Input Junkie

Beaverbrook? Heseltine? Paul Martin?

From:

nwhyte

Beaverbrook never fought an election as far as I remember, and held ministerial office through patronage. Heseltine on the other hand is a very good example, building up his own business from scratch and then climbing the political ranks by his own efforts.

(Paul Martin I'm not so sure about - obviously he ended up as PM so his political credentials are clear, but I think it may be fairer to describe him as having a strong business background than being a successful businessman.)

Abert Reynolds went from small business (rather than big business) into Irish politics, having made his fortune from dance halls and pet food before his 1992-94 term as Taoiseach.

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Paul Martin ran the family firm; the far from negligible Canada Steamship Lines.

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nwhyte

Hmm, loses marks for inheriting the business rather than building it up himself - and did it really prosper with him in charge?

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It did OK. It's still one of the major cargo carriers on the Great Lakes.

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Berlusconi, Thaksin Shinawatra

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sinboy.livejournal.com

Bloomberg has had a mixed bag, but in running NYC he's been not-horrible. I think there are situations where his business skill has helped, and situations where it's hindered him.

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I think I disagree with your assessment of Bloomberg.

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sinboy.livejournal.com

I'm probably still comparing him to the previous mayor, who was so unutterably assholish that Bloomberg was a refreshing change. I don't like Mayor Mike, but I don't loathe him the way I loathe Rudy.

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sodyera.livejournal.com

Mike Bloomberg's main flaw has been in trying to run NYC as if it were NYC, Inc., a division of Bloomberg, Inc. E.g., take Liz Black--PLEASE! She was a corporate croney with no education background who Mikey hired like just another mgr. Fortunately, she failed quickly and was replaced by a Deputy Mayor who actually had an education background and kids in the public school system.

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supergee.livejournal.com

George Romney did a pretty good job at American Motors.

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xiphias.livejournal.com

Does running a plantation count? Of course, Thomas Jefferson died broke. George Washington did well, though.

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thespian.livejournal.com

I'm not sure about 'business' as such; really I think what you're thinking of as 'business' has only existed since the mid-80s.

But with a less mentally encumbered idea of business in my head, I'd say Jimmy Carter. While he gets dismissed as a 'peanut farmer', after he took over his family's profitable but nothing big farm, he expanded it, advanced a lot of automation, and sold the various devices through his own manufacturing process, maintaining the farm and a full agriculture business as well. He was *very* wealthy as a result of his vision and expansion of the farm into other related aspects of farming.

I don't know how well he did as a president; I was too young and he had a really hard time to be pres in, that parallels Obama's issues now. But he's been an amazing former president.

I wonder if Trump quite realizes what being a former president means, in terms of his business dealings, actually. The limits on the dealings he can have afterward are stringent enough, in ways that The Donald would Not Put Up With that makes me think this is all a sham. He wants a voice, but he doesn't actually want the responsibility.

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First of all, government is nothing like a business. Let's list some trivial ways. You can't fire all your citizens when times get hard -- that's what the Republicans are trying to do, but then what happens is that, unlike the docile laid-off employees of modern American business, they don't wander off, they stay right where they are and fill up your streets with their unemployment and their hunger and their untreated medical conditions and their inability to get childcare or education or a place to live. Businesses have the government to pass the buck to. Governments don't have that. Businesses have governments to build roads, put out fires, supply water, law enforcement, and defense against other businesses ripping them off and recourse when they do it anyway. Governments provide all that, when they aren't crippled by assholes who think that not paying for stuff is cool.

Businessmen are all about maximizing the profits for themselves and their shareholders -- ask any fool from the Chicago School -- at any price whatsoevder to the rest of the world. Governments are about making things work, integrating systems, the long haul and the big picture. Successful businessmen are, if we are lucky, just this side of criminals -- they apartake of the conman, the thief, and the bully. Hopefully, that's not what we want out of a government. -- though, since the government has traditionally belonged to the business class, it has functioned more or less as an accomplice to all that most of the time.

