Of the various professions, that run for elected office, it seems like lawyers and business people are the two occupations that are the most represented. In the last Presidential election President Obama was a Lawyer, while Mitt Romney was a business leader. When you hire someone to do work around your house, that is beyond your skill set, people tend to hire those with the skills needed to do the specific job require. Nobody, in their right mind or unless they are trying to save money, will hire a roofer to fix the plumbing, or a landscaper to rewire the house. Each profession can be skilled in their own occupation, and not easily replaceable by other professions, but few if any are qualified to do all the jobs outside their area of specialization. The biologists will not do the job of the physicists if you need complex equations to model the nucleus. If you need the DNA sequenced, you are better off getting a biologist. A lawyer is a one profession with specialty training. This is also true of a business leader. These occupations are not interchangeable, even with people at the top of their profession, anymore than a master carpenter can do the same job of a master electrician. One will not hire the manager at a McDonalds to represent you in court any more than a divorce lawyers to run a start up tech business. The question is, under what conditions does the government benefit by lawyers leading and under what conditions does government benefit by business leaders, leading? Both occupations are highly skilled with each having its niche of expertise. This topic is not about which one is better, but rather each has its place in time, since sometimes the roof leaks and others times the bathroom needs an overhaul and one occupation can't do all, all the time.
I hate to break this to you friend but a good number of corporate leaders (I.e. businessmen) are lawyers - especially on Wall Street. Obama doesn't have a formal business background, he has something better. He has access to the best economic and business minds in the world. And that would be true of anyone who occupies the White House. What we should want in a POTUS is someone who is intelligent, a good decision maker, a leader, and someone who represents the best interests of most Americans. And you don't get that in a classroom. Just because one is a lawyer, it doesn't mean they have those qualities, nor are those qualities limited to lawyers and businessmen.
I'd add that many people in Congress are lawyers. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Both business leaders and lawyers are adapt at lying through their teeth, with a straight face which serves them both to get money from the bankers who will buy their elections for them and the typical schmuck voter pulling the Left/Right lever. RE: O-blah-ma doesn't have to be very good at anything other than golf as he has Bankers running our Central Bank for them and Murder Inc has it's own culture of imbecility (as well as a large number of golf courses). RE: Bennocchio 'the best mind in economics'. HAAAAAHhahahahahaha.... LOL
Lawyers have specialties, and this means that when they become politicians, they will more often than not craft, vote on, and pass legislation that doesn't even come close to closing all of the possible loopholes, have the desired effect for their constituency, or be immune to changes influenced by special interests outside of their constituency with their own ideas about what constitutes legislation that is in the public interest. And the more popular an idea for legislation is, the more likely it is to be amended, diluted, or co-opted to include less popular ideas needing a more popular venue in order to propagate. It is probably fortunate for us that not all politicians or ideas for legislation comes from lawyers. Bismark was right; whether one is making sausages or legislation, sampling the end products of such activities requires far less intestinal fortitude than observing how they are actually made. It gets messy.
