RE: Corporations

[Greg Peisert <gpeisert@jamesgregory.com>]

Hi Umberto;

  Good response, and it sounds as if we are in agreement. It is interesting 
how our perceptions differ. I tend to defend corporations because I see 
them coming under fire all the time, much of it unjustified, based on 
hearsay and ignorance. You see people as all but worshipping corporations 
and ignoring some of the destructive acts they do engage in. Fair enough.

  And I don't think we disagree on the Stalin/Hitler/Fascist point. Of 
course people who run corporations have been guilty of selling their souls 
to such despots...just like people who don't run corporations. There is 
evil in the world. Humans are highly self-destructive, vicious and 
exploitive creatures (although Margaret and others have been suggesting 
there is hope that we can somehow evolve beyond that). I don't know. I hope 
so, but it sure looks grim on that score.

  My only point, and I think we are in "violent agreement" on this (so to 
speak ;-)), is that people do indeed exploit people; the strong do indeed 
exploit the weak; and they do that regardless of their organizational 
framework, be it a corporation, a government, a union, or a society. People 
by and large act like people, and some among them, regardless of the 
organizational structure, exploit and abuse and often murder others. They 
do this independent of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, creed or 
social structure. Not all people do it all the time (fortunately), but we 
see it crop up repeatedly, everywhere, in every nation, in every type of 
organization. So, I think it is just the "nature of the beast" which beast 
we happen to be.

  You wrote that "Most large corporations have little interest in a free 
market and go out of their way to rig the game given half the chance. They 
are no friend of entrepreneurs."

  That's true. But in a market economy, they do a lot of things that help 
small companies and entrepreneurs, kind of as a by-product of their 
existence. I my industry (information technology), big companies like IBM, 
Microsoft, Intel and others open up who new worlds of opportunities for 
thousands of smaller companies who can fill the niche areas they miss or 
ignore. Yes, they suck up innovative ideas by buying smaller companies, 
sometime killing those ideas, sometimes incorporating them into future 
products. But, such is the market. I remember an interview in Business Week 
a few months ago. They were talking to a former entrepreneur who was now 
managing a division of Microsoft that presided over his former company, 
which he had sold. "Don't you feel bad about being swallowed up by this 
giant?" the interviewer wanted to know. "Hasn't the sale of your company to 
Microsoft stifled innovation and destroyed the entrepreneurial spirit?" 
"Well, no!" the now Microsoft executive smiled, "Nobody forced me to sell 
my company to Microsoft. I did it because it provided a lot of advantages. 
We are now developing a new line of products, and I have lots of resources 
now that I didn't have access to then. I'm having as much fun as ever."

  And for me, anyway, that's a lot of what life is about. Being productive, 
and having fun doing it. Rather than see large corporations as a threat to 
the entrepreneurial spirit, I see them as breeding grounds for it. At least 
half or more of all the entrepreneurs gained critical experience in those 
big companies. I'm no exception. I cut my teeth on a lot of the IT world 
when I worked for Control Data Corporation (CDC), one of the most badly 
managed companies in the history of IT! But it was a tremendously valuable 
experience. The company that is REALLY great at turning out entrepreneurs 
is General Electric. I think more CEO's of small, growing and mid-size 
companies have come out of GE than about any other company in the world. 
And they can do what they do with the smaller companies because of the 
experience they gained with the big guy.

  On other thing. Big corporations are a training ground for key technical 
talent. We hire people from companies like Lucent, AT&T and NCR. We need 
those talented people. These big companies have big budgets to hire people, 
train them, give them a wide range of solid experience, and then, when they 
get to feeling stifled or boxed in, they leave, and they join upstarts like 
us, where they can exercise the full range of their technical skills and 
creativity. But without those big guys to train them, they wouldn't be 
around to enable small guys like us to be successful. So, while big 
corporations have their down sides, they have their up sides as well.

  Would I ever go back and work for a big company? I don't know. I might. 
But it would have to be a pretty good opportunity, with lots of freedom and 
lots of challenge. Increasingly, however, big companies are making way for 
that sort of thing. Not all of them. But some of them. There is a 
noticeable change in many corporate cultures today in a number of large 
companies with which we deal.

  As to soft money and campaign funding, again, we agree. I wonder if there 
is some way to drive campaign reform so that politicians simply can't 
accept corporate contributions of any kind? Something with teeth in it, so 
that if they do, they don't just lose their office; they go to jail. But I 
can't conceive of any way that such a law would get passed, because the fox 
is in charge of the hen house. Those turkeys in congress even exempt 
themselves from the laws they DO pass, half the time!

  Take care.

-- Greg Peisert