To deliver on big things you need to be able to deliver on small things. Big projects are made up of many smaller projects and tasks. To ignore an inability to deliver on basic or small things explains much of why big projects don’t meet their goals or happen at all. Maybe it’s time we need to focus on basic competencies so we have the expertise that will allow the big things (infrastructure, military procurement, etc.) to get done.
Nicholas Monserrat wrote in his novel ‘The Cruel Sea’ about the corvette captain lecturing one of his young officers “It is a small thing, but you might as well get it right.” It’s a philosophy I’ve tried to follow for as you state, if you can’t get the small things right then how can you expect to get the big things right. Big things after all are made up of many small things.
We lived in the UK for two years and found British bureaucracy to be far more efficient than our native service government service.
I’m all for it, Matt. I believe this is analogous to what I heard a lot in my youth, “Look after the pennies and the dollars will look after themselves.” Little things mean a lot!
Having worked in both Fed and a Prov govts as a worker and as a director, it is very clear to me that the unions in their attempts to protect workers have facilitated incompetence and some of that is of a serious nature. The unions facilitate a lower level of discipline, attention to detail, timeliness and so many other aspects for which folks in the near past would have been fired or at least told off. I suspect there are other nations like this where the purpose of govt unions is to protect their clients often at the expense of those who workers are meant to serve. That is, the public. It has been so widely incorporated for such a long period of time, I have no idea how one would adjust this mentality as any attempt is met with severe resistance including from the media.
Government workers are the least likley to deserve union protection. Like all workers, they enjoy the protections of labor legislation and civil law. Like all monopolies, they enjoy protection from market forces. On top of that, they enjoy an employer with near infinite financial resources.
How about we start dealing with public sector unions? They are the bane of everyone's existence. They slow things down and they protect those people who do not do their jobs.
There's also issues with 'the employer' ie, the government.
Years ago a family member worked for a government agency and sat on the union committee which dealt with grievances. There was a particular employee who was a problem. The employer would discipline the employee & inevitably the employee would file a grievance which he would win. Why? Because the labour agreement had progressive discipline clauses in it & inevitably when the grievance was heard, it turned out that the progressive discipline steps hadn't been adhered to by the employer so the employee 'won' every grievance. My relative said the union grievance committee hated having to defend this employee & wished the gov't would follow the progressive discipline steps in the agreement so they could ALL be rid of the guy. The union didn't have a choice in defending against the grievance because it's their job to protect members.
Like I said, this was years ago & I'm sure it's gotten worse. My point is that both sides can be to blame. :-)
I have a relative who is one step below city manager for a major Canadian city. The stories I hear about being unable to terminate useless and/or abusive employees are incredible. We're talking a senior manager being caught repeatedly watching porn on city computers/networks kind of thing.
I'd be curious what the turnover rates are for private vs public employers. It's probably an order of magnitude higher in the private sector.
Then they are managing them better than we are here in Ontario. I'm not saying it's the whole problem but it is definitely a barrier to getting things done. I'm not asking to get rid of them. I'm just asking to hold them accountable.
I'm a proponent of the move fast and don't blink approach to government revitalization practiced by New Zealand in the late 80s and Alberta in the early 90s. As examples, Alberta turned around liquor store privatization and registry services in less than a year, dramatically lowering costs and improving services.
Lovely essay. I do not think that is a minor issue. I’ve lived in Sweden and seen what an effective public sector can look like. And I do like their mixed economy model of a strong public sector and a strong private sector. For me what that means - at least for the public sector - is a sector that is responsive and innovates. What you are flagging is a lack of innovation within the public sector. Its similar to broken windows theory, inefficient paperwork is a sign of a disorder/clunkiness that legitimates broader disorder and lack of responsiveness. So how to innovate and create an efficient solution to the problem you flag? I’m not sure. But its worth thinking about. I also think it is a timely issue, given books like Abundance or Who is Government that are appearing south of the border or Speaking Truth to Canadians about their public service by Savoie. It is also an opportunity for nuanced thought that is grounded in real world experience (e.g., from of people who actually know the inner workings of government) and people with relevant expertise. It would be good to avoid the partisan solutions we seem to get that hit the usual targets and have no nuance. Innovation requires sophisticated context sensitive thinking, that includes experience and expertise…This is a nuanced thoughtful essay and I’d be curious to see a follow up article…..Its not such a small issue but small enough that it may be a good and fun place to start :- )
I agree utterly. The 21 month horror of trying to get our foreign born son a Cdn passport with two native born, multi generational Cdn parents, just temporarily living abroad, was soul sucking.