The best way to address this topic is to first define each job; lawyer and business leaders, in terms of their unique skill sets. Then we define what being proficient and successful among their peers, means in each profession. This is not a value judgement but the goal of each profession for their A-teams. There are many types of lawyers. One you might generalize lawyers as prosecutors, defense, and compliance lawyers. Compliance lawyers are similar to defense lawyers and are needed to make sure legal activities and agreements are consistent with law; wills, deeds, divorce, estates, tax, pollution, etc. A defense lawyer has the most creative freedom of all the lawyers and attempts to manipulate feeling, as much as fact and law, so even an ax murderer will be made to look like a victim. Success is measured in victory not morality or even truth. If someone drips hot coffee on their lap, a good defense lawyer will posture this by saying it is not the fault of the victim, but the fault of deep pockets, which is usually big business. This is how you win and make money and become at the top of the profession. If you are rich and well connected you use defense lawyers to help you escape justice, legally. If they can get a murderer off with a technicality, this is still a victory, since it is not about morality or even justice but working the law and juries to achieve a goal. Another type of defense lawyer protects the people from the heavy hand of government. If the IRS is hounding you, there are lawyers who will come to your defense. Prosecutor type lawyers are those who attempt to enforce the law. Success is based on fighting for victims and winning in a way that is consistent with the current laws. In terms of an elected official, this type is more by the book and tends to be tougher on crime and violation, based on their legal experience and skill. Not enforcing the existing immigration laws, on the books, would be something one would expect from a defense lawyer and not a prosecutor. The prosecutor type lawyers would attempt enforce the existing laws on the books. One type of defense lawyer will defend people from the heavy hand of government while the other type helps criminals escape justice, with both getting people get through the border. Defense lawyers tend to contribute most to democratic candidates, so this was predicable, since fellow lawyers, as officials in government, would be birds of a feather. Business leaders are more concern with the management of ideas, people, projects and finance. Success is measured by innovations and efficiencies leading to profits. These efficiencies and profits may not always involve the feelings of all people affects or be compliance to all laws. They tend to need defense lawyers to help walk the fence. Business can;t be too corrupt without defense lawyers to help. As a case study; If you look at President Obama, he is most comfortable campaigning and fund raising. It enjoys presenting his ideas to a well chosen jury of his peers. His lack of management skills make him prefer being at the front end of projects, but he is not the one who leads the execution of the details. With the Affordable Care Act, the President was excellent at arguing the case to the American jury and he won the case. But once it was time to implement this, this was not his skill set. He was not out front like a CEO, leading and managing the start-up, so the logistics were set for success and efficiency to meet the promise of lower prices. In a hypothetical scenario, say you had a lawyer like the President having successfully pleaded his case for affordable care. But in the second term, we had someone of Mitts Romney's management skill set to build this from the ground floor and set it up for success. The reason this does not happen is these two skill sets don't overlap well enough for each to see the value in the other in making final decisions. What do we need in 2014? Prosecutors, defense lawyers or managers? Do we have enough projects set such that we need those who can turn this into reality or is really all set and we need new ideas?
If you compare lawyers and business managers, with respect to their attitude toward money and resources, each look at these differently. Managers think in terms of the bottom line and therefore try to use minimal resources; human and material, for the job. They like automation and the latest tech. This allows for higher profits. Prosecutors and defense lawyers are optimized by extra resources and extra manpower. These tend to be labor intensive jobs. The more it costs in resources, the higher the profit in money , prestige or power. Murder trials are long and expensive for all lawyer involved. It is not about streamlining the process, but stretching it out. Managers need to be proactive because they need to anticipate the future; changing markets, new regulations, etc. Lawyers are more reactive and are often not needed until after sometime happens. The prosecutor can't start anything until a law is broken or there is enough evidence to proceed. An individual does not call a defense lawyer, until it is necessary. One can see how each profession, assuming control in government, shapes how government looks and works. Large resource intensive reactive government is home town to lawyers. While a good defense lawyer, in a position of power, can be very useful to special interests seeking to break the law and/or escape justice; pork barrel and special considerations at the expense of others. Big business will get blamed, but in a government by lawyers and for lawyers, nothing gets done without the lawyers. They slide under the radar. If we have a government by business manager for business managers, the government naturally gets leaner but more robust and internally competitive. Success is measured in bottom line profit. A department that can get the job done with less is rewarded and given more control within the government free market. Lobbyists are treated more like venders, who need to have good products to make sales, since the bottom line is always in mind. They are more proactive and try to stay ahead of changes in the political market place. This makes the government more open to innovation since anything that helps the bottom line is always acceptable.
It's It's pretty obvious you have never been a corporate manager. Managers and executives, with few exceptions, are mostly focused on their personal wealth and power . ..not shareholder wealth. Contrary to the right wing nonsense you subscribe to, there are no magic bullets. Businesses don't have magic wands. And ggovernment isn't always inept and inefficient. Case in point, Medicare.
