Word: inertia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Instead of delivering on its promise to create a workers' paradise with ample material goods for all, Marxism-Leninism as practiced by Moscow has fashioned something of an inertia-bound bureaucracy that limits incentive and suppresses inventiveness. Says Economist Judith Thornton of the University of Washington: "Imagine a whole economy organized and run like the Department of Energy or the Pentagon. Of course, there is a problem. Public organizations work less efficiently than do private ones, which are eliminated if they are not competitive." The law of the land for the Soviet economy is the national Five-Year Plan...
...Knapps of Falling in Place are typical. Marriage for Louise and John survives by inertia. A divorce requires action and that is precisely what they are unwilling to take, or incapable of taking. Instead they have a vague arrangement: John comes home to Connecticut on weekends for picnics and such with Louise and their children, Mary, 15, and John Joel, 10. During the week Knapp commutes from his Manhattan office to his mother's house in suburban Westchester County. He usually arrives late because he spends the evenings with his mistress Nina in the city. At home, his children...
...effort must be made at all levels of the educational bureaucracy, from tenure appointments to the hiring and training of section leaders. Bok's appeal is welcomed, for improvements can be made; but to achieve them, students must change roles from spectators to actors in order to overcome the inertia of a self-satisfied institution...