I usually write of technical stuff.
I'm a techy and prefer to stay on my ground.
I live in Italy, that I consider a great place, that have given lot to world's culture, art and science.
In Italy we are living one of the lowest moments of our history, without even being aware of it.
Since this is a grave sentence I'll try to motivate it with data.
The first and foremost problem is the incompetence at higher levels of management: the majority of the politician aren't people dedicated to the common good, but people that devote themselves to personal enrichment and gain personal advantages up to the point to promote laws useful to their own economical and personal interests.
This has the consequence that much of the management of companies linked to Public Administration (this means from the little company that want/need to work with a local municipality, and in Italy we have more than 8000 municipalities, to the big enterprises) either submit to compromises with this politicians or are in league with them.
This pairs with a common theory that says that management does not need to understand the inner working of the company business but just need to know how to manage things; this approach could be summed up with the concept that the same manager can today be the CEO of a car industry and tomorrow the general director of a hospital and the day after the president of a farming consortium, because he "knows how to manage".
The consequence?
Companies have a management that usually do not take decisions unless are decisions that politicians push on them and are not able to guide and "manage" the company. Many are just good looking and smooth talkers. Who can blame them? If you do not understand your company business how can you decide the strategy of the company? If a computer or an hamburger are the same to you how can you make decisions?
The consequence?
This management raise, usually, mediocre people, so called "yes man" or friends so that their position is not at risk and they can do what they want without being hampered.
There is another part of the equation.
Italians are mediterranean people and to use a stereotype many of us "work hard when pressed", place attention on the "when pressed" part. Even if in our constitution we wrote at article 4 (so in a pretty important place) "Ogni cittadino ha il dovere di svolgere, secondo le proprie possibilità e la propria scelta, un'attività o una funzione che concorra al progresso materiale o spirituale della società." that can be translated as "each citizen has the due to work according to his possibility and choice to contribute to material or spiritual progress of society", few are educated to a working culture and are looking for a quick way to get money with the smallest effort. This make us creative people, but not always so productive. This is a rich pond where those politicians can go fishing for votes: "vote for me and I'll promise you benefits". To better control people media are constantly lowering the cultural level of the media content and information, with the result that people get distracted towards false problems and low profile (dumb) mindset: "let's give them soccer, girls and some topics to argue upon" (remember we invented "panem et circenses" 2000 years ago with gladiators so we have experience on this).
Think this scenario applied to all productive center of the society, schools, big industries, media, public administration. This has been running for years, so it's quite spread.
The consequences?
Is no wonder that Italy doesn't have big companies. We have lot of small businesses where hard working people strive to live the day in a difficult environment. Few people wants to be "Don Quixote" fighting mills and prefer to bow their head not to run the risk of loosing what they gained with hard work.
This is a simplified summary of the current situation, more a photograph of a state, not an analysis of why we are here. There are exceptions, not all of Italy is like this, but the balance is tilted on the wrong side.
History teaches that in similar situations Italy and Italians managed to raise and conquer freedom.
Let us hope for the best.
