(06-22-2019, 10:54 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 22-Jun-2019 Businessmen vs politicians
(06-21-2019, 07:06 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: > My experience with legitimately-brilliant people is that they are
> cautious -- perhaps because caution is necessary in law, medicine,
> engineering, and scientific research that attract such
> people. Recklessness is not worth the reward, and in some areas of
> scientific research it can get one killed. In law or medicine,
> recklessness can ruin a reputation.
He was cautious - he backed off. Imagine how you would be ranting and
screaming if he hadn't.
It is a good thing that he did back off on Iran. I suspect that it was people in the oil business that told him that a war with Iran was a very bad idea. Engineers, attorneys, and accountants? That is what I would expect as top executives of oil companies. Donald Trump is neither an engineer, attorney, or accountant -- and he would never make the grade as one of those.
Quote:You left "business" off your list. Businessmen are the brilliant ones
that do all the actual work, build businesses, create jobs, create the
wealth, provide food and shelter, provide energy and transportation,
and make everyone's lives better. It's good that you left "politics"
off your list. Politicians are the stupid ones that do nothing except
sit on their asses and whine and complain, while contributing nothing
to society except hot air.
Ruling out the professional practices in law, medicine, engineering, architecture, and accountancy that are not really entrepreneurial, or firms associated with the promotion of an invention itself the result of technical majesty (high technology) , most who start small business are not brilliant people. Every true enterprise is a risky proposition that puts an investment in danger of evaporating if the idea flops.
Laborers could make the case that they do the real work -- if one means the back-breaking, dirty, and often dangerous toil of farm labor, mining, logging, and meat-cutting. This is especially so with an established enterprise in which the initial enterprise has devolved into a bureaucratic behemoth. So it is whatever the economic system -- feudal, capitalist, or Marxist-Leninist. But in general, the people who become laborers are toward the low end in intellectual ability. People able to do something else usually do something else, including skilled labor that is generally not so onerous and is of course better-paid. The tycoons that got the profits from starting a railroad in the Gilded Age (one of the simpler models of enterprise) connected investment funds, not always their own, to labor, machinery, and supplies. I am not saying that connecting money to a private project isn't important; it is crucial.
I could make the case that in a well-functioning capitalist system that one group of businesspeople must be especially cautious: bankers. They connect funds, not usually their own but those of savers, to business activities from the purchase of real estate and motor vehicles on credit to business activity as big as fits the money available. Ideally the bankers are the people who can say no to "LSD deals" by ensuring that the person borrowing the money stands to lose big in the event of failure. Trouble arises with a bubble economy in which bankers assume entrepreneurial risk to make outrageous incomes. Are bankers the smartest people in business? Hardly. They are often the laziest, least imaginative, and most rigid-thinking people in business, people who like to dress well and not do any hard work -- and they get paid accordingly. If one has more on the ball one might prefer becoming a manager trainee at a fast-food place in which a mediocrity will do such work as unloading trucks, cleaning equipment, and counting the money in the register.
OK, one can be cautious and not very smart. Guess what -- that is valuable, far more valuable than being reckless but dull. Indeed, i would stay clear of the reckless-but-dull.
As for the politicians -- the top ones are usually attorneys.
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.