Give me a bureaucrat over a businessman any day.

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That looks rather like a stored rant to me. The question I asked was actually about the folks who have a long history of failing on a large scale at business, but who present it as a qualification for government.

Businesses can't fire all their employees and continue to function.

And nitpick about your closing line.... bureaucrats (as I understand the word) don't have general administrative responsibilities the way a president, a governor, or a mayor does.

How do bureaucrats do as administrators?

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No, it's not a stored rant . . . at least I didn't experience it as one. The question I thought you asked was "do you know of any successful businessmen who have succeeded in politics?" And it seemed like what you were looking for was a positive example, and I didn't think that was possible, that was what my response came from.

Goverments can't make any of their citizens go away except by killing them, and then they don't always really go away anyway. They have to keep dealing with them , is my point. Businesses don't have the kind of all-encompassing, never-ending, big-picture responsibilities that governments have. That's what I'm saying: businessmen don't need the kinds of skills that administrators have.

Bureaucrats are administrators. They make systems run, they integrate them with other systems. A low-level bureaucrat doesn't have the same big-picture responsibility that a general administrator does, but a bureaucrat who has worked at several levels of organizaiton is much more appropriately prepared for government than any businessman of any level, particularly the ones of the higher level, who you've noticed, never actually suffer when they make mistakes.

The best people I know of in politics at this time are all people who started as government or NGO bureaucrats or public interest lawyers, who have put in their time at local commissions and county administrations, who have a respect for the rule of law and the process of hearings, debate, and negotiated legislation. They aren't schooled in the skills of looking out for themselves and their cronies at all costs. They're accustomed to taking in the needs of whole communities and looking at long-range repercussions.

Bureaucrats get a bad rap because whenever we meet a bad or obstinate or uncaring one it scars us for life. But good bureaucrats are almost invisible and your power stays on and your street gets cleaned and your parks get maintained and your deed gets recorded.

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I may have been unfair about the stored rant.

I will note that employees aren't the only problem a business can have, and a fired employee is merely likely to be a non-problem. There are possibilities of taking business secrets to competitors and/or sabotage.

Longterm imprisonment is a way that governments have of pretty much making citizens go away. Exile used to be more of a possibility than it is now.

As for other problems that a business might have, there's competitors, governments, suppliers, and customers. Furthermore, a government can fire some of its employees-- I don't think things are as wildly different between business and government as you imply. The business has somewhat more ability to detach from difficult people, the government has a lot more ability to use violence. Neither power is unlimited.

Agreed about good and bad bureaucrats-- but there's a lot of discretely competent business I bet you're not noticing. You're judging good government by results, and dismissing all business based on hypothesized motives.

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I'm having such a hard time being clear, here. I'm not in any way talking about the personal motivations of businessmen, or the moral rectitude of individual businessmen. I'm talking about the demands of the business world, the pressures that the relationships and needs of business put on high-level executives. That old Chicago school thing -- who they are beholden to, what their structural (not personal) goals have to be, that sort of thing.

I never said that employees are the only problem a business has. I said that, as an example of how business is different from government, businesses can choose how many -- and which -- people they want to continue supporting and dealing with. And governments can't.

When the government puts people in prison, to respond to your counterexample, the government then takes on the total and unrelieved responsibility of feeding, clothing, housing, medicating, and entertaining those people. They don't go away, they become even more of a responsibility for the government than they were before. Hence the move to privatize prsons -- which is presented as a cost-cutter but it isn't, it merely gives the illusion of moving responsibility away from the government. But the responsibility never moves away.

Businesses do lots of things. But what they don't do is take on the responsibility for an entire community and its relations with other communities. According to current mainstream economic theory, asking them to take on even a little slice of that responsibility is asking them to perform in ways that they're not supposed to.

