what you will about their hiring practices, their software, and their customer service is a study in competence. At least, that has been my experience.

Another competent group is the Apple tech support people. I have dealt with some whose second language is clearly English, but they have been remarkably competent and easily understandable. And patient.

Bring back real education so that those we pay to serve us will be competent and will stop pointing fingers at the other guy who was supposed to take care of it.

Bring back competence by bringing back a cultural work ethic of purpose and individual responsibility, which can only happen when people truly care about competence and doing an excellent, not just an adequate, job. Stop giving people degrees in fields where they are not competent, and for God's sake, stop the diversity programs. Diversity doesn’t guarantee competence.

Image: Oregon Department of Transportation