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A comment on How Leaders Emerge. Parent comment

Re:How Leaders Emerge by Alex3917 on Tuesday August 02, 2011 @08:33AM (#2836874)
America has enormous disparities in terms of wealth and power. If you're not a leader then there's a good chance that you won't be able to get good healthcare, you won't be able to afford enough food or at least enough nutritious food, your kids won't get a good education, no one will respect you, you're much more likely to end up in prison, and you're very likely to have a shorter and less happy life in general. Thus there are a lot of people who are obsessed with trying to figure it how to become leaders, because the stakes are pretty high.

In short, if you're not management then most likely this is a fairly accurate description of your life: http://bit.ly/qVqbOb. Imagine being 50 and not being allowed to use the bathroom without asking, not being trusted to use the cash register, being watched by video cameras constantly, etc. That's what the life of the average American is like.

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Re:How Leaders Emerge by cookiecaper on Tuesday August 02, 2011 @08:59AM (#2836936)
I think that's a bit on the dramatic side of things. Most people with a desk job can afford all of the things you mentioned (which doesn't necessarily mean they're going to buy them, like nutritious food). You don't have to be management to be able to use the restroom at your convenience -- I've never been in management, but I've never had a desk job where I explicitly had to ask before I got up to use the bathroom. I just went to the bathroom.

You are exaggerating quite a lot here. There is some distinction between peons and management but in general it's mostly a status/mental thing, not a necessities-of-life thing. In the office, advancement and accomplishment is made by politics and promotion. It's not like a construction worker who can survey his work site and visibly see the progress he made; in an office-centric culture, people want to get into management because management equates with much-needed validation that you're actually doing something valuable. If you are made a manager, it means your managers think you're cool enough to join the manager club. And, again, in an office-centric environment, politics play a heavier role than they reasonably should.

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