Massive layoffs is not the same as "detaching from difficult people:" it's a way of cutting expenses and concentrating profits. Whenever executives run for office they say their experience running big businesses has shown them how to run institutions more efficiently. But the kind of "efficient" they are used to is the efficient concentration of profits into the hands of the shareholders and the executive class, and that, as we have seen since Ronald Reagan here in the US (and in other cases -- in another time and place I will regale you with the stories I heard in Czech Republic) is disastrously inefficient for governments. It results in unpaved roads, unemployed workers, unregulated industries, poisoned water, broken sewer systems, closed schools and libraries and hospitals, increased infant mortality, lower lifespans . . .

None of this is hyperbole.

I have no complaint about people who work in business. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm only trying to explain what I think is the glaring difference between what governments need and what executives must learn to do -- in answer to what I thought the original question was about.

From:

anton-p-nym.livejournal.com

Successful businessmen are, if we are lucky, just this side of criminals

My first response to this is unprintable. (Or, at the very least, only suitable for "R"-rated media.)

My second response was an unworthy throw-away joke involving the Politburo.

My third, and more reasoned, response is to argue that the statement is no more fair than the far-right blitherings on the evils of government coersion. However, I just don't have enough of my wits together today to put together a worthy argument... so I'll just note that I strongly disagree with your characterisation and think that there are suitable places in a functioning society for both government and business. (And that neither can adequately substitute for the other, at least entirely.)

-- Steve will add the following disclosures of possible bias: he works in a public-private partnership, and his father retired as an executive in a Fortune 500 firm and pursued a second career in the civil service.

From:

tahkhleet.livejournal.com

The adversarial nature of contract law is absurd. On major business deals everywhere, both parties go in with the clear intent to rip each other off if they can luckily stumble onto a vendor/customer who was lax in their legal costs. In BC, my dad noted for the construction industry, where he ran a small business his whole life, he kept hearing over and over on big contracts that the principals would sue the government for cost overruns after making screwy lowball bids to get the contract (these were jobs he would never have had the resources to fulfill or bid on so it wasn't sour grapes). From what I've heard in the popular media (auto part supply chain stories in particular) you swim with the sharks once you're dealing with agreements between major players.

It is not perhaps inevitable that a major businessperson must be a borderline criminal. But that only applies _if being a crook is punished regularly_. Since misconduct is overwhelmingly NOT punished in these days of regulatory capture, a businessperson who is not a ruthless win-at-all-costs, push-all-my-costs-onto-people-who-can't-make-me-pay type their company will be at a huge disadvantage. As marketers note, customers only pay for value where they perceive value and I've never heard of a business making the case "pay more for our product, we don't rip our suppliers or customers off every chance we can quietly lead them to unethical contracts with us".

Does this mean government is made of white knights? Hardly. But structurally, a businessperson has much less incentive to be ethical. A CEO's rewards for ill conduct are becoming astronomical. Even an out and out criminal bureaucrat taking kickbacks or other forms of blatantly illegal gratification is dealing with small potatoes for gains compared to the businessmen. Logically, anyone with administrative talent and no morals is going to see that business is by far the better field to go into.

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ is also worth pondering. I don't remember the study but I heard that the traits that people identify as the most desirable in a business leader have a substantial overlap with narcissists and sociopaths alike. Because followers want to hear confidence and see resolute quick action from leaders. And narcissists and sociopaths, having no inherent value on fairness, can deliver both in spades. It's not the ONLY way to manifest these traits. But I think it's a fair thing to say that I've seen few intelligent, empathic people who would swagger and feel comfortable making draconian, fast decisions to keep people impressed with the sense someone's "Definitely in charge".

I think a strong case can be made that is not a "left wing rant" but a statement of material fact. I would think the crisis of 2008 being so largely the result of regulatory capture and fraud (banks selling investment vehicles _explicitly designed_ to bilk investors and the Martingale-betting-on-the-derivatives-market 'investment strategies' front and center)...this happened in the wake of radical deregulation in the United States. Seems to me a very vivid case study of the business class being dominated by criminal types. Especially given the ridiculous lack of criminal prosecutions of the principals of these crimes in the aftermath.