Also, to pull out a bit, some people didn't like the phrase "Canada is Broken". Fine. Couldn't the adults in the room paraphrase that into 'can't we do better' without being accused of hating Canada?
The Supreme Preacher here. The most truthful phrase and a fact is "Canada IS broken". If you do not agree with these words, you are a willing servant of Satan. And worse, a Liebrano voter.
I cannot emphasize enough on Matt's point that the bigger problem is that we Canadians are actually OK with substandard service. Attributing this attitude to "Canadians being nice" is just completely counterproductive to this country's growth.
My wife tried to get the military service records of one of her uncles, a man who was born in Canada, lived in Canada all his life, except for several years serving overseas with the Canadian Army during WWII, survived the war to return to Canada and lived in Canada until his death decades later at a ripe, old age.
So far, four years and counting. Every so often, she checks in to see with Veterans' Affairs to see how it's going.
My husband was told it would be five years when he requested his deceased father’s military records some years ago. He had all necessary names and numbers, so it shouldn’t have been an onerous task. I believe it is a matter of priorities with such requests languishing on Someday isle
Thanks for your comment, Penny. It shouldn't take a government four or five years to respond to requests from its citizens, no matter what the priorities. That is completely unreasonable by any measure. When governments fail to respond in a timely way, people lose trust in the system, as we know many already have and democracy crumbles.
I agree! I believe we have an overstuffed, overpaid, underachieving, unambitious public service who tend to work to rule. I acknowledge there are exceptions.
It is the Liebrano voters who insist on deeply substandard crap being the only one and true Canadian way. And "Elbows Up" and then .... poooofff into the mist.
I used to work in the federal government. Trying to do even simple things was often a challenge. One time I discovered to get a copy of a specific form, I had to fill out another form, get that approved, so I could get the form I needed! Way back when, the government underwent a downsizing (what a strange concept today). What I discovered after the downsizing, that routine things got easier and faster to do, as fewer people had to read, question, and finally approve anything that needed to be done. Could this be a soulution?
As a university student, I worked for the AB provincial government during the Klein era. Despite the union propoganda, working conditions and productiviry improved with austerity as reduced headcount almost always lead to more agile decision making. As an example, I worked in the health department compiling stats and accounting costs. Three employees did nothing but hand key numbers from print outs to produce stats. Due to the mind numbness of my job, I fegured out how to redirect they output from the printers to text files so I could import the numbers into Excel and automatie the analysis. I was written up and a grievance was filed due to my initiative. After layoffs whacked the union reps and several more, I was liberated to do a better job.
Wow that is almost literally a Soviet style mentality - "how dare you innovate and undermine these people's useless and counter-productive jobs?". I wonder how much of the problem is exactly this.
I can happily report that when I reached out to the documents registry in Alberta, I was able to pay for an expedited delivery of my birth certificate. The documents arrived less than two weeks after I mailed my application (by express post from another Canadian province).
That I could not submit the request by .pdf (certified by a licensed Notary Public) was irritating. As was the need for several tens-of-dollars in service fees for expedited service.
But it was fast.
Ontario has long had a reputation for molasses-slow service, a point your experience appears to corroborate.
I was on the executive of our local curling tink and had to fill a form out for our provincial government. I called our local municipality thinking they could help with some of the information I needed,they were very helpful they transferred my my call to someone that absolutely would know that information. I got My voicemail.
