[dropcap]P[/dropcap]RACTICE COMES FIRST
DECISION MAKERS NEED TO FACTOR INTO THEIR PRESENT DECISIONS THE “FUTURE THAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED.”
Decision makers – in government, in the universities, in business, in the labor unions, in churches – need to factor into their present decisions the future that has already happened. For this they need to know what events have already occurred that do not fit into their present-day assumptions, and thereby create new realities.
Intellectuals and scholars tend to believe that ideas come first, which then lead to new political, social, economic, psychological realities. This does happen, but it is the exception. As a rule, theory does not precede practice. Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice. Its role is to convert the isolated and “atypical” from exception to “rule” and “system,” and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and, above all, into something that can be generally applied.
ACTION POINT: Are the premises that you base your decisions on obsolete? Do you need a new intellectual framework to win in the market, as it exists today?
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]ANAGEMENT AND THE LIBERAL ARTS
MANAGEMENT IS A LIBERAL ART.
Management is what tradition used to call liberal art – “liberal” because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, self-knowledge, wisdom, and leadership; “art” because it deals with practice and application. Managers draw upon all of the knowledge’s and insights of the humanities and social sciences – on psychology and philosophy, on economics and history, on the physical sciences and ethics. But they have to focus this knowledge on effectiveness and results – on healing a sick patient, teaching a student, building a bridge, designing and selling a “user-friendly” software program.
ACTION POINT: What is your plan to develop yourself in the humanities and social sciences? Develop such a plant today.
“It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose your own.”
HARRY TRUMAN
“Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.”
PHILIP SLATER
“Know something? I’d lay even odds that between the people following us and the people hunting us, we’ve become this city’s principle means of employment. Tal Verrar’s entire economy is now based on fucking with us.”
SCOTT LYNCH
“I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.”
PAUL KRUGMAN
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“Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are — a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.”
HA-JOON CHANG
“No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.”
RUSH LIMBAUGH
“When we replace a sense of service and gratitude with a sense of entitlement and expectation, we quickly see the demise of our relationships, society, and economy.”
STEVE MARABOLI
“Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.”
THOMAS SOWELL
“You know what’s truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they’re all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it’s shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place.”
BRUCE STERLING
“You can’t tax business. Business doesn’t pay taxes. It collects taxes.”
RONALD REAGAN
“In the fashion industry, everything goes retro except the prices.”
CRISS JAMI, KILLOSOPHY
“The best way to boost the economy is to redistribute wealth downward, as poorer people tend to spend a higher proportion of their income.”
HA-JOON CHANG
“Disease is the biggest money maker in our economy.”
JOHN H. TOBE
“The power to tax is the power to destroy.”
JOHN MARSHALL
“Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”
JOE BIDEN
“Cheap booze is a false economy.”
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade…”
AYN RAND
“Right now, the economy is a whole lot like a fairly good-looking brain-dead chick in a persistent vegetative coma. You can’t really wake her up, but there’s things she’s still good for.”
CINTRA WILSON
“How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?”
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES