“Elon Musk is in some ways the Andrew Carnegie of our time,” says Larry Summers on the Bloomberg “Balance of Power” show 5/13/2022 with David Westin.
https://twitter.com/BloombergTV/status/1525158825514389504?c…
Jaak
Only an elite would believe that comparison was a complement.
https://www.reference.com/business-finance/did-andrew-carneg…
Many accounts of Andrew Carnegie state that he exploited his workers, subjecting them to long hours, a dangerous workplace, and low pay. Many workers in his steel mills worked for 12 hours per day, seven days a week, and were cast aside when they were no longer physically able to meet the demands of the workplace.
https://www.britannica.com/question/What-was-the-Homestead-S…
The Homestead Strike was a violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and many of its workers that occurred in 1892 in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The striking workers were all fired on July 2, and on July 6 private security guards hired by the company arrived. The guards and workers exchanged gunfire, and at least three guards and seven workers were killed during the battle and its aftermath.
The contract between the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union and Carnegie Steel was to expire on July 1, 1892. Andrew Carnegie gave his operations manager, Henry Clay Frick, permission to break the union before this deadline. Frick began by cutting the workers’ wages, which the workers protested by starting the Homestead Strike. In late June Frick locked them out and fenced off the plant. On July 2 he fired all 3,800 workers.
The Homestead Strike was ended after the Carnegie Steel Company asked Pennsylvania Governor Robert Emory Pattison for help and he responded by sending in 8,500 soldiers of the state National Guard. The plant was turned over to the militiamen on July 12. By July 15 the plant was again operating, but with replacement workers.
Carnegie, along with John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, was behind the first successful buying the presidential election of business friendly William McKinley. Unfortunately for them McKinley was shot early in his second term and that damn trust busting, national park creator, civil service reformer Roosevelt became president.
Andy did build many libraries throughout the country. But that money was derived from his brutal exploitation of his workers.
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Only an elite would believe that comparison was a complement.
It was. Everyone has their good and bad points, and larger persons even more so.
www.forbes.com/2004/03/11/cx_dd_mibp_0315carnegiepoll.html?s…
Historian David Surdam credits Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie for nothing less than being the principal figure behind America’s transformation from a rural agricultural country into an industrial power. He helped make the U.S. the world’s leading steel-producing country, partly by gauging efficiency of management with individualized records that compared cost to output. Carnegie’s knack for novel techniques was so deep, according to the late Northwestern University economic historian Jonathan R.T. Hughes, that he once started a board meeting with the sentence, “Well, gentlemen, what shall we throw away this year?”
DB2
the principal figure behind America’s transformation from a rural agricultural country into an industrial power.
But at what cost to the working man?
Methinks was much more interested in accumulating wealth than America’s transformation to an industrial power.
In ancient times industrialists use slave to build monuments to themselves-pharaohs & slaves.
In the US during the late 19th & early 20th centuries industrialists were brutal toward their workers.
Today industrialists, in developed nations are blocked by legislature from working their laborers brutally. So they build factories overseas where foreign governments allow such treatment of workers.
Musk Infers “American Workers R Lazy”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-americans-trying-1…
Elon Musk said China would produce “some very strong companies,” praising the country’s workforce.
By contrast, he said, “in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”
“There’s just a lot of super-talented, hardworking people in China who strongly believe in manufacturing,” Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday.
“They won’t just be burning the midnight oil. They will be burning the 3 a.m. oil,” he continued. “They won’t even leave the factory type of thing, whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.”
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Discretionary effort.
“Discretionary effort is the level of effort people could give if they wanted to, but above and beyond the minimum required.”
https://www.aubreydaniels.com/discretionary-effort
Granted, the above website is built to lure management types to learn to do management type things, but don’t lose the point.
People will do more for those concepts they believe in. The greatest figures in human history got people to believe*.
Just because the relationship is a professional leader/employee type doesn’t make it any less powerful.
Teams embued with strong vision and real rewards (the best rewards are non monetary) enable tangible progress, exploding towards milestones. A high performance team of employees will do more for the cause - and the bottom line- than any ordinary vocation with anti-aspirational goals and vision.
*Fear and tyranny are successful at achieving results as well - for a short while. It turns out that belief systems built on fear carry most of the essential motivating factors, but are fleeting since there are many paths away from fear.
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