Matt’s column is the thesis of why we need a DOGE department at all levels of government; to ensure service delivery is optimized and wasteful rot is minimized. I echo Matt’s frustrations and his cited example with Ontario’s service delivery failures. Relatedly, I also include the past grand failures on business/corporation registrations or material change updates, which historically were submitted to the government bureaucracy for input. To be fair, they have since automated it to be self-service and managed by business owners directly — which frankly just exposed how historically dysfunctional and inept the bureaucracy was throughout time when all it had to do was simply input supplied data from businesses using government-prescribed forms. Other outrageous but failed essential service delivery can also be found at the Public Guardian and Trustee. I could go on…
Overall, it’s as if the bureaucracies quickly develop a sense to not give a shit to do their jobs consistently, correctly or efficiently — contrary to the private sector — where being unaccountable with unionized protections shields these bureaucracies from doing the very thing they are actually their to do to the best of their ability. These aren’t new problems, but continuously worsening problems, and for all the taxes we all pay to subsidize these problems, it boggles the mind why Canadians are just so complacently tolerant of these clear failures at basic services. Like Matt and many others, I too have injected copious amounts of personal time and sometimes cost to address or resolve these issues in both the incidental and the systemic elements of same. It is exceedingly rare that such efforts are ever embraced by those who are most responsible for implementing the corrective actions to these problems. A glaring problem to all these issues is the role of labour unions and the culture of workforces they encourage: maximize compensation and benefits while minimizing work responsibility and productivity. Tax-paying customers requiring government service always gets treated with the lowest priority in this country, and that seriously needs to change. The old adage ‘the customer is always right’ does not exist in government lexicons of thought or applied practice. Establishing DOGE departments at all levels of government would be a swift and widely beneficial means of tackling these unsustainable service problems.
My friend works for a large government-adjacent institution doing construction management. The institution is about to do $15 billion worth of construction over the next decade. The construction and design and project management is being done by contractors. Friend knows they're being ripped off by the contractors. Probably 2-4 times the cost versus normal commercial construction. I asked friend why they don't just stand up a construction division within the institution. Hire their own architects and engineers and project managers and labour. $1.5 billion per year can support a big firm. Friend said it's because of the financing arrangements. Capital costs can be financed with bonds whereas operating costs must come out of income. Perversely, it's better to have a capital project go vastly over budget than spend an extra penny on operating expenses because it makes the accountants happy. The place is run by accountants instead of people who know how real things are built.
Another friend works at Metrolinx. According to friend, they only hire business managers and accountants that have business degrees from Western University. So a small handful of professors are training the entire management structure of a multi billion dollar public institution.
There are people within the institutions who know how fucked things are, but they are powerless to improve things. Diktats from high up run everything. Centralization of control ruins organizations. Some consultant made a spreadsheet that calculates the most economically efficient waiting time for government documents (months), and that policy is imposed on the middle managers regardless of the absurdities. Don't you like efficiency? Everyone loves efficiency. Is months of waiting not efficient for you? Too bad, pal. Spreadsheet says wait.
“I want to live in a country where noting areas where improvement is possible and warranted is taken as helpful feedback worth considering...,” vs. “My […] pride compels me to downplay this issue because to admit to any failure risks collapsing my fragile sense of self.”
If we take these sentiments and apply them to criticisms of an article's reasoning, could Line readers then expect editorial responses to such criticisms to take a more productive form than invitations to cancel their subscriptions?
My dear Matt, both from personal experience and from what I've observed you can be pretty touchy, quite independently of the criticism or the critic. It's not that you're never self-critical: when it comes to input from yourself (for which you can claim credit), you're admirably open. It's only external sources that sometimes raise your hackles, for reasons that aren't easily explainable through any investigation of the criticisms or critics themselves.
I hasten to add that responding to criticism in a way that does an injustice to its merits and the critic alike isn't a failing unique to you: as you point out, entire countries can be guilty of it. Since you chose to remind us of this truism, I in turn couldn't resist reminding you that it never hurts any of us to look in a mirror. Surely your sense of self isn't so “fragile” as to prevent your acknowledging that my reminder was as timely and warranted as your own.
Thanks. How accurate that answer turns out to be in future is something I'm willing to see demonstrated, and I'm hopeful. It isn't in my judgment an accurate summary of the past.
There's a mitigating circumstance, though. Throughout publishing history some of the most self-indulgent magazine articles ever written came from the typewriters of editors—because all too often no one dared to edit the editor. Now we live in an era when even subject experts can get instant feedback from readers pointing out something the expert has overlooked, a wonderful development from the point of view of refining an analysis. Writers open to such input can enjoy stimulating collaborations with readers; and writers genuinely committed to truth quests will welcome someone else having discovered the truth they were seeking.
To deliver on big things you need to be able to deliver on small things. Big projects are made up of many smaller projects and tasks. To ignore an inability to deliver on basic or small things explains much of why big projects don’t meet their goals or happen at all. Maybe it’s time we need to focus on basic competencies so we have the expertise that will allow the big things (infrastructure, military procurement, etc.) to get done.
Dan, this is exactly right, and I've told Jen that one day, I'm going to write my Hollywood Thesis column.
This is basically that thesis. But I'll save the rest for later.
