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BOSS_PSYCHO

                                                 March 3, 2013

This is a subject that's been
coming up more often of late:

    "Are Psychopaths Good for Business & Society?",
    Feb 27, 2013, by workingwords at the Dailykos.
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/27/1190266/-Are-Psychopaths-Good-for-Business-Society

There's apparently some evidence to show
that CEOs are more likely to be "psychopaths",     A related subject is the
i.e. to lack empathy for other human beings.       point that if "corporations"
                                                   are taken as human beings,
    The question asked in that                     they're very strange humans
    headline was probably                          that by nature (and
    intended to be rhetorical,                     arguably, by law) are
    but it might be worth                          capable of only a very
    taking seriously.                              narrow, short-sighted
                                                   self-interest.
    The claim would be that
    this sort of "psychopath"
    may actually serve a useful
    social function.  The           Myself, I've always liked the
    ruthless leader may be          contrary position, that the
    useful for the survival and     corporate leader as benevolent
    profitability of a company      dictator (paternal figure?) is a
    and throughout the economy      better model for success.  You can
    as a whole, may be helpful      find examples of companies that
    for "maximizing economic        got that to work (at least for
    efficiency".                    awhile).

                                    The continued dominance of meat-grinders
                                    like Intel is a disturbing contrary
                                    trend.  Why is it that their good
                                    employees don't all quit and find
                                    someplace better to go?

                                    As far as I can tell, that's one of the
                                    forces that helped AMD keep neck-and-neck
                                    with Intel in raw specs.  They've never
                                    managed to catch up in production
                                    capability, though.






          In some places here I lament
          that citizen's are too easily
          swayed by emotional arguments...

              DRAMATICS

          The boss psychos' supposed
          advantage is that they
          are not swayed by "dramatics"...

                                                          SCANNERS
       Consider the scanners and the cranched.

       The boss psycho is the scanner as boss,
       the inhuman monster who is, because of his
       inhumanity, is capable of making tough/ruthless
       decisions that benefit the whole (or so we
       hope) rather than just the individual.

       The boss psycho has no problem with
       rational tradeoffs of human lives, and
       is unlikely to be stampeded into a panic
       simply because lives are at stake.
                                                             STRONGMAN
       And yet, we've seen situations where the boss
       psychos probably *should* be more reluctant to
       play with human lives-- under Bush Jr. we've
       had a "strong man" government that's done some
       severe damage to the United States as a
       by-product of it's tough-minded decision making

            (Or at least we *hope* it's a by-product.)








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