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March 01, 2005
Business and politics
Bill Gates discusses some problems and potential solutions with our high schools. Proving yet again why he's my favorite liberal blogger, Matt Yglesias comments:
I have the sense that this sort of thing [concern about the quality of our educational system] used to be a widespread attitude in corporate America. Obviously, businessmen were always on the lookout for their class interests and for the narrow interests of the company the run. But in the 1950s and '60s business groups also spent a reasonable amount of time worrying about issues of broad national concern that also happen to be issues of concern to corporate America writ large
And it's pretty clear to me that the reason we've lost this "paternal" concern of the businessmen for the country is threefold:
1) As businesses have become global, the lack of quality of prospective employees in one area isn't as big of a deal as it used to be. This is an example of non-discrimination at its finest - the businessmen don't care that their employees are brown or yellow or green or what-have-you - all they care about is that they do good work at a reasonable price.
2) Because business competition is more global, the average businessman doesn't have time or energy to focus on "big picture" concerns - they're running 10MPH all the time just trying to keep their business working smoothly. This is where Bill Gates is a clear exception - he's already so wealthy, and so far ahead of all of his competition that he can afford to convert brain cycles to big picture concerns, and his company won't tank while he's looking at something else.
3) The overwhelming attitude from liberals about business is one of dismay at best, disgust and antagonism at worst. Liberals operate the school system. Why would any businessperson in their right mind spend precious time trying to work with people who think they are 'exploiters', 'destroyers of the environment', 'greedy capitalist pigs', 'contributing nothing to society'?
Oh, and just to get a libertarian dig in - if the government wasn't quite so powerful, businessmen wouldn't worry about getting perks/paybacks/special considerations from the government. But that's a topic for another time.
Posted by jb at March 1, 2005 02:54 PM
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