“in the Mobile Infantry, everybody drops and everybody fights”

That of course is from Robert A. Heinlein’s book Sci-fi/military fiction book Starship Troopers.

If we look away from everything else that is Starship Troopers and focus on just that, the “everybody drops and everybody fights” and the explanation for it. Robert A. Heinlein wrote a page or two about why militaries of old didn’t quite make it. There was a lot of military personell that did nothing military. In the mobile infantry you drop (get shot via space down to the planets surface) and fight. Everyone does this, from the private grunts, to the lieutenants and corporals, generals and the chaplain. There is no slack, everyone knows the core-objective. Now if we’re not out to kill aliens (I’m not) could that philosophy be translated into something else?

I’m obviously thinking about big corporations, and medium sized too. How come that companies get bloated so quickly, and that the core is lost. Think about it, really think about it. What if the place you worked at, every single employee worked towards the same goal. Maybe not all the time, but most of the time. Could you run a company like that? (startups and small companies can). Could you run a whole society like that (I do not think we should). Could you run the civic functions like that? If we tried it, would it kill of bureaucracy?

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