I for one am a believer that once you let mediocrity in through the door, you've screwed over your company. "Bad" people hire more like themselves, and eventually the kernel of brilliant people doesn't enjoy working there anymore and leave, and you end up left with all the ok and not-so-good people. Yes, I'm elitist. I believe that you need elite people to achieve elite things.
This sounds like the Dead Sea Effect.
Yep, but I believed that long before that article was published.