Thomas Lunde wrote:
>
> Ed Weick wrote:
>
> We have also witnessed an increasing convergence of
> the interests of our universities with the concerns of business
>
> Quoted from a Posting on gdk97 list
>
> My comment on the Private vs. Public Sector Debate:
> Bear in mind that one of the five principles of the market economy --
> possibly the most predominant -- is PROFIT.
[snip]
>
> --Francesca Reinhardt
[snip]
> Thomas Lunde
[As usual, I'm not sure who said what on the e-mail push-down
stack....]
*Is* the most predominant principle of real-life capitalism
in the 20th century *profit*?
I think this is probably a grossly misleading over-simplification
if not outright falsification of things.
My hypothesis is that a more nuanced sociological inquity
(in the spirit, e.g., of Erving Goffman, and perhaps C. Wright Mills,
et al.) would show that profits are primarily part of the "language"
of the *players* in the arena of enterprise (business, academic,
government, etc.). Of course, if what you're doing can't make a
profit, you soon find yourself needing to start doing something
else unless you have other sources of revenue. But that's maybe
just a kind of "first pass filter", to keep out people
who don't fit in (and bankruptcy has rarely stopped a real
entrepreneur from continuing his "career"). But, beyond that,
I think "competition" serves more as a kind of social glue for
the persons involved. The 0 <= k <= n for some n martini lunch
(oops: don't they call it a: "Power lunch", now...),
golf, all the social pleasures (and, yes, frustrations) of the
business[wo]man's work day... -- all these things I think constitute
the *real substance* of modern capitalism. The bottom line is
perhaps sort of like the morning-after aerial maps which British
Bomber Command used in WWII to measure the effectiveness of
raids, and concerning which, as Freeman Dyson has described, if the
ratio of bombs within the target radius was not good enough,
one could simply enlarge the target radiius....
If profits were the real highest objective, then we'd probably
have something closer to what the German industrialists would
probably have liked Hitler to be. And why the ambivalence
toward the mob? Aren't they *making profits*? "Ah! But they're
not playing by the [i.e., OUR] rules...." What about
pirates of all shades, from those with armed high-speed
boats in international waters, to the ones with only a couple
cassette duplicating machines? Ditto. If profits earned
according to certain rules are the objective, then the
definition and cultivation of the rule-space is primary, not
profits per se (one does not need to be a Husserl scholar to
make this kind of "reduction"). If profits per se were the
real final objective (solution?), then, in a way somewhat
analogous to a Laplacian universe, language
would cease to have any logical force (being reduced,
everywhere and always, to a market penetration tool), and the
resulting war of all against all would probably provide
some real "meat" for Chaos [theory (whatever that is...)]....
Boiled down to
a rather pointed image, I think there is a close analogy between
dogs smiffing each others' [let me be polite] bodies, and
Captains of Industry meeting at The Conference Board. From
my perspective down in the mud but trying to look (and,
yes, climb...) up, I also seem to detect a
curious phenomenon: That at least sometimes, at the
very highest levels, these people are not as stupid as
the world they have projected onto "the public". While
Everyman was busy trying to get together a downpayment for his
"first home", The Conference Board (back ca. 1980)
was pointing out that
for a country to invest its wealth in ownership of
private housing is about as productive as everybody
hoarding gold, i.e., Zero!
Now, what use could this kind of speculation possibly
be? If, along with Sophocles (and, perhaps, Freud),
we understand human intelligence as an immensely
powerful but altogether undirected force, then the problem
is, somehow, to alter the imaginative "world" --
the poles and the pulls -- in which this force
operates. For "the little man", we need, as William
James argued, a moral equivalent of war, that each
may have "his share of freedom in the darkness
and dullness of his life" (--H. Broch).
How many of the professors in the various prestige
Business Schools are teaching Peter Drucker at his best
as the least their students can aspire to?
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(914)238-0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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