Nicholas Monserrat wrote in his novel ‘The Cruel Sea’ about the corvette captain lecturing one of his young officers “It is a small thing, but you might as well get it right.” It’s a philosophy I’ve tried to follow for as you state, if you can’t get the small things right then how can you expect to get the big things right. Big things after all are made up of many small things.
We lived in the UK for two years and found British bureaucracy to be far more efficient than our native service government service.
I’m all for it, Matt. I believe this is analogous to what I heard a lot in my youth, “Look after the pennies and the dollars will look after themselves.” Little things mean a lot!
Having worked in both Fed and a Prov govts as a worker and as a director, it is very clear to me that the unions in their attempts to protect workers have facilitated incompetence and some of that is of a serious nature. The unions facilitate a lower level of discipline, attention to detail, timeliness and so many other aspects for which folks in the near past would have been fired or at least told off. I suspect there are other nations like this where the purpose of govt unions is to protect their clients often at the expense of those who workers are meant to serve. That is, the public. It has been so widely incorporated for such a long period of time, I have no idea how one would adjust this mentality as any attempt is met with severe resistance including from the media.
Government workers are the least likley to deserve union protection. Like all workers, they enjoy the protections of labor legislation and civil law. Like all monopolies, they enjoy protection from market forces. On top of that, they enjoy an employer with near infinite financial resources.
How about we start dealing with public sector unions? They are the bane of everyone's existence. They slow things down and they protect those people who do not do their jobs.
There's also issues with 'the employer' ie, the government.
Years ago a family member worked for a government agency and sat on the union committee which dealt with grievances. There was a particular employee who was a problem. The employer would discipline the employee & inevitably the employee would file a grievance which he would win. Why? Because the labour agreement had progressive discipline clauses in it & inevitably when the grievance was heard, it turned out that the progressive discipline steps hadn't been adhered to by the employer so the employee 'won' every grievance. My relative said the union grievance committee hated having to defend this employee & wished the gov't would follow the progressive discipline steps in the agreement so they could ALL be rid of the guy. The union didn't have a choice in defending against the grievance because it's their job to protect members.
Like I said, this was years ago & I'm sure it's gotten worse. My point is that both sides can be to blame. :-)
I have a relative who is one step below city manager for a major Canadian city. The stories I hear about being unable to terminate useless and/or abusive employees are incredible. We're talking a senior manager being caught repeatedly watching porn on city computers/networks kind of thing.
I'd be curious what the turnover rates are for private vs public employers. It's probably an order of magnitude higher in the private sector.
They have those in the UK too and still get the job done.
Then they are managing them better than we are here in Ontario. I'm not saying it's the whole problem but it is definitely a barrier to getting things done. I'm not asking to get rid of them. I'm just asking to hold them accountable.
If you are paying attention to what is actually happening in UK, you will see that they are NOT getting the job done.
On most issues yes. On this specific one which this piece was about - they are.
I'm a proponent of the move fast and don't blink approach to government revitalization practiced by New Zealand in the late 80s and Alberta in the early 90s. As examples, Alberta turned around liquor store privatization and registry services in less than a year, dramatically lowering costs and improving services.
Lovely essay. I do not think that is a minor issue. I’ve lived in Sweden and seen what an effective public sector can look like. And I do like their mixed economy model of a strong public sector and a strong private sector. For me what that means - at least for the public sector - is a sector that is responsive and innovates. What you are flagging is a lack of innovation within the public sector. Its similar to broken windows theory, inefficient paperwork is a sign of a disorder/clunkiness that legitimates broader disorder and lack of responsiveness. So how to innovate and create an efficient solution to the problem you flag? I’m not sure. But its worth thinking about. I also think it is a timely issue, given books like Abundance or Who is Government that are appearing south of the border or Speaking Truth to Canadians about their public service by Savoie. It is also an opportunity for nuanced thought that is grounded in real world experience (e.g., from of people who actually know the inner workings of government) and people with relevant expertise. It would be good to avoid the partisan solutions we seem to get that hit the usual targets and have no nuance. Innovation requires sophisticated context sensitive thinking, that includes experience and expertise…This is a nuanced thoughtful essay and I’d be curious to see a follow up article…..Its not such a small issue but small enough that it may be a good and fun place to start :- )
I agree utterly. The 21 month horror of trying to get our foreign born son a Cdn passport with two native born, multi generational Cdn parents, just temporarily living abroad, was soul sucking.
