The Access Economy

Ayn Rand warned us about it when she coined "an aristocracy of pull" in Atlas Shrugged to describe a system dependent on trading favors instead of goods and services with actual defined value.

Kara Swisher nails it here when she talks about how you don't need acumen or expertise or competence when you can rely on having access to the people who make the decisions about the money.

Access. How many times do we have to hear about the bullshit absolute supremacy of access (arts, communications, the press, etc - and now normal everyday commerce) before enough of us insist on putting people in charge who actually know what the fuck they're doing?

PS) I hope the Ayn Rand reference didn't scare anybody off. She was an absolutist, and a bit of a quack, and certainly a hypocrite in the end, but - you know - even a blind hog roots up and acorn once in a while.