Over at Freakonomics they’ve posted an interesting item from one of their readers on the subject of military officer promotions.  Here’s an excerpt:

Officers rise through the system without relevance to merit; promotions
are based on the length of time the officer has been in the system. (Up
to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, anyway — to make Colonel you have to
have done more than serve time.) Enlisted men are subject to a
completely different rule: you see them studying for months, mastering
the contents of a book this thick (makes gesture, thumb and fingers
about three inches apart).

To be an officer you must either have been to one of the military
academies or to college. Because promotion is not based on merit, smart
officers get frustrated and leave for jobs where they can make better
money; less able officers have every reason to stay, since incompetence
is no impediment to career advancement. Since the effect of the system
is to retain the least able, it perpetuates the elimination of the
able: the norm is for smart young officers to find themselves reporting
not to superiors like themselves (the ablest left early in frustration
at the stupidity of the system), but to superiors who a) were not
frustrated by the system and b) feel threatened by clever subordinates
… And that’s how we get the leadership of our defense services.

They ask for input from other readers to see if this is in fact an accurate representation of the military system today.  My guess is that they’ll find this a somewhat simplistic portrayal of the system that is, unfortunately, closer to true than not.  Of course this problem isn’t unique to the military, as anyone who grew up in the DC area could tell you.  There’s a reason a lot of us who were the children of civil servants decided not to follow our parents into the government.  We heard way too many stories about "idiots and a-holes" who’s rise through the ranks seemed to the defy the gravity of their incompetence.  Sure the job security and benefits are great, but how many people want to work for or with a brown-nosing, sniveling incompetent?

Okay I’m a little cynical about the federal government, but I think there’s plenty of reason to be cynical and I’m willing to bet the Freakonomics boys will find as much cynicism regarding the military.