Call it “the revenge of John Galt“, call it “the revenge of main street“, call it “the rebuke of the compliance department”, or call it something else…. but what’s brutally missing amid all the pearl-clutching punditry is an acceptance that President Trump is ushering back an era of The Titans of Capitalism.

A succinct comment by thesavyinvester cuts to the brutal heart of the matter:

How ironic… The last 8 yrs ( and frankly much longer ) the non producing bureaucratic state only focused on growing it’s own organisms ( like something Ripley fought against ) rather than fostering yours, will now be run by those that for eons that had to dot their I’s and cross their T’s for all these pencil pushers. Yikes, they will be more uncomfortable than Rodney Dangerfield constantly adjusting his collar and tie during his comedy routine🙂. No I am not tired of winning, grab the popcorn this will be fun.

The game changing nature of a Trump Administration that will be run by in essence by efficiency experts rather than coming up through the ranks politicians is so stunning I am not even sure Treeper’s and Freeper’s get it. Words like Demming, Kaizen, Six Sigma etc will be like names of villainous monsters once these departments have to adapt or go metaphorically extinct. No more room for Comity and advising and extending my remarks and yielding to the gentle lady from bla-bla-bla, get-er-freaking-done. Is it me or is this George Washington 2.0 and no one gets it? (link)

No chief, it’s not just you – but, yes, few are “getting it“.

For the past 30+ years the entire construct of Main Street business and enterprise has been dragged through a complex dynamic of ridiculous and insufferable regulatory and compliance building.

For those who constructed this economic system Trump represents a very real and existential threat; intent on destroying decades of economic quicksand with a politically incorrect atomic sledgehammer.

Unfortunately, there are too few people who can grasp the scope of economic frustration upon Main Street brought about by historic special interest do-gooders. Meanwhile, the doers have had to bite their lips, jump through hoops, dot I’s, cross very specific T’s and watch their language around the compliance officers who were created solely to handle the mandates driven by a need to ensure the policy outcomes of the do-gooder crowd.

To be fair, some of the regulation and compliance was merited. However, we long ago crossed that worthwhile Rubicon, and we raced onto a downward slope where value was removed from the economic equation and replaced by feelings.

Most of the last three decades of regulatory horse crap has been driven by the feelings amid the constituency who control economic legislative interests, ie. Wall Street.

The recent quote from U.S. Steel’s CEO, Mario Longhi, is intensely on point:

[…] “There was a point in time in the past couple years that I was having to hire more lawyers to try to interpret these new regulations than I was hiring … engineers. That doesn’t make any sense.” (link)

Oh, but it’s been a lot longer than “the past couple of years“, this economic risk avoidance process has been well beyond the ridiculous phase for over a decade.

In order to try and retain a viable business model, surviving businesses began emphasizing productivity to offset escalating operational costs. The regulatory and compliance costs were/are generally considered “uncontrollable costs”. When faced with costs you cannot control – businesses are forced to adjust the economics within the costs they do control.

The period from 1992 through 2002 was a decade of astronomical increases in productivity. The production principles of Edward Demming, Kaizen (Continuous Improvement), CQI and Six Sigma productivity evaluation were paramount business executive skill sets. Everyone was focused intensely on how to do more with less.

Efficiencies in transportation, logistics, inventory controls and human productivity factors were the primary KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) of those charged with industry management.

Meanwhile, seemingly oblivious to the same level of pressure and anxiety, the compliance department strolled merrily along, enjoying executive lunches, and critiquing/providing even more and more regulatory requirements that required ever increasing divergences from the core mission of the business.

Within business ownership and management pressure rolls downhill; and soon it became mandatory to change the core mission of Human Resources from payroll and data processing, to the processing of employee feelings. The emphasis on sensibilities, every associate deserves a recognition trophy, gave rise to an entire new approach toward human capital management. That sensitive “you matter” team-building management approach continues even today.

What thesavyinvester and a few others are beginning to recognize, is that President Trump is putting together a team of executive efficiency experts, private sector outsiders and captains of industry, who are positioning Trump’s administration to bring the atomic productivity hammer into the public sector for the first time.

Federal Government employees are going to go bananas when they are forced to undergo the same level of productivity expectation and merit-based scrutiny as their private sector neighbors. This shall be epic.

However, as we have seen with the appointment of Labor Secretary Andy Puzder, don’t expect too many pundits will be even able to fathom the task. Most of those who are paid simply to deliver opinion are more familiar with the modern compliance department approach within the principles of current business interests.

As a direct consequence the back-bench angle of insight will be a series of various cabinet member litmus tests and ridiculous discussions of disconnected economic realities because they have no grasp -or have forgotten- fundamental Main Street economic principles.

A good case in point is both Mark Levin and Sarah Palin claiming the Carrier Corporation deal in Indiana is “crony capitalism”. Laughable. Brutally laughable.

Only after allowing yourself to become economically disconnected from reality would being allowed to keep your own income be considered “crony capitalism“.

In essence Levin and Palin are calling all Americans who get tax refund checks from the government each year, ‘crony capitalists’. Why, because according to their logic, the government is ::GASP:: letting Americans keep more of their own money.

No, despite what the cognitively dissonant say, Solyndra is crony capitalism, not Carrier. Solyndra was given money to fund their business model; money Solyndra themselves were not able to create through revenue. Carrier is simply being allowed to keep more of their own created income. THERE IS A PROFOUND DIFFERENCE.

When you recognize how far we have traveled from the place where common sense economic understanding exists, you begin to fathom the scope of the challenge facing President Donald Trump.