03-07-2019, 03:06 PM
I notice a huge difference in American business practice in seeking out potential bosses. In th eold days, most businesses promoted from within. It was rare, to be sure, but it happened: people could start in the mail room or on the shop floor and advance through the hierarchy of management. People of talent got recognized for such even if they came from modest backgrounds. To be sure, management salaries were themselves modest by current standards, and advancement was slow and steady. But it was possible, much unlike the sit6uation with the low glass ceilings of advancement in contemporary America.
The executive might be fifty years old and earning perhaps ten times what someone in the mail room or on the shop floor was getting. This executive was too old to splurge on sports cars or a trophy wife. So his house would be paid off and his kids were going to college. Fine.
But look what the company got. Its executives knew what was going on down to the shop floor or the sales route. Those executives (probably GI) could treat subordinates well because they knew whence they came.
The executive might be fifty years old and earning perhaps ten times what someone in the mail room or on the shop floor was getting. This executive was too old to splurge on sports cars or a trophy wife. So his house would be paid off and his kids were going to college. Fine.
But look what the company got. Its executives knew what was going on down to the shop floor or the sales route. Those executives (probably GI) could treat subordinates well because they knew whence they came.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.