Accountability. What is it good for?
Well, everything
People like to talk about accountability. Use it in memes. As corporate jargon. Peruse LinkedIn for any amount of time and you’ll see plenty of examples of what I’m talking about. So it would seem like we should have an extremely accountable society where few excuses are made and nearly everyone stands up and says, “Yes. I made that decision and I will take the consequences for it.”
Does it seem that way to you?
It doesn’t seem that way to me.
What I see is a society with a critically dangerous lack of accountability. A society that in fact abhors accountability. A society that actively hates consequences of any sort. A society that elevates victimhood to such a point that even perpetrators of crimes are elevated to victim status. The criminal’s victims? Oh, well just brush them aside. Nobody actually wants to talk about them. They’re inconvenient and muddy the narrative of how that poor person had accountability forced upon them by some big meanie.
Accountability is “mean”. Oh it was a mistake, why don’t you forgive that X, Y, Z thing? Why are you so mean to make someone pay back their loan? Why are you so mean to fire that person for not coming to work? Why are you so mean to arrest that person for stealing? Where is the concern for what happens when you don’t hold people accountable for these things? Where are the memes and slogans about accountability then?
Does anyone care about the breakdown of civil society when you stop enforcing behavioral norms? Does anyone know or care what happens when you vilify the enforcement of rules and norms and excuse the lazy and criminal? Anyone at all? It doesn’t seem like it.
There has been a rash of police officers murdered in the line of duty recently. After a lifetime immersed in news and politics and living the things 99.7% of the population only reads about, I have largely checked out of following the endless outrage du jour, but even I have seen the recent headlines and maybe you have too. If the news registered at all, maybe it caused a momentary, “oh that’s to bad”, or for the more callous, “good riddance”. What it probably didn’t spark was an internal debate over what happens when those who hold people accountable stop doing it.
Maybe you’ve had a job with weak leadership. Or were part of a club or organization where those in charge were really just holding titles, but not actually in control of anything. If you’ve been fortunate and not had this experience, let me describe the inevitable series of events that follows. People, be it members of an organization or fellow employees, inherently have some desire to be there, be part of the team and do a good job. People genuinely want to take pride in their work. When it seems like everyone else is also there for that reason people put in extra effort. They help out above and beyond their minimal duties because they see everyone else doing it too and as a group they are doing good work and achieving their goals. But what happens when a few people start to slack?
Well, a strong group with high cohesion will exert social pressure to get those individuals back in line. Failing that, if the slacking gets to be a bigger problem, the leadership will address the issue either by resolving some legitimate grievance, or punishing/removing the slacker. Once this is done harmony is restored and the high cohesion group continues on harmoniously. But what if the slacking isn’t addressed?
What if the ability of the group to exert social pressure has been removed and handed over to management only? Well, this can still be an effective group, though it will never be as harmonious and efficient as it could be because a level of trust and buy in has been removed. The members have less ownership and investment and therefore become more complacent. Still productive workers, and still willing to help their friends, but more likely to be out the door at exactly 4 O’clock than they would have been.
As long as there is strong leadership that addresses the slackers, the group can continue to function at a good level because most people see that their work is valued and the slackers aren’t getting the same benefits for riding the coattails of the producers.
What happens though if you remove the ability of the group to exert social pressure, AND you remove the ability of management to enforce standards? What if you go so far as to punish the group and the managers for attempting enforce standards? Go even a step further and what if you begin teaching people that the idea of even having standards is wrong. What happens to that organization then?
If you’ve seen this play out in real life, you know exactly what happens. People stop caring. They stop working. They may keep showing up. They may retain titles and say some things that sound like they still care, but in reality they’re just using the organization for a benefit. Maybe it’s pay. Maybe it’s power or position of prestige. Whatever it is, it’s not the good of the organization or the desire to produce something of value. It’s simply a question of what they can get out of it until the whole thing falls apart.
That’s where we are today. We removed the people’s duty to protect themselves, their property and desired social norms and outsourced those duties to the government through official law enforcement agencies. For a long time we have been able to continue functioning as a high trust society with remarkably high levels of social cohesion considering our size and diversity. There’s a reason most countries in the world are so small, and the two biggest countries are largely uninhabited tundra.
However, in 2023 we find ourselves in a position where we have not only outsourced society’s responsibility to self-regulate, we are in the process of removing the government’s ability to regulate standards as well. Going so far as to attack even the idea of having standards as one of a variety of “-ists”.
If you think living in a society that in your view is rampant with evil -ism’s and -ist’s is so awful, just wait until you don’t.