You seem to be missing the point. I was not comparing democrat and republican Rather the topic was about comparing the skills sets and work culture differences, between lawyers and business managers. Lawyers don't work for free either. That aside, the main point was lawyers and business people have different skill sets, therefore they have different goals and different peer cultures. Which ever profession dominates government, will naturally feel more comfortable bringing that culture into government. Lawyers are not about efficiency. Do you know any lawyers who will expedite and cut corners to save you money, beyond doing free public service work or friendship? It is about milking the system over long periods of time with convoluted logic. Death penalty is a ten year job, with no attempt to streamline. Hypothetically, if lawyers controlled government culture and they wanted to give their own industry and their own peers in law, a job boost, they can make more laws, so there is more new violation and more need for defense against new accusations. A business minded government culture would do it differently. Business would reduce the number of laws, since many are there to create jobs for lawyers. Lawyers will sell their favorable jury the sale pitch that business is so evil so they need more laws. Lawyers also benefits by more laws, which is not said. Defense lawyers contribute most to the democratic party, so evil business would be expected in their sales pitch; deep pocket for lawyers to pick, with popular support. Law suits connected to medical concerns, could be addressed by the medical profession. Lawyers self police, so why not doctors? Doctors are rated higher in terms of trust, yet only lawyers are allowed to self police. The math does not add up, except in a government based no a lawyer culture. Letting the more trusted doctors self police, would save money and lower insurance premiums for all. However, medical self policing, would impact defense lawyer jobs, which is in a lawyer culture is more important than efficiency and lower premiums for all. Law is not about streamlining, with even a simple task made complicated, convoluted, and confused so you need lawyers; jobs. Say we work under the assumption business people are greedy and cut throat, what would be the impact of this culture being brought into government as the culture of government. It would add free market forces to government, since this is the landscape of business. In this culture various agencies will need to compete for tax (consumer) dollars; greed, streamlining government. The wasteful and inefficient go bankrupt and/or get gobbled up like in the free market. Economies of scale will appear and the larger more successful agencies will absorb the smaller agencies, until there are only a few agencies running the government; lean, less wasteful with less redundancy. This extrapolation is why business people like Mitt Romney saw smaller and learner government, due to competition, with the absorption of inefficient agencies like Education and EPA. These are both modeled on the lawyer model instead of consumer (tax payer) needs; designed for lawyer jobs. I was hoping others would paint their own POV scenarios of these two professional occupations and their cultures and then extrapolate this to what type of government forms in their cultural images. It is not about democrat or republican, since both parties have lawyers and business people. The current government culture is based on the lawyer model, which explains a huge convoluted Health Care bill which became very wasteful and inefficient in terms of implementation. The skills sets and cultures don't overlap well. Business culture would have started, simpler, and not begin with convoluted; lawyer jobs. I am not a lawyer or a business person, so I am doing my best to infer what they do using common sense observation. We don't have many scientists in government leadership Even their profession and culture would do it differently, than lawyers and business people. It would be about facts and equations with very little in the way of rhetoric and emotional manipulation to the jury. Emotional manipulation is a lawyers touch.
actually i'd hazard a guess as to why lawyers and business people dominate is there the ones whose carreers are lucrative enough to take the time off to campaign.
There are three sectors of our society where dishonesty is not only acceptable, but encouraged, and to the point that they are the standard operating procedure. These are sales, juristics, and politics. So, yes. Business executives and lawyers are already trained for politicking.
