I disagree with Noah Smith

 Noah Smith has penned a column entitled only-fools-think-elon-is-incompetent.

I disagree with him but I will ignore almost everything he has written as it does not really address the point!

To begin with it is disappointing to see Noah not understand IQ scores. They are only of any import when you examine a number of them not just one. I did one once in primary school. I got 142. Until I did more it did not tell me anything about me. one score can not tell you anything. Few people realise this.

Noah misses the point by ignoring Musk's business experience.

Musk was forced by the courts to buy twitter. He went in like a bull in a china shop and cut like crazy. alas he cut where it badly affected revenues. This meant he did not have a clue of what he was doing.

Similarly now he has his minions cutting the US public service but yet again he has no idea. I have talked previously about how ignorant he is about soft power. USAID had that in spades but Musk did not understand and made very bad cuts.

The very first thing one does is to examine whether strategy or structure is the problem. It is usually strategy but restructuring is almost always the solution. In the public service it is the Minister that dictates strategy.

If you really want to reduce costs you do not fire willy nilly but examine work processes and attempt to change them.

First two anecdotes.

 I had a mate whose wife worked for one of the big four banks in Melbourne in what was called then computing. One day they had HO people come in and say 1 in 4 had to go and sure enough that is what they did. 1,2,3 your sacked etc. This did not work and they had to change this after about a year. 

In a bank I worked in they bought the State Bank of SA.the man in charge got hairy chested and sacked a lot of people. He was then told he needed quite a lot of them and had to rehire them on larger salaries!

I will end with this. We know Trump is an inveterate liar. BUT BUT BUT so is Musk. Intelligent people have no need to lie so much. People who have no idea do. Have you noticed all that fraud Musk has uncovered has not been uncovered at all.!

Sorry Noah you are dead wrong.