Psycho Bosses Depressed Workers

"The professor believes that psychopath's cold-blooded ability to manipulate others without remorse, coupled with a veneer of charm and high energy can make them extremely successful in many walks of life."

"They could be perfectly qualified for top posts in the military, politics or in huge multi-national companies as history has already shown in one notorious case."

Wow, what a clever way of rationalizing a non-meritocratic society - by labelling the successful as psychopaths. So achievement and drive are now pathologies? I guess sloth, clock-watching and a lack of ambition in the workplace are the signs of a healthy mind.

While there are certainly authoritarian control freaks who seek and obtain positions of power in both the private and public sectors (including unions by the way), I do not consider this to be a universal trait of those who rise to such positions.

Based on my own experience as an employee in some disgusting jobs in 4 countries, when I was an employer between 1957, and 1979 in Vancouver, I had enough brains to realize that happy workers are the best producers.

Although, we always employed some union members, we never became a union shop, as they guys never had any need for it and the unions couldn't supply our needs for specialized skills, which they understood and agreed with.

In my shop the guys set their own working hours and conditions. When they voted for 4-10 hour days, it ws Ok by me and they were happy. We had meetings when we had to bid on major jobs , or buying new machinery and equipment. I made the final decisions, as somebody had to, but even the apprentices had the right to say anything and criticize any decision I made. We had some roaring fights sometimes, but the way I looked it it, the guys felt themselves part of the business and had its interest on their minds.

When I was leaving the shop, I thought I was selling, but never got paid, the new owner called in an "expert" from the
Business Development Bank. We were sitting in the office discussing things. In the shop the radio was blaring, the guys singing, shouting and making jokes, so the "expert" said to my partner "You know, Ed is too soft on those guys! You should go out there and fire a couple of them to keep the rest on their toes!"

I just about killed the stupid ass. A new worker was no good to me for at least a month, until he learned the ropes. We were all friends. Some of the guys have been with me since before I started my business and for over 20 years. I could be anywhwere, pick up the phone and tell them what had to be done, how to do it, and when I came back a week later, it was done to perfection.

Here, I watched many occasions in union mills, where the management went out of their way to screw workers out of pennies, when the mill was making millions in profits. I asked some of the managers why they don't just tell the workers what had to be done, then get the hell out of their way and watch production double.

They were horrified "We couldn't do that! We're hired to manage and would be fired by the owners!"

How incredibly stupid. One of my customers in Vancouver was an industrial psychology professor at UBC who used my methods in his lectures, but that was 35 years ago and since, if anything, under the neoclassical/neocon crime wave, things are going downhill to become "more competitive and efficient".

Ed Deak.

Jeez, am I ever happy that our warped indy, beat me to the reply !!!!!

Ed Deak.

Do you have a specific point of disagreement with my earlier post? Do you believe, as Eugene apparently does, that "the bosses are all psychos"? Do you believe that *all* people who get ahead in organizations do so due to some mental or moral defect?

Or are you simply taking a cheap shot and playing to the herd?

Again the planets align in a rare configuration, and I agree with Indy.

I've had bosses who were fair to a fault, and quite successful.

I've also had bosses who were greed driven control freaks, again successful.

Guess which ones spent less money training new workers, had far less turnover, and had good word of mouth among their employees.

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"and the knowledge they fear is a weapon to be used against them"

"The Weapon" - Rush

What I find most remarkable is when some ideologically braineashed person, calling himself "individualist" advocates the fascistic oppression of peoples, even if they happen to be "employees". Smacks very much like Stalin's Worker's Paradise, where workers had nothing to say, unless they wanted to end up in the gulags.

I knew a Russian refugee, who was late for work twice and ended up in a labour camp for 10 years as a "saboteur", "liberated" by the nazis and never went back.

The neoclassical theory, advocated by chickenshit advertisers, like the Fraser Inst. recommends high unemployment, so that people have to "compete" for jobs.

