One problem with the British upperclass, is that they tend to be educated at private schools like Eton, where they primarily learn confidence. So tons of British politicians and managers know how to appear to know what they're doing, without actually knowing what they're doing. As long as things are going well, this works fine, especially since the people they do business with come from the same schools. But when the shit hits the fan, it turns into a fumbling circus. Like it did with Tories and Brexit.
Not limited to the British upper class. It's astounding how far someone can go in life by simply being confident, charismatic, and articulate (and tall) despite being completely full of shit.
I think the world would do well to try to inoculate itself against this sort of superficial confidence. It's way too effective, with frequently harmful results.
I don't think it is an issue just with people educated in certain schools.
Elizabeth Holmes, genius dropout of Marshall University - it just doesn't raise a billion dollars in venture capital quite the same way (even with her connections to people like Draper). She was sold as the next Bill Gates (or Zuckerberg), and the next Bill Gates must drop out of a prestigious school too, because she's so brilliant and her mission is so important she must be getting on to The Big Thing. Even Stanford could not contain her. The elite school is required to sell that fraud.
WeWork by comparison is an actual company with actual revenue ($3 billion for 2019 perhaps). It's just not worth anywhere near what the pumped up VC numbers were attempting to keep inflated. Maybe in liquidation its worth $500m, maybe it's worth $3b. Theranos was not a real company, it had no real products (going by the book Bad Blood), it had no consequential sales. Neumann was selling a different sort of fiction than Holmes (both were fiction mind you).
It's dumb that people are picking on that word out of the overall comment like it was some kind of mistake. The comment was about the nature of the appearance of competence, and height is one element that has an effect on how people perceive another person, and there are countless teachable things about that.
I've gotten a similar vibe from a lot of graduates of prestigious US schools. Very confident, fairly confrontational style of conversation. I'd actually kinda like it if I hadn't learned through feedback and midwesterness to do basically the exact opposite. I'd guess it's especially strong in those who've been through seminar-style prep schools (which is most of the "good" ones, as I understand it) before going to university.
That's funny how much it describe my brother, even if he's not upper class and went to a not particularly prestigious school (called ESTP). In his case, he was already quite confident and charismatic before leaving high school.
> despite being completely full of shit
he's not completely full of shit, but I wouldn't in a thousand years work for him.
Having worked with certain interested underwriters from Lloyd's, it was an easy upvote for me.
It's not universal for all UK politicians and managers, and it's not unique to the UK, but their system of mediocre elite schools that seems to train specifically for confidence, does make it more blatant.
Prior to that is was run by a woman, who was not Eton educated. So basically the comment is a generalisation that cannot even be applied to this specific instance.
The only thing it can be applied to fairly is the British political class, who in general would adhere to it.
