Note: American Renaissance is having its annual conference in August at the usual location in Tennessee. It is a great event and anyone who is interested in the sort of politics discussed here should make it there at least once. You can sign up for the event at the American Renaissance website.

One of the criticisms of the public company model is that the managers tend to think in the short term rather than long term. This was a popular critique of American business in the 1980’s when Japan was on the rise. The Japanese magically thought long term, which allowed them to benefit from long term investments in industry. Sinophiles made similar arguments about China as she rose economically. The Chinese think long term, it was said, while America thinks short term.

Up until Trump came to town and started making bad noises about China, those same Sinophiles made this point about democracy. The democratic West, they said, was hobbled by the short-term thinking that arises from regular elections, while China avoids this problem through one party rule. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times was fond of making this point. China’s system was winning because the Chinese were not thinking from one election to the next.

Of course, the real reason Japan and China rose from the ashes to challenge American industry is that connected people in the United States saw a profit in helping these countries at the expense of America. They flung open the gates, so to speak, on deindustrialization of America, which led to the shifting of manufacturing to low-cost places like Japan and then Korea and China. It turns out that both China and Japan were the beneficiaries of short-term thinking.

Putting that aside, this difference between short and long-term thinking with regards to how an organization functions does matter. A business with lots of fixed assets, for example, will have to think long term, while a business with no fixed assets can operate in the moment. The reason for this is the former has assets that are not easily transported or converted into cash. The latter is not tied down this way, so it does not have to worry about long term asset protection.

You also see this in how the people in a business think. The person who has been with a company for a long time will often take the long view. This is exclusive to privately held companies, where the owner is directly involved. Those long-term employees take on the owner’s time horizon. The people who move from job to job are opportunists, making what they can from their current situation and then moving onto the next opportunity in which they make little investment.

This is why small business tends to be better at customer service than the big chain stores that now dominate life. That small business owner thinks in the longest of long term, his own life and that of his children. The business owner sees his business as an extension of himself. The hired man, in contrast, looks at the business as just a place he toils for money. Who he is exists outside of what he does. The customers are no more meaningful to him than the coffee pot.

This mindset is what harmed Trump in office. He spent his life leaping from one real estate or media opportunity to the next, never stopping in one place very long before he leaped to the next opportunity. His opportunistic thinking makes him a special campaigner, but it made him a terrible president. To be successful, a president must think about his legacy, which is the longest of long-term thinking. That means forcing through big changes with your name on them.

Ironically, Trump reflects what is wrong in Washington. His opportunism is different from the people in permanent Washington only in its presentation. The people who run the government are all hired men with the time horizon of hired men. None of them have ever built anything or even left footprints on the beach. The point of their existence is to never be tied to anything, so they can flit from one opportunity in the system to the next opportunity, building the resume for the next job.

One of the weird things about life in Washington is that it is an insult to ask one of these people what they do for a living. Lewd acts are met with less offense than asking one of these people what they do for work. The reason for that is they do no work in the way in which people in the dreaded private sector think of it. The resume of the Washington man is a list of places and people with whom he has a connection. Where you are and who you are with is what matters in Washington.

Of course, the politicians for whom this army of hired men in Washington allegedly work are hired men as well. In theory, at least, the elected official is a servant of the people, temporarily holding an office. The whole business about the people paying the salaries of the elected officials is supposed to remind the office holder that he is just a hired man, easily replaced at the next election. The fact that 97% of incumbents win reelection does not change the fundamental mindset.

Therein lies the problem with the American managerial state. The politicians and the army of policy makers all have the mindset of the hired man, but they also live consequence free lives. Victoria Nuland, the architect of the disastrous Ukraine strategy, will never pay for being terrible at her job. Anthony Blinken will bounce from this job to a turn at the Kennedy school then maybe a comfortable ambassadorship somewhere in the Gavin Newsome administration.

Imagine a business owner hiring a general manager that he can never fire. Once the general manager figures out that he can never be fired, he is no longer going to think much about the business, beyond how it benefits him. His hired man mentality will be turbocharged by his immunity to consequences. This is what has happened in Washington over the last few decades. Personal success is now fully detached from the outcome of public policy.

This is why Washington is so hostile to white people. They see white people as the owners, and they are the general manager who cannot be fired. They gnaw away at the assets of the owner but resent that the owner exists. That is why they are so comfortable using terms like “whiteness” and “white power structure.” Everyone they know is in the same position and harbors the same resentments, therefore this language of resentment comes naturally to them.

What this points to is the truth of managerialism. Managers are essential in every enterprise, but they can only exist at the pleasure of the owner. The CEO must respect the shareholders. The hired man must respect the owner. To do otherwise turns the relationship on its head, putting the dispensable above the permanent. That is the root of the current crisis. America is ruled by easily replaceable men, while the owners are treated like day workers.

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