Also, to pull out a bit, some people didn't like the phrase "Canada is Broken". Fine. Couldn't the adults in the room paraphrase that into 'can't we do better' without being accused of hating Canada?
The Supreme Preacher here. The most truthful phrase and a fact is "Canada IS broken". If you do not agree with these words, you are a willing servant of Satan. And worse, a Liebrano voter.
I think people who didn’t like Canada is broken thought it meant we were giving up vs saying things needed to be fixed.
I cannot emphasize enough on Matt's point that the bigger problem is that we Canadians are actually OK with substandard service. Attributing this attitude to "Canadians being nice" is just completely counterproductive to this country's growth.
Nice of course meaning Canadians will eat a lot of shit to avoid causing conflict.
My wife tried to get the military service records of one of her uncles, a man who was born in Canada, lived in Canada all his life, except for several years serving overseas with the Canadian Army during WWII, survived the war to return to Canada and lived in Canada until his death decades later at a ripe, old age.
So far, four years and counting. Every so often, she checks in to see with Veterans' Affairs to see how it's going.
My husband was told it would be five years when he requested his deceased father’s military records some years ago. He had all necessary names and numbers, so it shouldn’t have been an onerous task. I believe it is a matter of priorities with such requests languishing on Someday isle
Thanks for your comment, Penny. It shouldn't take a government four or five years to respond to requests from its citizens, no matter what the priorities. That is completely unreasonable by any measure. When governments fail to respond in a timely way, people lose trust in the system, as we know many already have and democracy crumbles.
I agree! I believe we have an overstuffed, overpaid, underachieving, unambitious public service who tend to work to rule. I acknowledge there are exceptions.
It is the Liebrano voters who insist on deeply substandard crap being the only one and true Canadian way. And "Elbows Up" and then .... poooofff into the mist.
I used to work in the federal government. Trying to do even simple things was often a challenge. One time I discovered to get a copy of a specific form, I had to fill out another form, get that approved, so I could get the form I needed! Way back when, the government underwent a downsizing (what a strange concept today). What I discovered after the downsizing, that routine things got easier and faster to do, as fewer people had to read, question, and finally approve anything that needed to be done. Could this be a soulution?
As a university student, I worked for the AB provincial government during the Klein era. Despite the union propoganda, working conditions and productiviry improved with austerity as reduced headcount almost always lead to more agile decision making. As an example, I worked in the health department compiling stats and accounting costs. Three employees did nothing but hand key numbers from print outs to produce stats. Due to the mind numbness of my job, I fegured out how to redirect they output from the printers to text files so I could import the numbers into Excel and automatie the analysis. I was written up and a grievance was filed due to my initiative. After layoffs whacked the union reps and several more, I was liberated to do a better job.
Wow that is almost literally a Soviet style mentality - "how dare you innovate and undermine these people's useless and counter-productive jobs?". I wonder how much of the problem is exactly this.
Won't know the magnitude unleza eliminating the ability of unions to obfuscate
Thank you for this, Matt.
I can happily report that when I reached out to the documents registry in Alberta, I was able to pay for an expedited delivery of my birth certificate. The documents arrived less than two weeks after I mailed my application (by express post from another Canadian province).
That I could not submit the request by .pdf (certified by a licensed Notary Public) was irritating. As was the need for several tens-of-dollars in service fees for expedited service.
But it was fast.
Ontario has long had a reputation for molasses-slow service, a point your experience appears to corroborate.
Good on Alberta.
I was on the executive of our local curling tink and had to fill a form out for our provincial government. I called our local municipality thinking they could help with some of the information I needed,they were very helpful they transferred my my call to someone that absolutely would know that information. I got My voicemail.
