A bureaucrat, considering himself overloaded, hires two subordinates to do his job. He can’t share it with his already working colleagues, nor can he hire one subordinate and share it with him – no one needs competitors. The story repeats as his employees hire employees for themselves. Now seven people are doing the work of one. Everyone is very busy, but neither the work speed nor its quality increases.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect, encapsulated in phrases like “Other people’s work always seems easy” or “The more I know, the less I know” (or as Socrates put it, “I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing”), highlights a peculiar aspect of our perception, scientifically termed the Dunning-Kruger Effect.