I was a business reporter for almost 30 years, specializing in CEOs – the great, the mediocre, and the really, really bad (sometimes all in one person). From the early 1990s to the late 2010s, I rode shotgun, watching in awe as the Corner Office point of view – ever Alpha – left the political, the academic, and basically every other perspective in the dust.
Shareholder-driven capitalism meant what was good for business was good for, well, everyone. (“everyone” wasn’t supposed to mean income inequality hitting historical highs). That belief, in turn, elevated industry titans from Jamie Dimon and Mark Zuckerberg to Jack Welch and Warren Buffett as the most powerful voices on the planet. The real decisions were made at Davos or in Sun Valley, not DC or Brussels. Politics were an inconvenience. For decades – until companies like Microsoft and Google became well-acquainted with antitrust law – tech companies ignored Washington and didn’t even lobby. Why bother?
