tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8317310.post3278814312273306378..comments2023-11-02T09:28:05.181-04:00Comments on Daily Revolution Archive: Yes, Virginia, There Is Freedom of SpeechBrian Donohuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03247660397233913297noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8317310.post-60150575185942446882006-12-08T12:39:00.000-05:002006-12-08T12:39:00.000-05:00How timely this discussion of the dangerous creep ...How timely this discussion of the dangerous creep of corporatization into our lives and government.<br /><br />The company that I work for merged last year with several other companies who do what we do and formed an ESOP. Ostensibly a good thing, (it's 100% employee-owned and highly regulated by the IRS, so it's not like an Enron-type arrangement) but in this year, I've seen the swift change from our entrepreneurial company culture that never took itself too seriously, to the institutionalization of a consumptive corporate culture and its increasing demands on the lives of those of us who work there.<br /><br />The loss of our company's identity was one of my biggest fears while the president and I worked on the merger, and he tasked me with helping to preserve the unique company outlook and philosophy that had made it such a terrific place to work. But in only a year, I'm increasingly expected to sacrifice greater parts of my life to this company and to ask the same of my employees/co-workers, to represent the company at all times, to preach the gospel of what we do and who we are. I feel like I'm in "Shaun of the Dead", that I went to sleep one night and woke up to find myself surrounded by zombies and all of them looking to turn me into one of them.<br /><br />A year ago, my attitude was the prevalent one. We scoffed at any intimation that we would need to devote more of ourselves to this soulless entity. We had built our success -- and thus our attractiveness to be invited into the merge -- by doing precisely the opposite and encouraging everyone who worked there to keep their lives and family and activities as a priority, that we expected 100% when they were at work, but never to put work before life. The president of the company had earned the devotion and loyalty of those of us who worked there in prior years with his very simple philosophy that we work to live, not live to work.<br /><br />And we're suffering for that change, though it never gets taken into account in the (now daily) meetings with corporate...only the drive to the bottom line and results and expansion matters now.<br /><br />I knew I had to get out when, during our October meeting for the new ESOP in which we were regaled with the ambitious plans for growth of the merged company and expansion into new markets, the CEO of the ESOP said that he just learned a new quote that was now his new motto: "All capitalists are monopolists at heart." Chilling, no? For two reason, in my view: 1) that a man who has a Master's in business apparently never took an Econ 101 class, where he would've learned that quote before he was 45; and 2) that he actually adopted it as a philosophy worth following.<br /><br />He said it with a grin and to much applause from my coworkers, but I immediately had visions of a wave of locusts invading fields and consuming everything in sight, then moving on to do it again and again and again. And then I was struck by how this image can be applied to so much of business in our country, to the consumerism we're taught from infancy, to the way we use and discard Nature, the way we steamroll our way through other countries and wars and economies.<br /><br />Such reckless, destructive folly.<br /><br />-- Miss BittyBittyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01559013235379520937noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8317310.post-24979782229513807642006-12-05T00:35:00.000-05:002006-12-05T00:35:00.000-05:00The exchange between Bush and Webb is highly revea...The exchange between Bush and Webb is highly revealing -- only a very thin-skinned President would forget his diplomatic reflexes so easily. (Though granted that was never his strong point.) It's easy to imagine a hundred different responses that a leader could have made that wouldn't have come off sounding so childish and cranky. Either he's much more vulnerable than even we suspect, or much, much stupider -- either way, an iron hot enough for the new Congress to strike.<br /><br />--Dr. HulbeckDr. Hulbeckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14952434485138242963noreply@blogger.com