>>>>
>>>>Okay, I don't know a lot of CEOs but over the years I've known more than a couple ( my college classmates tended to be more disciplined and less inclined to seek sin and adventure in far away places with strange sounding names <g> ) The ones I've know have been real grinds. Harvard or Stanford MBAs, maybe a law degree on top of that and then 30 years of very very hard work with very long hours doing things I would mostly find so boring I would have started embezzling or put a gun my mouth about year three. One of them right now does about 8 million a year in salary and bonuses ( major banking corp ) but I've travelled more than he has and have more free time in a week than he's had since college. Being a CEO is not that good a deal. ( being the art student son of a CEO isn't so bad )
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>>>If they were more like you or I, then like you and I, they would not be CEOs. Because they are driven by money and power, they are CEOs. About those long hours, as I said before, what kind of personality does it take to pretty much abandon your family in pursuit of money and power?
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>>I grant you there are some pretty valid generalizations one can make about anyone who does what it takes to climb the corporate ladder. I think there are some who are just doing what comes naturally. The bank CEO I mentioned was a fraternity brother a year ahead of me. My sophomore year we sat next to each other in Microeconomics 211. I was an econ major at the time with dreams of going to Harvard Business School and getting very rich. One day the prof was drawing supply/demand curves on the board and my eyes were glazing over and I looked over at Dave and thought I could see a stain forming on his pants. I left class that day and changed my major to history ( where I enjoyed similar epiphanies for years ) And in the time it took me to type that he made more money than I made last year. <g>
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>Yep. They are just doing what comes naturally. Thing is, the fact that it is natural for them is what worries me the most.
>
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>>>>The ones who really are in it for the competitive rush ( I know one of those ) aren't interested in crushing little guys. It only counts if the scalp you hang on your wall is at least as valuable as your own. When Ted Turner pleasures himself with visions of smiting his enemies, with the other hand he's not holding up a picture of the feisty crusading editor of the Paducah Fishrap Intelligencer and Shoppers Ads - he's lookin' at Rupert Murdoch.
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>>>The big fish eats the slightly smaller fish who eats the slightly smaller fish who eats... In the end, you are left with one fish.
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>>Yes, but what's your point? People who choose to play competitive games are subject to elimination tournaments. There are lots of ways to make a living or a life that allow a bit more personal freedom. But we make choices. ( and remember, you're preaching to the choir on this one - aside from my early adventures sort of working for the government in an admittedly strange and loosely supervised capacity I haven't ever had an "employer" )
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>My point is that having just one fish is not a good thing for the rest of us who have to work for that fish or starve, and who have to buy that fish's roe for far more than it's worth.

But there is never just one fish. Remember when it was conventional wisdom that Wordstar had such a lock on WP that nobody else should even bother ? Or when about the most profitable thing you could do was own a railroad? Or monopolize the corn shipments from Alexandria to Rome? Or why should anyone both trying compete with Ashton Tate when DBase was the standard for the ages? Or how nobody ever got fired for buying IBM? I grant you the fish get bigger but that just means your enemies are bigger or meaner. And then somebody invents an exploding head harpoon and ... ( yeah, I know, mammal - work with me here ... )

I would agree it is not good when dominance is such that end-users get squeezed (oil collusion, 19th century RR etc) but the nature of some industries is that the market also requires a limited number of players or at least a limited number of standards and those who back the wrong horse lose. The DC folks (electricity not comix) came up very short when everybody agreed on AC, but electric users benefited from standardization. Betamax ... Amiga ... ( from mighty Commodore ) Much as people rail against MS, there is something to be said for being able to write software that will run (insomuch as 'undocumented features' in the OS do not interfere <s>) on 95% of the world's PCs.

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>>>< ...snipping was definately required... >
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>>>>
>>>>For the captains of industry good citizens and stable society means a stable business climate - no messy barricades in the street, no anarchists throwing bombs into the carriage, no Bolsheviks. Oh, and to some the idea that the workers can read the Bible on their day off gives them a warm fuzzy feeling. ( 1850, remember )
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>>>If that's true, then why did those same captains of industry hire thugs and gunmen to break up union meetings etc? Didn't they bring a lot of the chaos on themselves? It was their own practices that led to workers revolutions. Sure they wanted good citizens and a stable society, but the problem was in how they defined those things. Their definitions were very different than those of the average working guy.
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>>Bolsheviks ! <s> But remember the social history of the whole thing. You can't ascribe 21st century views of social equality to decisions made in the 19th century. And it wasn't the bosses that were promoting universal education, it was the universal educators that were making the argument to the powers that be in order to gain support/funding for public schools. The bosses were primarily interested in the no barricades in the street part - they hadn't really thought through what a literate workforce implied once people started publishing The Daily Worker
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>Ok, now I'm confused. Weren't you arguing that the captains of industry were promoting public education because it would be better for industy? Now you seem to be saying that in fact, it was not the bosses who were promoting universal education.
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>Now, I fully admit that this is a tactic that I sometimes use myself, but at least I'm smart enough to do it only orally, never in print. ;)

I certainly hope I was wiley enough to snip out anything to the contrary but I think I said the promoters of public education made those arguments and that suited the powers that be (sorry, but I still have trouble taking that expression out of its Buffy and Angel context ) since the argument was one that suited their interests. It was not their idea, but it was fine with them. ( in English factories etc there were employer sponsored book clubs etc - they wanted to keep the workers sober and uplifted so they would be more pliable and productive )

>
>>>
>>>< ...snipping was even more required here... >

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>>>>But they most often don't get their by being abrasive boat-rockers, either. As one friend discribed it "It's sh*t sandwich. If you want all that bread ... well, you gotta eat the whole thing"
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>>>And you feel that is not a sign of a sociopathic personality?
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>>
>>Sociopathic - no. Coprophagic - yeah <s>
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>Well, as I've said for years to anyone who would listen, "If you're going to be effectively coprophagous, it's probably in everyone's best interest if you also become a sociopath".
>

I agree, if you've said that once you've said it a thousand times.

( but more accurately - "If you really want to be a sociopathic CEO you'd better learn to be ravenously coprophagous."

As my bumper sticker says "May all my enemies pagh copro and die!"