Free The Peter Principle by Laurence Peter Page B

entering at a high level, above the class barrier.
    Obviously, then, in areas SC and DC, below and above the class barrier, Pullovian hierarchies are more efficient than those of a classless or equalitarian society.
    A Contemporary Class System
    Before I am accused of recommending the establishment of a class system here, let me point out that we already have one. Its classes are based, not on birth, but on the prestige of the university which one has attended. For example, a graduate of Harvard is referred to as “A Harvard Man” but a graduate of Outer Sheepskin College is not referred to as “A Sheepskin Man.” In some hierarchies, the graduate of the obscure college—no matter how competent he may be—does not have the same opportunities for promotion as the graduate of the prestigious establishment.
    The situation is changing. There is a strong trend toward making university graduation a prerequisite for more and more positions, even in the lowest ranks of certain hierarchies. This should increase the promotion potential of all degree holders, and therefore diminish the class value of the prestige degree.
    My personal studies of this phenomenon are incomplete, due to that most lamentable dearth of funds, but I will hazard a prediction that with every passing year, each university graduate will have greater opportunities for reaching his level of incompetence, either in private employment, or in government.

CHAPTER 8

Hints & Foreshadowings
    “Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration.”
    P. B. S HELLEY
    I T IS THE custom to ornament every scientific work with a bibliography, a list of earlier books on the same subject. The aim may be to test the reader’s competence by laying out for him an awe-inspiring course of reading; it may be to prove the author’s competence by showing the mountain of dross he has sifted to win one nugget of truth.
    Since this is the first book there is no formal bibliography. I confess to this apparent shoddiness of scholarship, since guile is not my long suit, in firm belief that the future shall vindicate my unorthodoxy.
    With these considerations in mind, I have decided to mention some authors who, although they never wrote on this subject, might have done so, had they thought of it. This, then, is a bibliography of proto-hierarchiologists.
    The unknown originators of several proverbs had some intuitive understanding of incompetence theory.
    “Cobbler, stick to your last” is clearly a warning to the journeyman cobbler to be wary of being promoted to foreman of the boot-repair shop. The hand that skillfully wielded awl and hammer might well fumble pen, time sheet and work schedule.
    “Too many cooks spoil the broth” suggests that the more people you involve in any project, the greater are the odds that one of them, at least, has reached his level of incompetence. One competent vegetable peeler, promoted to his level of incompetence as cook, may add too much salt and ruin the good work of the other six cooks who helped make the broth.
    “Woman’s work is never done” is a sad commentary on the high proportion of women who reach their level of incompetence as housewives.
    In his Rubáiyát, O. Khayyám remarked sourly on the high incidence of incompetence in educational and religious hierarchies:
    Myself when young did eagerly frequent
    Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
    About it and about: but evermore
    Came out by the same door where in I went.
    I have mentioned elsewhere the existence of a “hierarchal instinct” in men: their irresistible propensity to arrange themselves by ranks. Some critics have denied the existence of this instinct. However, A. Pope noticed it over two centuries ago, and even saw it as the expression of a divine principle.
    Order is Heav’n’s first law; and this confest,
    Some are, and must be, greater than the rest.
        (E SSAY ON M AN, Epistle IV, II. 49–50)
    He accurately observed the satisfaction that is