Stupid/selfish people and debating.

As part of one of my online ventures, I deal with a fair number of people who all hold various areas of responsibility. I'm a fair believer in taking a harsh line and leading by example, but over the years, this has brought with it a certain reputation.

Strangely, as time has gone on, a lot of people, while not agreeing with my methods, are at least coming around to my way of thinking. Of course, I have to point that out to them, much to my own amusement. However, there's one guy whom I believe to be abusing the position of trust that a website owner has bestowed upon him. We usually end up in various debates about this particular website. His typical reaction to any perceived criticism of him or his "friends" is complete denial, usually followed by a "you're wrong" or "that's deliberately mis-representing the truth". At first, I thought it was me, but several other people have also backed me up in my version of events and a few people have told me in private that they've suffered similar fates when having a discussion with this person.

Anyway, he continually challenges any suggestions to change his working practices despite the fact the website in question is really going to the dogs. He refuses to support other people's endeavours to help the site and, thus far, has yet to offer any ideas of his own on how to accomplish this goal. His basic philosophy toward the site is to reap the rewards of his position, but bury his head in the sand at the state of the site.

Every time I think of this, the phrase "laissez-faire" springs to mind from my old GCSE Economics class. I think it translates roughly as "leave to do" or similar. What it actually means that you use a system whereby if you leave everything alone, you hope that it will all work out in the end. This seems to be exactly the attitude of this person, which is frustrating when you consider the amount of work being put in by many other people, only for this one idiot to be spoiling it for the rest of us, and yet the web site owner doesn't listen...