JCC Congratulations Austria

Your new secretary of state is just 27 years old!

http://www.euronews.com/2013/12/14/austria-appoints-youngest-ever-foreign-minister/

That's not even old enough to post responsibly on a Star Wars forum.

 

I guess the NSA will be monitoring his snapchats now.

 

Adorably flawed decision.

 

Goddammit, it should be up to the older, wiser people to **** the world.

 

Even, what experience can he draw on at 27?

 

Why is "experience" necessarily a good thing? There are many, many examples throughout history of things going disastrously because senior officials were set in their ways.

I do think 27 is young for a high-ranking diplomat, but let's not pretend that older people are automatically competent or that their views are correct.

 

But I didn't say that; you inserted that as my position so it would be conveniently in opposition to your viewpoint.

27 is simply too young to be a foreign minister. Tony Blair, when elected, was a young Prime Minister at 40 but if read his autobiography (or, like me, have 16hours of Mr Blair reading it himself as an audiobook ) he acknowledges that New Labour had a real lack of experience in government, with practically none of his ministers serving in government and only ever knowing opposition. Youthful enthusiasm and energy are great but they need worldly experience to temper them. I always worry when a public official is elected and has never been involved in a wealth creation enterprise.

The centre-left is particularly good/bad at it here, putting people who've been lifelong trades union officials into government and I think this is wrong. Until you've worked somewhere where you're accountable to external (and sometimes fickle) stakeholders and your performance dictates both your remuneration and your job security I can't see you have anything to offer in a position of leadership such as a ministerial posting.

 

evan, older people aren't automatically competent, but younger people are automatically incompetent

 

Thanks for taking down my supposed strawman and saying something worse.

 

He actually looks 12.

 

How... what?

I was adding further commentary. And I stand by it; if a public office holder hasn't worked in a wealth creating business then I really doubt they have much to draw upon and offer an electorate.

 

I'm not sure a career military man or public servant makes the best minister. I dealt with a lot of both in my government work, and having done both private sector and public sector the latter suffers on two levels. One; risk-adverse culture. To be fair, public employees aren't supposed to be risk-takers but ministers are. Two; it's generally the case that unless there's gross negligence or dereliction of duties, it's hard to impossible to lose your job in the public sector. You might be taken off the career treadmill at, say, an EL1 level (whatever the equivalent is in US Govt. parlance) but you'll still get the mandated pay rise each year.

However, if your performance was a determining factor in job security - i.e. when you can lose your job for underperforming - it enhances your accountability and the quality of your output. You are the best you can be, and that's what gets your the promotions and salary increases and bonuses. Results are crucial to your success, in other words. Which is not dissimilar to the world of a minister.

 

The only thing I know about Austria is that Arnold Schwarzenegger came from there.

 

And Hitler.

 

2 things!

 

Didn't Merkel just fracture her hip?

 

I don't know, George W Bush, Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney all had private sector boardroom experience and they didn't exactly crown themselves in glory as competent public administrators. Likewise, I'm sure you wouldn't want to see the executive management of Enron and other corporate disasters putting their hands up for senior public service positions.

 

Money making is all that matters when it comes to leadership experience.

...

 

By all accounts, though, Rumsfeld was a good SecDef. Dubya and Cheney though were horribly under qualified (most of Bush's corporate appointments owed more to his name than his talent) and then later beset by a set of unique factors. I would be tempted to suggest they're an outlier and you would get more benefit from looking at his father's record as a public administrator.

Or to Malcolm Bligh Turnbull, being as he is, a shining light.

You should be modestly ashamed of the breath-taking idiocy inherent in that post. Granted, it's politics, a subject where you struggle with the nuances like your favourite person struggles with science. But that is neither what I said or meant, and only an imbecile could confuse working for a "wealth creating business" with MAKING ALL THE MONIES.

 

So much for my plans of making her my sex slave...