Most Corporate Senior Executives I have met over the course of my life did not achieve without a foundation of intellectual capacity and hyper-ambition. They have expended tremendous effort to create wealth and value. Much of my work in founding
alonovo would not have been possible without first the effort of people like Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple, Bill Gates at Microsoft and Larry Ellison at Oracle (which was my home for a substantial part of my life).
They are an extremely competitive group, think of the NBA or NFL -these guys put Armani on instead of Rawlings as they "suit up" but the desire to win may even be more fierce. During Mr. Ellison's quest to create more power and wealth many software geeks like me were employed and well-compensated as the industry grew and companies like Oracle paid for experienced, talented people (yes, I snuck in!) --life was good.
The software industry (as much of the industrial sector had previously discovered) found that developing countries were an interesting source of talented resources that could provide services to meet software demand more cheaply than the American and European software engineering labor pool. Countries like India and China had the vision to invest in high-quality software engineering programs in their universities which helped prepare very competitive resources to meet growing demand. Then, as the dot com implosion negated a growing demand for engineers, as supply greatly increased as new labor markets were opened the impact was felt by many of my peers at Oracle and throughout the industry. While the impact was harsh, it was no different than the impact of moving manufacturing facilities into developing countries to offset labor costs and generate more corporate profit. In fact, it was different in the respect that many in the software engineering space were well-compensated and better prepared (in theory) to deal with the impact of declining compensation and a narrowing job market.
Competition among business and business executives is generally good and important to create growth in the economy and improve the quality of life of many people. There is an important line to consider, however that many CEO's have forgotten with few exceptions. There is a much larger picture than any revealed within the context of any particular game such as Oracle versus Microsoft, AOL versus Earthlink, Dell versus HP or GM versus Ford. Quality of life and sometimes life itself is at stake. When an executive makes a decision to create value --perhaps an innovative new product or gadget, I applaud the effort. This creates opportunity and jobs and should drive more revenue and share growth back to the business. But when a CEO and executive team implement cost-savings programs that shift their costs to all of us, there is no honor or value in that. A business that makes a product that is unsafe, and determines the cost of the fix is higher than the cost of the class action lawsuits (under attack by the Neocons as "frivolous") and decides what's a few deaths or injuries --that transcends competition and greed, it is criminal. Imagine if some urban youth got together and decided to rob a bank. They decided instead of some costly, elaborate "white collar" crime to steal the banks money it was cheaper and expedient to go in with AK-47's blazing and if there were a few deaths and injuries --so be it, can someone explain the difference (other than the fact that our society has provided less opportunity to the urban youth --so what does that say about CEO's)? What about a company that closes its assembly and/or manufacturing plants in the US, not only to reduce labor costs, however also to reduce their operating costs and increase their profit because of relaxed or non-existent health and safety standards, labor laws, child labor protections and other fundamental protections one typically thinks of when thinking about "democracy". So while I agree with the fictional character Gordon Gekko said in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" "Greed is Good". It inspires innovation and creation of value and wealth when in the hands of true visionaries. But not the egregious greed on steroids version brought to us by small minded neoconservative business leadership who unlike their counterparts have no vision and no plan other than to have each of us pay for their costs of doing business, stealing from each of us so they can dine with their peers and talk about new ways to take from all of us. And these are the same scum that deride social welfare.
Despite all of this, G is also for Galbraith, or Professor John Kenneth Galbraith and others that have furthered the study of economics not for pure science, however how economics can be used to improve the quality and dignity of life everywhere. So "G" is not all bad.
Just a few thoughts from my over-caffeinated alphabetic mind.
About the Author: Mr. Polisner founded alonovo.com in March of 2005. He has been working in most aspects of Information Technology since 1981 and was an early commercial adopter of the UNIX operating system. Prior to founding alonovo.com earlier this year, George was a Director at Oracle Corporation. He is a frequent contributor to newspapers regarding political and economic policy and often appears as a guest on radio programs. In fact, when it comes to alonovo.com, it's pretty difficult to get him to stop talking.