Intergalactic Summit

Meritocracy and self-sacrifice is what kept our people alive during the Dark Ages. The most capable is by definition the one who cares most about the collective, and achieves his position by working for the better good of the whole. That is the reason many Caldari are capable of sustaining what appears to be abuse to outsiders; its faith that those who have proven themselves worthy of leadership are doing what is necessary to ensure the good of the State. The good of the people.

Unfortunately it was our exercise in Democracy that led us to Tibus Heth, not meritocracy.

Heth didn't arrive to his position based on merit, but based on the promise of merit and change which led to the explosion of the repressed masses. What we have under Heth might have started out as meritocracy, indeed before I was a capsuleer I was a Tribunal Prosecutor and we rooted out a great deal of corruption and nepotism in the State under Heth's original programs, but now all I see are Provists and other Heth loyalists occupying positions that were once cleared for those with the talent to fill them.

Apparently Heth's definition of merit and mine are in conflict.

To hell with "the will of the people".

What matters is numbers. Isk made, jobs created, share value, planets held.

Thousands of Caldari died by the hand of a corporation run by Heth, died with no appreciable value accrued by their deaths. They died largely because KK and Heth did not want to realize that the monster they serve - populism - is turning on them.

The will of the Caldari people, in any case, is to be Caldari. It is to function as a meritocracy, to avoid corruption and waste. These sentiments brought Heth to power. But Heth apparently did not realize this. Janus Bravour did, but he is gone. So now Heth believes that his power comes from appeal to the mob. But, in the end, his downfall will come about because of the fact that the Caldari "mob" is not like the Federation's. We, the people, the shareholders, the employees, and the managers, will demand results.

The "will of the people" is a political phrase. It denotes the majority will of the citizenry. The groups I stated are stakeholders in an individual enterprise, and may or may not be the majority of the people at large. I suppose I should be more obvious, but some things I tend to take as commonly understood - which I shouldn't, because not everyone has read everything I've written. Therefore, I apologize.

What I was trying to say, and apparently not conveying, is that the Caldari "people", as a mass, don't have a say over how any particular corporation is run, nor should they. But they, in general, if we were to take their views into account, that still wouldn't get us to where Heth or the Gallente want us to go.