P.S. Competence can actually be counterproductive, from everyone else's standpoint, when there's a conflict of interest involved.

Even stipulating that (say) Carly Fiorina, Bob Nardelli, and "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap are really a bunch of geniuses, how do you explain the fact that they screw up so bad. Either they really are smart, and are pursuing their self-interest in an intelligent manner that just happens to be at odds with the interest of the "little people" in the company, or they're just incompetent and following the flawed MBA playbook. Either way, what they're doing amounts in practice to the behavior of an Ottoman tax farmer: stripping the organization of assets, gutting human capital, and hollowing out long-term productive capability in order to game their own bonuses and stock options. If the corporate economy requires "geniuses" like this to administer it, it must be really fucked up.