This is a pretty astoundingly condescending essay you've written here. There are a lot of things about it I disagree with, but to save time let's just focus on the "incompetence as a strategy" angle.
I don't disagree that in society today, you are often better off being uselessly incompetent unless you're a serious expert, but I wouldn't blame that on "lazy, feckless millennials." The education system we put students through is practically designed to produce this mindset. You can bust your ass all through school and get straight A's or you can do the absolute minimum, demanding clear guidance and instruction every step of the way.... and get straight A's. We don't ask students to ground their thoughts in real-world application or call out stupid/pointless processes, so I don't know why we'd suddenly expect them to be good at it when they hit college. I certainly wasn't and neither were my peers.
This is something that I feel really hurts us from a diversity perspective as well. If you have business-savvy parents you'll learn "how the world works" from them. If you don't, you have basically no hope. You're certainly not going to learn it from your barely-more-than-minimum-wage earning "civics" teacher that is fresh out of school themselves with a bachelors in education. Even less likely if you're in an area where schools don't have a lot of resources or opportunities to expose students to "white-collar life" growing up.
I don't disagree that in society today, you are often better off being uselessly incompetent unless you're a serious expert, but I wouldn't blame that on "lazy, feckless millennials." The education system we put students through is practically designed to produce this mindset. You can bust your ass all through school and get straight A's or you can do the absolute minimum, demanding clear guidance and instruction every step of the way.... and get straight A's. We don't ask students to ground their thoughts in real-world application or call out stupid/pointless processes, so I don't know why we'd suddenly expect them to be good at it when they hit college. I certainly wasn't and neither were my peers.
This is something that I feel really hurts us from a diversity perspective as well. If you have business-savvy parents you'll learn "how the world works" from them. If you don't, you have basically no hope. You're certainly not going to learn it from your barely-more-than-minimum-wage earning "civics" teacher that is fresh out of school themselves with a bachelors in education. Even less likely if you're in an area where schools don't have a lot of resources or opportunities to expose students to "white-collar life" growing up.