Stupid is worse than evil. What, dear reader, you'd like it stated a little more eloquently? Allow me to oblige:
Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may
protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by
use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own
subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of
unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless; reasons fall on deaf ears;
facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed–in
such moments the stupid person even becomes critical–and when facts are
irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as
incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious
one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes
dangerous by going on the attack. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters & Papers from Prison, 43)
Ok, maybe i didn't state it more eloquently and Dietrich Bonhoffer did, but i found the quote and you didn't. I am the one that mixed my labor with the State of Nature on the internet so it is mine even if i did not create it; John Locke said so. But today we are not going to be exploring classic economic theory--i want to expose a little on the upside of stupidity because it isn't all bad.
Today I made caramelized onions. Caramelized onions are great; that is why they serve them up in fancy steakhouses. But caramelized onions take a lot of work. No really, a lot. So much that when explaining the process cooking writers all lie about how much time they take to create. There is a convention in cooking to say that the process takes a lot less time than it does in reality. It took me forty-five minutes today to caramelize my onions, and i probably rushed it and stopped a little too soon, but some recipes will say it takes as little as ten minutes. It is boring too. It takes no skill, you just need to stir them occasionally, making sure the onions stay in contact with the pan and don't pile up.
The long, labor intensive process is the reason you are more likely to see caramelized onions in a steakhouse than a burger joint. A wise man once said, "Caramelized onions are great on burgers." And Samy was right they are. They may be better on burgers than with steaks because steaks are already so good that you are really just gilding the lily when you start piling things on. Whereas burgers can really benefit from the fusion with other ingredients. But because they take so long to make burger joints don't often devote the manpower to preparing caramelized onions because they cannot fetch enough of a premium to justify the extra labor. "Time is money," and these damn onions take a lot of time to caramelize.
This is where we see a rare positive externality of stupidity. You may be familiar with the Fight for 15. If you are not, look it up. (I don't feel like polluting this page with a link.) These "Fighters" are basically putting themselves out of work. Sure you can't raise a family on eight bucks an hour, but you aren't supposed to work that job when you are raising a family. And you really can't raise a family of four after your job has been replaced by a burger flipping robot because the restaurant cannot remain profitable when they have to pay the least productive labor market participants fifteen bucks an hour. However, once you replace "Troy, the burger boy" with the TroiMk.3 autonomous grill tender you can take advantage the mindless time intensive processes that robots excel at to elevate your menu.
"Troy, the burger boy" cannot be trusted to actually pay attention to make sure the onions are stirred and do not burn or dry out, he'd rather be chatting up that nurse with a taste for men that never get out of entry level jobs that comes in most days. TroiMk.3 will not get distracted and can be programmed to stir the onions when not doing cooking and assembly of active orders. There are probably a lot of things TroiMk.3 will be able to do with downtime to enhance my experience at the future human-free autonomous burger kiosk of the future, but you get the general idea.
So in the future we can look forward to BK and McD (no one will have time for full words or even all the letters in the Idiocracy trending future) to serve caramelized onions with your WppR or BgMc.
Later
Bob
