Gender imbalance of corporate executives is not a great social problem

The following is a comment I posted in a response to an article in the Star Tribune about a Sheryl Sandberg's book 'Lean In' encouraging women to be more aggressive in climbing the corporate ladder to become leaders in the business world. 

I have a hard time seeing as a social problem needing a national conversation the fact that any group is lagging behind another group in the race to having the most members classified as overpaid, paper pushing executives.  My view here is sort of the opposite of my view on unions where people should think "maybe I can rise with the help of Unions to where I am as well paid as they currently are."  But in the case of this article my thinking is that nobody should be paid, or given the credit for a corporations results or any subsequent knock-on effects for the country, what CEO's of large corporations are, regardless of gender.  When looking at compensation in the business world, in general it seems like it is those that get paid the most are those that accomplish the least in terms of materially affecting the wealth of the nation.  I mean, taking the example from the article, what exactly would have been accomplished in that hypothetical meeting in San Francisco other than a lot of jawboning?  What is Zuckerberg and Facebook accomplishing in their lockdowns other than creating a better Rube Goldberg social networking device? -- All people want to do on FB is share what they're doing in comments and photos -- it's not complicated.  The national conversation that is needed is not that we need to find ways to make sure the one percent that is enjoying an even greater share of the pie is more evenly divided between men and women.  It's not as though the world is going to be a better place if there is more female Gordon Gekkos.  The national conversation that is really needed is to figure out how the material wealth of this nation can be distributed in a fair and just manner that at the same time incentivises activities that further improves the material condition of the nation.  And yes, if that system is really fair and just then by default there shouldn't be any discrimination based on gender, race or any other group.  But insofar as the sort of gender discrimination described in the article and book exists, it exists because we are not living in a meritocracy but rather in the business world it is more of what I call an 'Office Politocracy' where the ability to navigate relationships within the office successfully is all that is incentivised in the business world.  It sounds like the author of the book in question is merely suggesting more women 'lean in' and be more aggressive at marketing themselves as some confident figure that people could rely on as a strong leader.  Never mind that they may be just as good as any man at steering the corporate ship into a reef -- at least they did it with confidence!    

Systemic Unfair Hiring Paradigm in the Business World

There seems to be a problem with how our economic system is set up to set up to select employees.  If we think of the system that employers use to hire new workers as a machine that selects some item to serve a purpose, can we think of that selection machine as a useful device in good working order or should it be declared either broken or a very poorly designed Rube Goldberg type device?  I tend to think the later is the case.  The primary problem is there is an overemphasis on skills, particularly the skill to market oneself, that have little to nothing to do with the job the worker is being hired to perform.  In researching job hunting skills,  one will hear about the great importance of things like social networking, getting the word out, dressing for success, it's not what you know it's who you know.  One might start to think that every job around was some type of sales or marketing job.   And yet we continue along with the assumption that it is the job searcher that needs to change and improve when maybe it is the overall economic system that needs to change.  While for purely practical purposes it might be a good idea for any given job searcher to emphasize self marketing skills and learn how to be a good sales person even if their desired field is not sales,  I don't think the problem of our malfunctioning macroeconomic hiring system that the business world has set up and generally accepted as the norm is being addressed nearly enough.  The business world does not seem very good at questioning its assumptions, generally speaking.  While one would think that a business would gravitate to what would be the most economically viable route, finding workers based on their ability to perform the work in a manner to provides the greatest profit for the business, that doesn't seem to be the case.  Instead, the human nature of being a social creature first and foremost gets in the way of logical, cerebral route needed to navigate through to reach the destination of an optimally performing business.  That is, people tend to bring on board and hire those people that they like, or are attracted to, or want to be around in a social sense.  Since it is people, rather than a machine making the final hiring decision, the social human filter factor gets in the way of and takes precedence over the logical algorithmic decider of what is best for the business in terms of human capital.  If we take as a given that there is a problem, and we can't count on the business world fixing it themselves, the question arises of how can it be fixed?  Of course the first option that springs to mind, is the intervention of the government.  While there is usually objection and resistance to more government interference in the operations of private business, what those in the business world need to keep in mind is that they do not operate in a vacuum,  but instead exist in a system that government has set up as the referee and rule making body in the world of business as a game.  While in a small stakes playground game, the players themselves can be counted on set the rules and ref themselves, once the stakes increase on the scale of the business world, the players themselves can no longer be counted on to ref themselves and set the rules.  Rather the players desire and count on a system of government intervention and rule making so that each business player knows how they can win the game of business against their opponents.   We the people that make up 'The Government' have set up this game not because we think there is some moral right that the game be played at all, but rather that the game is beneficial to society as a whole.  So when there is some breakdown in game that makes it both unfair in some respect and also to run less than optimally in how the game benefits the greater society, then it is incumbent on the rule-makers; the people, the government, to change or tweak the rules in order to fix the problem.    There are already laws that protect certain classes of people from discrimination in hiring.  I believe in those laws is a recognition that a flaw exists in the human social nature that inclines people to hire others like oneself.  What may be needed is merely an application of the general principle that justified the creation of anti-discrimination hiring laws, towards all forms of discrimination other than merit for the job being applied for.    

