Why is Common Sense so uncommon?

Studies, Committees, Senate Reports and PhD’s all have one thing in common…99 percent of them are completely irrelevant and produce nothing we did not already know.

Politicians and business ‘leaders’ speak in clichés, and when a real answer is demanded escape to ‘as I understand it’ or defer the question entirely to ‘after a Committee has reported on the issue’.

One of the reasons Common Sense is so Uncommon is the need to appease every minor voice, dissenting or otherwise. Unless of course it is the vast majority of PhD’s whose sole purpose are to meet quotas and lift University rankings. 

Everyone knows Nokia failed because they stopped watching the mobile phone market (now the smartphone market, but they missed the name change) and yet their top executives believe they did nothing wrong, and cry themselves into stupidity at press conferences.

Everyone knows that government departments, on the whole, are top heavy and waste millions of dollars on salaries not required to meet their core functions. Arrium knew it needed to significantly upgrade its equipment years ago but did nothing. Holden knew people were buying smaller fuel efficient cars yet did not build one (until it was too late).

Yes, stupidity is a factor, yet those pesky minority folks (which include, in addition to car manufacturer executives, the senior people who presided over Polaroid, BP safety, multiple -speed limits in Adelaide city streets and the Frome Street super-hyper bike-way built for an Airbus) who sternly and stubbornly believe they are right and have the right to be heard.

Unfortunately they are heard way too often and, also way too often, are completely wrong.

Please, I understand the need for diversity of views and am the first to listen and consider seriously all new ideas, but the squeaky wheel now receives a million barrels of oil instead of just the needed drop.

The excess energy spent on debating, studying, researching and reporting on aspects of our lives that can be solved by the time-old equation of Common Sense is worth more than our total GDP, yet we spend it willingly in the name of ‘consultation’.

Consultation be damned, give me common sense any day.
Location: Adelaide SA, Australia

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