It's a lot more solid than Republican rants that "socialism is destroying our prosperity" when Europe and Canada and Australia are all better places to live than the USA now by all the major indicators.

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You're reminding me of something from Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency, a book about the destructive effects of trying to have a perfectly efficient business.

It was the only section which made me laugh out loud, but it was written from the angle that when both parties to a contract are trying to pull a fast one (and part of that may well be skimping on writing the contract carefully), they will spend more on legal costs than they could possibly have made on the contract. However, this was written as though such events happen on the fringe.

If such behavior has become a lot more common, I don't know how much of it is lack of punishment, and how much is bad cultural ideas, though I grant that they can be intertwined.

Edited Date: 2011-05-03 06:44 pm (UTC)

From:

bemused-leftist.livejournal.com

Palin did well in business and as Governor. In both, she started from nothing and quickly built success (80+ approval rate).

From:

lysystratae.livejournal.com

Sam Walton is the only one I can think of offhand, and he didn't win.

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stoutfellow.livejournal.com

Herbert Hoover? His training was in engineering, not business administration, but he was a success for all that - a partner in Bewick, Moreing & Co and a founder of the Zinc Corporation, not to mention his work in the postwar relief efforts.

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captain-button.livejournal.com

I've heard Arnold Schwarzenegger made millions in real estate investing before he got into the movie star business.

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bradhicks.livejournal.com

Any respect I had for the Oracle of Omaha went away after 2007. Ever since the real estate bubble burst, Buffett's been lobbying HARD to distract investigators from attaching any blame to Berkshire-owned Standard and Poor's for the blatantly fraudulent, blatantly bribed AAA ratings they stuck on really low quality subprime mortgage CDOs. Buffett's participation in that cover-up makes him just as guilty as the raters and salesmen who committed the crime, in my book; the man ought to be in jail.

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Given a choice between Palin and Trump, most voters choose suicide.

I just checked, and I think you're right.

Is it plausible that issuers are the only people who are willing to pay for ratings?

I read a book about Buffett's business practices, and he said it was immoral to set up systems which make it easy for people to steal-- it's an interesting claim, and I wish he'd stuck to in in regards to ratings.

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ndrosen.livejournal.com

Honest Ton Johnson (Thomas Loftin Johnson) was a successful businessman who went into politics. He started from poverty (the Civil War had ruined his family), and became a magnate in railroads and steel. Then he served honorably as a Senator, and afterward became mayor of Cleveland. He didn't succeed in accomplishing everything he wanted to (his attempt to cut trolley fares and make the trolleys a public service led to extended litigation with the trolley companies), but he did manage to systematize property assessments, making them more accurate, and removing opportunities for corruption. You might want to study his biography.

From:

richardthinks.livejournal.com

I second the nomination of Heseltine. The trouble is, having been a big shot CEO in his own organisation he seems to have allowed himself to be used as a pawn by Thatcher, so I fear although he's a good example he's also completely useless.

The East India Companies (especially the Dutch) are shining examples of businesses run as governments (rather than the Bloombergian reverse). I am very glad never to have been administered by them myself, although they did succeed in making money and wars - the primary aims of statecraft at the time - for quite a while. Considering great examples of entrenpreneur heads of state on the nationalist model, I nominate Bartholomew Roberts. But I think "business thinking" leads one more naturally toward Henry Morgan, whose outright piracy and later snitching on and hunting down his former companions doesn't get much play in this wikipedia article (alas, why do I do this to myself? Now somebody's going to want me to provide evidence for my vile slander).

No. I cannot think of a single businessperson I would like to have as President. But then, I generally think of corporate success as really corporate in nature: you need a good, large and expanding team. You need more expertise than any one person will bring. And you need a limitless Outside to which you can banish anyone/thing that does not "perform."

...my next project might actually be on examining corporations as autonomous states and looking at their political systems. But I haven't started it yet, and I think I might prefer to do something more fun, so I don't have a bibliography.

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richardthinks.livejournal.com

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