One of the battle cries of our total sicko Preston Manning and most likely of his disciple, Stephen Harper,was and still is, "Canadian workers priced themselves out of jobs"

Funny thing, wages and profits were rising in the 50s and 60s, while borders remained closed, but that wasn't good enough for the rulers, so they hired some economists, like Milton Friedman to come up with scriptures sanctifying daylight robbery, disguised as "efficiency".

This is why now the deindustrialization of North America and the GATS, FTAA and the coming SPP and NAU treaties, all of which specify the "free movement of business persons", otherwise known as imported slave labour.

One of the main targets of the NAFTA superhighway is the movement of resources South and workers North, now negotiated inb secret by Harper.

I'm a dedicated "private", as opposed to, "free enterpriser", who went through hell to become my own boss and have been for 50 years an employer for 22.

Of course this may not qualifiy as "individualism"

I fought communism for 45 years, because of its dehumamizing, oppressive and mass murderous ideology, covered up with the beautiful ideological claptrap of the likes of Marx, and intend to fight capitalism for exactly the same reasons, covered up with the distorted words of the likes of Adam Smith.

Go and read up on the "Iron Law of Wages" by one of Smith's successors, David Ricardo, available on the Net and in many books, advocating the total oppression of workers, paid with absolute minimum, survival wages. It has been put into practice in the Dickensian times as "laissez faire" economics and now brought back by the neocons as "globally competitive neoclassical market economics", pouring stolen benefits into the pockets of 2%, while enslaving and murdering millions every year.

All big businesses survive on lies, secrecy, deceit, fraud.

As far I'm concerned, the US based Council of Foreign Relations, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the Mexican Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales, the pushers behind the planned "NAU proto parliament", the North American Competitiveness Council, also the NAFTA, GATS, WTO, WB, IMF etc. are all criminal organizations set up to destroy democratic decision making powers, environmental protection and human rights. All their proponents deserve and should be in jail.

How much do the good boy, real capitalists know, apart from a few memorized slogans and buzzwords? In my 22 years of meetings with the top VIPs in the Vancover area I found most of them completely ignorant buffoons, who knew how to play the cash registers, but were ignorant of the most elementary facts of life.

I had a big argument just a few days ago, with a very good, arch capitalist friend of mine, who retired at 40 plus on his stockmarket holdings and still plays the markets, very profitably, every day, almost 30 years later.

He didn't know, or believe me, that the deregulated banks now are legalized to create money, out of the air, for the takeover of the properties of others, using them as collaterals. The biggest con-game/racket in history, yet a deep secret for most.

Now, before you try debating the grownups, perhaps you could tell us what your indendent business and employer experience is?

I could go into just about any workplace, big or small and increase production by double digits with my methods. I won't because I don't have the time, but it would be very easy, as I have done it in my own businesses.

Meanwhile look up the writings of the American economist/statistician Edwardes Deming who pulled Japan up from the ruins with is co-operative methods.

Ed Deak.

All those words, and still the closest you get to answering any of my questions is this...

"All big businesses survive on lies, secrecy, deceit, fraud."

Which isn't exactly the same as saying that you agree with Eugene that all bosses are psychopaths, but is a similarly absurd overgeneralization.

"Funny thing, wages and profits were rising in the 50s and 60s, while borders remained closed..."

And how much did basic household goods cost in those "good old days" of closed borders and fat oligopolies/monopolies? How much did it cost for instance to buy decent quality clothes? Oh that's right, you were supposed to sew your own from the cloth you wove yourself - self-sufficiency and all.

("While there are certainly authoritarian control freaks who seek and obtain positions of power in both the private and public sectors (including unions by the way), I do not consider this to be a universal trait of those who rise to such positions.) INDY

No one around here said it is a universal trait.

It is however universal when it comes to the psychological behavior of our newest species of individuals with rights...the corporations.

