The Take no Prisoners Society The most damming thing that has ever been said about American Culture is that it produces a surplus of sociopathic characters. These are people who will sink the whole thing to win a bet. They have no concern for harming those around them and are so wrapped up in their self-agrandizement that they would kill those closest to them. This is the joke about ruthlessness that someone like this would kill his own grandmother to get ahead. I recall the strategic talk that started coming out of schools of business in the 1980s and 1990s about Taking no prisoners and more recently the phrase I really dislike Failure is not an option. This worries me a great deal, this uncompromising point of view, and that is was started in business management practice where sociopathic personalities often congregate. I worry that this mindset has pervaded our mindset, at least the public stage. Entertainment is full of all-powerful super-hero types and even the revision of historical and stories based on history that dont show the real complexity of events, but depict them as a battle of will, of conviction, of intention, which they are seldom. Now we have the national impasse over the government and budget and the real possibility that the government might default on its debts, and we have the more local but as locally catastrophic BART transit strike looming, and both are curiously similar. I hope that time is not lost for either to be resolved, and the debt ceiling issue is much more serious as it could send the bond markets into uncertainty and very much weaken this nation economically. Economics isnt physics with full conservation laws but it does depend on trust and agreements which the political fight could undermine. It is shocking to me how uncaring the players seem in either case about who could be harmed. I wonder if it is because they all have that business school training in how to leverage negotiations and armed with more or less sociopathic personalities they cannot back down even if they wanted to, being forced to their supporters, visible and invisible. The Management at BART always seemed to be saying that they would not budge from their initial formula. They seem to be negotiating within a preset set of parameters that basically give the employees a small raise but take it away in health care expenses. It is as if they never intended to negotiate. I dont blame labor for its response and it would serve the BART Board to suffer a long strike. Riders are angry about the lack of compromise and are willing to blame both sides, but since we dont know what the management at BART decided to stick to as their position and why, we will never get the whole story. Maybe their assumptions will be disclosed because they are a semi-public business, but often these things boil down to battles between egos. Would, for example, the ridership allow for a 20% fare increase so the unions could have better compensation and at the same time require more accounting from the board that it wasnt living high off the hog? The Congressional impasse is more serious. It seems for battles over ideelogy and egos the Republicans in the House are willing to let the government fail financially then give in. Today 74% in the polls disapprove of them. Too bad they arent up for re-election tomorrow. If history is any guide, even if this gets resolved, the GOP will suffer significant losses in the upcoming elections and at least lose its majority in the House. I am disappointed in the President for not standing up to them more. He seems to have the wrong personality for being President, which entails leadership and strength. I hope that he has a trick up his sleeve, because what I would do if we default is to call out the Army and arrest the members of the House as traitors. They arent doing their jobs and they have violated their oath of office. I would call a Constitutional Convention to redraft the articles that define the legislative branch and the electoral college and make apportionment at large by state accourding to the direct vote, which allows for third parties and a coelition government. The chance of this happening is small. Our enemies must be rejoycing and this is something we have done to outselves and it begins with the national character flaw promoted by business and business schools.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 03:24:35 +0000
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