Basically, I am contrarian by nature, so there are many things I dislike. People who know me know that I have long said, “Bureaucrats are incapable” (that is, they potentially have ability, but the system prevents them from demonstrating it), and that is why I passed up the Class I National Civil Service Examination. Nor does it seem likely that I will ever change my view that “I would rather eat shit than make a living with politicians.” So what I dislike now is “people who call themselves consultants.”(Ookayama Diary)
That hits close to home. I, too, am part of such a private-sector company and can easily be seen as a “consultant.” (My business card has a different title, though…)
Still, I do not think there is any need to get quite so worked up about it. I would like students to understand the essence of consultants and recognize the difference between them and scholars, however.
In the modern industrial economy, there have been people who have played a role in the economy by moving “things” from one place to another. They are merchants. Merchants were often scorned for “producing nothing.” As everyone knows, in Japan they were placed at the very bottom of the shi-no-ko-sho social order.
As time passed into the present age, when “information” is consumed even more than “things,” people emerged who play a role in the economy by moving “information” from one place to another. These people are called “consultants.” They are the sort of people who talk to Company B about what they heard at Company A, then talk to Company A about what they heard at Company B. Since they, too, “produce nothing,” people who produce information, such as scholars, may say, “What are those people doing?” Yet, like merchants, they must be useful to society, which is why they earn high fees. In that sense, might not “consultants” be the modern-day version of “merchants”?