Matt’s column is the thesis of why we need a DOGE department at all levels of government; to ensure service delivery is optimized and wasteful rot is minimized. I echo Matt’s frustrations and his cited example with Ontario’s service delivery failures. Relatedly, I also include the past grand failures on business/corporation registrations or material change updates, which historically were submitted to the government bureaucracy for input. To be fair, they have since automated it to be self-service and managed by business owners directly — which frankly just exposed how historically dysfunctional and inept the bureaucracy was throughout time when all it had to do was simply input supplied data from businesses using government-prescribed forms. Other outrageous but failed essential service delivery can also be found at the Public Guardian and Trustee. I could go on…
Overall, it’s as if the bureaucracies quickly develop a sense to not give a shit to do their jobs consistently, correctly or efficiently — contrary to the private sector — where being unaccountable with unionized protections shields these bureaucracies from doing the very thing they are actually their to do to the best of their ability. These aren’t new problems, but continuously worsening problems, and for all the taxes we all pay to subsidize these problems, it boggles the mind why Canadians are just so complacently tolerant of these clear failures at basic services. Like Matt and many others, I too have injected copious amounts of personal time and sometimes cost to address or resolve these issues in both the incidental and the systemic elements of same. It is exceedingly rare that such efforts are ever embraced by those who are most responsible for implementing the corrective actions to these problems. A glaring problem to all these issues is the role of labour unions and the culture of workforces they encourage: maximize compensation and benefits while minimizing work responsibility and productivity. Tax-paying customers requiring government service always gets treated with the lowest priority in this country, and that seriously needs to change. The old adage ‘the customer is always right’ does not exist in government lexicons of thought or applied practice. Establishing DOGE departments at all levels of government would be a swift and widely beneficial means of tackling these unsustainable service problems.
Except DOGE isn't doing any of that.
My friend works for a large government-adjacent institution doing construction management. The institution is about to do $15 billion worth of construction over the next decade. The construction and design and project management is being done by contractors. Friend knows they're being ripped off by the contractors. Probably 2-4 times the cost versus normal commercial construction. I asked friend why they don't just stand up a construction division within the institution. Hire their own architects and engineers and project managers and labour. $1.5 billion per year can support a big firm. Friend said it's because of the financing arrangements. Capital costs can be financed with bonds whereas operating costs must come out of income. Perversely, it's better to have a capital project go vastly over budget than spend an extra penny on operating expenses because it makes the accountants happy. The place is run by accountants instead of people who know how real things are built.
Another friend works at Metrolinx. According to friend, they only hire business managers and accountants that have business degrees from Western University. So a small handful of professors are training the entire management structure of a multi billion dollar public institution.
There are people within the institutions who know how fucked things are, but they are powerless to improve things. Diktats from high up run everything. Centralization of control ruins organizations. Some consultant made a spreadsheet that calculates the most economically efficient waiting time for government documents (months), and that policy is imposed on the middle managers regardless of the absurdities. Don't you like efficiency? Everyone loves efficiency. Is months of waiting not efficient for you? Too bad, pal. Spreadsheet says wait.
Good article- remember the passport gong-show!
The solution was to hire more people to process the same number of passport applications.
Same process - same results.
Great column, Matt. Your family must appreciate your thoughtfulness very much.
snort
“I want to live in a country where noting areas where improvement is possible and warranted is taken as helpful feedback worth considering...,” vs. “My […] pride compels me to downplay this issue because to admit to any failure risks collapsing my fragile sense of self.”
If we take these sentiments and apply them to criticisms of an article's reasoning, could Line readers then expect editorial responses to such criticisms to take a more productive form than invitations to cancel their subscriptions?
It would depend on the criticism and the critic.
My dear Matt, both from personal experience and from what I've observed you can be pretty touchy, quite independently of the criticism or the critic. It's not that you're never self-critical: when it comes to input from yourself (for which you can claim credit), you're admirably open. It's only external sources that sometimes raise your hackles, for reasons that aren't easily explainable through any investigation of the criticisms or critics themselves.
I hasten to add that responding to criticism in a way that does an injustice to its merits and the critic alike isn't a failing unique to you: as you point out, entire countries can be guilty of it. Since you chose to remind us of this truism, I in turn couldn't resist reminding you that it never hurts any of us to look in a mirror. Surely your sense of self isn't so “fragile” as to prevent your acknowledging that my reminder was as timely and warranted as your own.
Not at all. I just felt you were owed an answer to the question you asked.
Thanks. How accurate that answer turns out to be in future is something I'm willing to see demonstrated, and I'm hopeful. It isn't in my judgment an accurate summary of the past.
There's a mitigating circumstance, though. Throughout publishing history some of the most self-indulgent magazine articles ever written came from the typewriters of editors—because all too often no one dared to edit the editor. Now we live in an era when even subject experts can get instant feedback from readers pointing out something the expert has overlooked, a wonderful development from the point of view of refining an analysis. Writers open to such input can enjoy stimulating collaborations with readers; and writers genuinely committed to truth quests will welcome someone else having discovered the truth they were seeking.
How lucky for us all.