Business majors..

bluedevilmike
Sat, 04 Aug 2007 19:53:22 +0000

Business innovations are vastly more powerful, although often less obviously personal, than the help provided by, say, a physician. Researchers can research all they want and physicians can diagnose all they want, but without the capital markets to bring drugs to bear on the market neither of them has any power to help patients. And that’s just one example.

Computer innovations, as brilliant as they are, would never have changed society without their business underpinnings. The agricultural sector which has dramatically reduced starvation in the US has done so through using business financing to bring together different technologies, from storage to transportation. From clothing to food to medical devices to computer technology to home building, each of these innovations has not just one but many prominent, very talented business executives behind them.

The fact that they are well-compensated – or that some of them abuse their positions – should not detract from our understanding of the value that they provide our society. I suspect that a society with no businesses whatsoever would suffer far more than a society with no doctors or no lawyers, although of course any of the three would be miserable.