Comment by sverige
5 years ago
> One problem with the British upperclass, is that they tend to be educated at private schools like Eton, where they primarily learn confidence. So tons of British politicians and managers know how to appear to know what they're doing, without actually knowing what they're doing.
Having worked with certain interested underwriters from Lloyd's, it was an easy upvote for me.
I agree that in politics that type of idiot is particularly over-represented, however it is unfair to assume this is the case with most managers in the UK. Perhaps it is because I have worked for and with competent UK managers who have no public school background, so the generalisation that this applies to tons of people is inaccurate. I am not defending the Eton educated upperclass just saying that they hardly represent the majority of managers employed in the UK.
I didn't mean to imply that all UK managers or politicians are like that, just that there's a segment that's coming from these schools that train primarily for confidence rather than competence. And they try to help each other to these positions of power in order to maintain the system.
It's not universal for all UK politicians and managers, and it's not unique to the UK, but their system of mediocre elite schools that seems to train specifically for confidence, does make it more blatant.