On the other hand, thanks Indy for triggering the most amazing, on target, thoughtful, and concise rant authored by Ed.

(that I will now forward to all of my friends as required reading)

My friend you're the same closed minded ideologue I've known in fascist, nazi and communist times.

The statistics are available for anybody who cares to find them.

There'll always be a certain small percentage of addicts etc, but we had no homeless, no foodbanks, especially no wage earners at foodbanks. When I was an apprentice, my starting wage was .75cents, my wife had about the same and a bit more in her various jobs. Our monthly rent was $35. our weekly groceries $20. and we ate well. I went to work in a 1949 Hillman Minx I bought for $325. Gas was .20 plus cents per gallon.

We bought our first bungalow in Vancouver in 1966, for about $6,000 with a monthly payment of $45. Even in 1970, with 3 kids our grocery bill was under $100/month. I could go to Army and Navy and buy a workshirt that would last 20 years for $2-3, a pair of shoes for $6. or about an hour's wage for an unskilled worker. I paid $13, for a pair of shoes in Montreal once, during Expo 67, and everybody thought I was crazy.

Hot dogs were .25 cents, hamburgers .50 cents, coffee and pop .10 cents, you could get a very good meal in most restaurants for $1.25 - 1.50. and had to fight off the waiters from constantly refilling your coffee cup, without extra charge.

In 1975 I bought brand new, Dodge, Tradesman 200 van for my business, with all kinds of extras for $5,600. and a monthly payment of $150.

About 70% of our exports to the USA were duty free and ditto. I exported to the USA, even to Hawaii, and paid no 12% fst. tax, contrary to the claims of Mulroney, when he brought in the PST.

We went to the border and told them where we wanted to go and goodbye. When I was on car rallies, crossing the border, the guards waved us through when they saw the numbers on the cars.

In the first 30 years after WW2 the North American standard of living went up 47%, Since then prices inflated by about 1,000%, while wages remained stagnant. If wages were still the same proportion to costs, as they were then, the average wage would be about $50/hr. but CEOs woudn't get millions and the former CEO of Home Depot wouldn't have received $210 million golden handshake.

I started my first manufacturing business with a $500 bankloan and was employing a dozen skilled tradesmen within a month or two.

Now, our living costs, even with our great degree of self sufficiency, 3 freezers full of organic foods and meats, have gone up 300% since the FTA in 1989, and doubled within the last 5-6 years and we'll find higher prices, than they were 2 weeks ago, when we last went to town.

Because the purpose of the globalized, competitive marketplace is to cut wages and increase prices.

How old are you, that you don't know all this and what is your life experience, apart from shouting platitudes?

Ed Deak.

After reading through all the posts thus far, there are some points of agreement I have noticed.

You don't need to be a psychotic boss in order to be successful, in fact you're almost universally better off if you are fair and equitable. Less, turnover, more consistent production, less strife between labour and management; all the result of fair treatment of employees by employers.

A win-win far as I can see.

Globalism is, however, not concerned with win-win.

It is concerned with absolute control, and "merit" an unknown word in it's language.

It is like a farmer who consistently works his animals to the point of exhaustion, feeding and housing them poorly in the process, who then wonders why they keep either dying on him or running away.

---
"and the knowledge they fear is a weapon to be used against them"

"The Weapon" - Rush

"I do not consider this to be a universal trait of those who rise to such positions."


And so ...your point would be?
But before we get into that ...
Then it must be, according to your reckoning's, the author and the shrink do, and you are compelled to set the record straight?


---
[juris ignorantia est cum jus nostrum ignoramus]

it is ignorance of the law when we do not know our own rights"

lex ferenda

"No one around here said it was a universal trait."

Uhm, Eugene kind of did when he said...

"And of course they can't manage their jobs because the bosses are all psychos."

<blockquote> So achievement and drive are now pathologies? </blockquote> Only when they are achieved by climbing over the accumulated skulls of the victims............<p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
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