And where did I say anything about Republicans or Democrats or even hint at those political parties? You are making stuff up friend. I said there is nothing magical about businesses and there is nothing innately wrong with government. Business isn’t always right and efficient and government isn’t always wrong and inept. That isn’t Republican or Democrat, it is a fact. And as I pointed out the distinctions you are trying to draw between businessmen and lawyers do not exist. Many businesses are led by lawyers. So I guess using your logic, those businesses which are led and managed by lawyers are not efficient. You need to tell that to the stockholders of Home Depot and Goldman Sachs or John Chambers of Cisco. But be prepared to get laughed out of the room. All of those CEOs are lawyers. You live in a fantasy world my friend. Contrary to your assertion, we have a business oriented government. That is why our tax code is so riddled with holes it makes Swiss cheese look like cheddar by comparison. Businesses would prefer to not to compete. Businesses would prefer more to use government to limit competition and protect their markets and use government to subsidize their businesses (e.g. oil subsidies, carried interest, etc.) and use government to shift their costs on to others (e.g. deregulation of pollution controls). That is a whole lot easier than competing for their money. And history if loaded with examples, Reagan’s supply side economics only worked for and benefited powerful Republican financial sponsors. How do you explain Reince Priebus, Chairman of the RNC, a lawyer, or the Republican National Lawyer’s Association? Additionally, defense lawyers couldn’t care about businesses evil or otherwise, because businesses are not charging their clients. You have been listening to too much right wing entertainment. http://www.rnla.org/Newsletter/ViewArticle.asp?ArticleID=359 I don’t suppose you have heard of state medical boards? You apparently are aware of state bar associations. But apparently you have not heard about state medical boards. State medical boards oversee medical practice in the same way state bar associations oversee lawyers. Additionally, lawyers are subject to malpractice law suits just as physicians are subject to medical malpractice suits. So your premise is simply and entirely WRONG. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_State_Medical_Boards http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/edu...n/medical-licensure/state-medical-boards.page And where is the basis for this assertion? Don’t tell me Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin. You have obviously never been in business nor will you ever be in business because someone will eat your lunch every day. Businesses want to make money. They are not in business to perpetuate the notion of or the ideal of free markets. Free markets are just a means to an end. Romney, like other recent Republican nominees, had to flip flop daily from appeasing the crazies, which is most of the party, to trying to be more reasoned and mainstream on a daily and sometimes hourly basis which made Romney look like the flip flopper he was. The reality is that Republican administrations have been more fiscally irresponsible and profligate and the economy has grown less under Republican administrations that under Democratic administrations. That is just a simple matter of fact. Where is your proof that the Department of Education and EPA are inefficient? You my friend are just mindlessly mimicking partisan rhetoric. I think you wanted others to join you in mindless repetition of Republican talking points. Where is your evidence that the current government culture is based on the “lawyer model”. What is the “lawyer model”? As previously noted your premise is deeply flawed and wrong. Our current government is riddled with special interests. The healthcare industry is largely responsible for Obamacare. It continues to protect the pharmaceutical industry from competition. It continues to protect, although to a lesser degree, physicians. It continues to protect hospitals. But Obamacare does inject some competition into the healthcare system (i.e. paying for results rather than procedures), better reporting and establishing best practices and limiting insurance pricing and cost containment measures. The problems with our government are all the special interests which control and corrupt our government. Medicare Part D and Billy Tauzin are prime examples – examples of waste passed into law by Republicans in congress and signed by Republican POTUS, George Junior. The reforms you seek lie not in pursuing fake baubles but in reforming how congress works and how they get elected. Money should be taking out of our electoral processes. Members of congress and their families along with public regulators should be free from conflicts of interests just as any employee of any Fortune 500 company would be expected to be. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/under-the-influence/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_the_United_States It is obvious you are not a lawyer or a business person. The problem with our government lies not in the professions of those we send to Washington to represent us, but in the money that finances and corrupts those individuals. Our elected representatives should have one interest and that is the interest of those who they are supposed to represent…not their party, not those who finance their party and them, and not those who offer them and their family’s lucrative employment.
When I saw this thread, I instantly considered it might be the answer to the question what three classes of people ought to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes? I assume I win no accolades for this heady insight.
