Egonomics, not economics, rules the mouths and actions of men, and this is never more true than when at work.
Niccolo Machiavelli, in his desire to establish himself as a politician in the employ of a powerful Italian faction, wrote the splendid tome The Prince. Ironically the present was not presented, for the intended recipient - A VIP - (Very Important Prince) perhaps could have used the counsel within sooner - he fell from power. So Machiavelli didn't bother to publish his masterpiece.
Nonetheless we have it through good fortune! Machie puts forward various strategies for the prince to win power, and hold on to power. The latter is not easy when your jealous friends may segue into your worst enemies. Essentially if your ambition is to be a prince, then your ambition is to be alone. A prince is all alone! Yet he needs advisers, and machie provides much useful counsel on how to select advisers, when to believe them, when to trust them.
Essentially to survive the prince must abandon the lunges of his ego in favour of a calm rational strategic game. He must abandon friends and flattery in exchange for the trappings of power. For power is its own reward. Yet to keep hold of power, one must not over-abuse it, for to do so surely leads to ruin.
The ego animal will always deform, once empowered, into a feral beast, untamed and self-destructive, and deadly to those that are dependent. A prince must conquer this feral beast before he is self-devoured! A wise prince therefore has power, yet in his mastery he denies himself most of the fun that power brings.
Many an ego-driven leader wants the world to love him, whether a politician his people, a king his subjects, a lord his serfs and a chairman or CEO his employees and even customers. Yet Machiavelli teaches us that this is the fastest route to disaster. Yet a prince must ask from his subjects a toll of money and other resources, for without these, the prince cannot defend his territory nor supply his people with infrastructure. A politician must likewise tax, and a CEO must lure money from the fingers of his customers and entice hard slog from his employees.
Yet a leader wishes to be loved! How can a man be loved whilst demanding payments and sacrifices from his subjects? It is the ego which wishes love, the prince must reject this! Yes, power without love is a paradox to those that seek power, who believe being powerful equates to being loved. In fact a prince must tax his people to the point whereby they reproach him. Yet if the people discern that the prince spends the money wisely, and that the prince does his duty of protecting them, then though they may reproach him, they will not hate him. And over time the reproach will coexist with respect, and love will happen over time. Yet even eventual love will never germinate if the prince's ego demands it.
For if the prince decides that he will buy his love, then he will lavish great gifts upon his people, entertain them lavishly, and treat the rich to magnificent houses and gold. Yet then he must raise taxes yet more, to pay for this lavishness. The increased burden on his subjects will surely transform reproach into downright hostility. The goodwill bought with gifts will soon be forgot, and the prince will have but enemies for subjects. By ingratiating himself for love, he wins but derision. The ego that wishes to buy love will procure only disparagement. That is a key principle of egonomics, you can buy neither love nor respect!
And THIS is where egonomics and economics collide. For economics presumes that we are driven by the desire to make money, either by creating wealth, earning wealth or stealing wealth. But in reality this is a myth. If we ignore the case of abject poverty where money is a matter of life and death, then we have money in the role of toy. It buys nice shiny houses, cars and women. For women, unlike love, happiness and respect,
can be bought! Though a woman who has no respect or love for you is a sour purchase indeed.
So what good is wealth but to possess toys, palaces or even the Mona Lisa? The answer is, there is little utility in money beyond that. Well OK, funding environmental preservation, cancer research etc are good, yet even so humans have a distinct, stronger drive than the desire for flashier possessions and worthy causes! They are driven by the ego, a point not compatible with economic theory.
Economics, the theory of cash, cannot explain how corporations work. Corporations (and government departments etc) are arenas in which sociopaths and corporate psychos often rise to the top, and are actually considered beneficial to the organisation. Why? Because corporate psychos bully people. This makes no sense from an economic point of view. Corporate psychos have self-interest only, with no qualms about losing corporations millions to further their own selfish egos. So why are corporate psycho's "successful"? Egonomics, they theory of ego, can provide answers. For corporate psychos batter the ego's of their underlings. But corporate psychos, unlike a real prince, have no genuine power, no genuine responsibility: the average corporate psycho can and does blame others, and can and does pass the buck. And what do innocent underlings do when their ego is being mercilessly battered by the psychos? They either leave, or, as mostly happens, they work harder to try to sate the unquenchable demands of the Corporate Psycho.
As a result, even though the psycho squanders money, his negative energy actually acts as a glue - formulated by the insecurity of others - to bind an organisation together, and force the worker ants to slave without asking too many questions. For the stressed victims tend to blame themselves for the failures that the Corporate Psycho tells them they are producing. So they will work assiduously to overcome their failings, in the hope that their shattered ego's will once day be soothed by the approval of the psychos. In effect managers, even if they are not corporate psychos to begin with, often feel that have to become them in the end. For their own bashed egos can find the easiest salvation in battering the egos of others.
Economics cannot account for why billionaire CEOs keep pitching up to work. This is easily explained by egonomics. Who have the largest egos? The mega-rich! And why are they mega-rich? Because they have immense egos - along with much skill and luck along the way. So the mega-egos work not for money, but to feed their insatiable egos. The accumulation of money is to them much like the accumulation of waste products by metabolising cells - it is merely something to be got rid off. That dour duty is attended to by self-sacrificing trophy wives.
Then there are the kids out of school. They work like dogs, they are the office gofers, the factory lackeys. Their reward? Having a job. Without a job they would suffer an ego-shit-storm breakdown.
Then as the employees progress, they realise they can get away with doing less work, and so it is that they do this. Until a corporate psycho comes along, however, and beats them up. These minions sweat for ego-preservation, not cash.
Then there are those in management that are not corporate psychos, and these managers are the most laid back of all corporate staff. They are the Corporate Buddhists. They relinquish the ego altogether, for this is the only way that the Corporate Buddhists can defend themselves from the deathly ego-attacks from the Corporate Psychos above - and even below. These Corporate Buddhists tend to be reasonable, thoughtful - though not necessarily successful, because the Corporate Psychos - who do no real work - steal all the credit for the achievements of the Corporate Buddhists. Consequently, the Corporate Buddhist is the first to go when it is redundancy time.
When this honest, dutiful Corporate Buddhist is given the shove, his colleagues scratch their heads in exasperated bewilderment. They may not suspect that charming Corporate Psycho had long been plotting the fate of Corporate Buddhist. The bosses that Corporate Psycho deftly manipulates "know" that only Psycho is "indispensable". Everybody else hoped that Psycho would get fired, which would make the most economic sense for the organisation. Egonomics, not economics, explains why the best talent is the first to jettisoned when corporate belts need tightening.
So is the Machiavelli prince - the Machiavelli CEO - a Corporate Psycho or a Corporate Buddhist? The answer is ungainly: he must simultaneously be both.
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Naz | Subject: | 2007-07-01 14:41:28 |
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