Categories of Capitalism

By Glen Wallace

In the movie Wall Street the character Gordon Gekko makes a famous speech before shareholders where he states "greed, for a lack of a better word, is good." I would counter that 'greed' is neither necessarily good nor bad. Greed, rather, is simply a motivational tool that can, if allowed, motivate people to make money by taking advantage of workers and the environment. But greed can also motivate someone who has lost their job to start a new small business that provides a needed good or service, along with perhaps some jobs to provide or manufacture the goods, to the community. Therefore the correct approach to greed and capitalism is a pragmatic one. Greed and capitalism should be seen as a powerful team of horses that needs to be directed to aid society, but if not guided would run wild trampling people everywhere. Herein lies the fundamental flaw of the free market capitalists: they seem to be in some kind of fantasy land where they only imagine how capitalism can be beneficial to society and assume that it then is always beneficial if allowed to roam freely unfettered by regulation or laws imposed by the government. First they don't recognize the fact that where the capitalistic business has benefited society, that business has been carefully directed to so by intelligent people with benevolent intent. Therefore, it is not capitalism itself that is acting like some intelligent machine or robot looking for ways to help humanity, it is people that are directing the machine properly. But if the robot of business is being run without regard to humanity by its operators, anyone in the way of that robot better scramble away or hope for luck that the robot randomly veers away from your direction. The only way that we can insure that the robot of business is directed in a manner benefiting the community is to have a powerful government oversight imposing regulations that mandate that the business robot or the team of greed horses are directed in a manner that will benefit the community and not trample it. How else can we insure that the human designers and operators of the capitalistic business are driving their machine with benevolent intent? The free market capitalists, however, never bother looking at the manifold examples that refute the belief that unfettered capitalism is so great for the whole world. The free marketeers would rather live in their lala land where every business is this nice mom and pop operation that pays all their employees great wages, never dumps any toxic sludge out the back door, provides a product or service that the community greatly needs and would be facing hardship if the business never existed in their community. This brings me to my theory of the three basic forms of capitalism: 1) Crony 2) Parasitic 3) Symbiotic. The free marketeers in the fantasy land of their own minds prefer to imagine that if it were only allowed to roam free, then all businesses would be operating under the third form of capitalism, symbiotic. The symbiotic form is one that exists much like the mom and pop business example I described above where there exists a mutual benefit between the owner of the business and community where that business exists. The parasitic form of capitalism is where someone finds a way to drain money off of the flow of currency without putting anything back from where the money was drained. The best example of the parasitic capitalist brings us back to the start of this essay: Gordon Gekko. In the movie he gives the example of a painting he bought for X amount of dollars and could turn around and sell it for a much greater Y amount of dollars today. He didn't do anything to the painting -- he didn't improve it in any way. That is the goal in parasitic capitalism -- to take out from the flow of currency more than you put in. Any example of 'flipping' is an excellent example of parasitic capitalism. The term flipping is often used in the sale of houses where someone buys a house and immediately turns around and sells it for a profit without doing any improvements to the house. If that is the definition, buying something and without improving it in any way, sells it for more than what was payed for it, then most all forms of stock market trading would be considered flipping. The only possible exception would be if someone in buying shares used that opportunity to use their stake in the corporation to influence the board of directors as to how the company is run. It is a little ironic that we come back to him since he's the one that said that greed is good. But in parasitic capitalism the only sense of 'good' exists for the parasite himself. Now it sounds like I'm painting a rather bad picture of parasitic capitalism, but I think just as with capitalism as a whole we should treat this subset of capitalism pragmatically as well. While due to its nature, it's hard to see how parasitism could be beneficial to the community at large, I do think there can be, like in the biological world of parasites, where the negative effect for the host is either insignificant or nonexistent. Perhaps, to a degree, I'm trying to defend myself since I have in the past and am currently trying to 'play the markets.' In so doing I'm trying to come up with some way to realize some capital gains, but I'll have to admit I don't see how what I'm doing in playing the markets, in itself, will benefit humanity. However, if I succeed, that will leave me with more time to write essays like this one with intent to benefit mankind and without regard to the commercial success it might have with whatever I write. Additionally, especially considering the very small amounts I have to play with, I'm lead to believe that I'm engaging in the neutral form of parasitic capitalism where there is little or no negative impact on the host of commerce. But like in nature where there can be parasites that are very harmful to the host, the same problem exists in the world of commerce. An example of malevolent parasitic capitalism exists in the movie Wall Street (and I suppose I should issue a **spoiler alert** for what follows for those who haven't seen the movie) where Gekko tries, after buying it, to break up and sell off in parts the fictional Blue Star Airlines. Along with the break up, all the jobs would be lost along with the all benefits of the airline to the community where it was based. Gekko was planning to sell the airline, in parts, simply because he thought he could suck off more capital gains that way than by running it as a symbiotic business. Of course there is very often a great deal of overlap in all the categories of capitalism when looking at real world examples of how businesses are run. A business may alternately by parasitic at times and symbiotic at others or some parts or divisions of the same business may each be engaging in the different categories. However, its hard to imagine that one particular business act could be simultaneously parasitic or symbiotic. It would seem that the two terms are mutually exclusive if were using them as the business equivalents of the same two categories in the biological field. That is, if the relationship between two or more entities is mutually beneficial then I don't think that in biology that it would be correct to call the relationship parasitical. Rather the relationship if mutually beneficial would necessarily be called symbiotic. While the free marketeers seem to be completely oblivious to the reality of capitalism often devolving into malevolent parasitism, they do, to their credit, recognize the harm to society of capitalism engaging in its third basic form: Cronyism.