07.04.09
Of unappealing personalities and free markets
I get the sense from a particular frequent commenter here at BN that he would like to put this question to me: Come on, now, haven’t you ever come across people who consider themselves primarily business people, as opposed to makers of some product, practitioners of some particular technology, or craftspersons of some sort, who were pushy, aggressive, thoughtless and shallow?
The answer is yes. I’ll even go so far as to say I’ve met lots of them. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that the field of business per se (again, as opposed to those who consider themselves to be primarily, say, metal stamping experts or independent record label owners) has more of such type than other fields, such as the arts or the clergy or some esoteric type of scientific research.
But therein lies the beauty of the free market. If you find such a personality type distasteful, no one is forcing you to deal with those who embody it.
Can you completely avoid contact with them? It’s doubtful. As I said in the post below, the free market is based on a fundamental truth: All life is a trade-off. There will be instances in which you’ll hae to decide whether the extent to which you need or want a particular good or service is such that you will tolerate contact with boneheads. Freedom is a function of the real world, after all.
