ON THE IMPORTANCE OF AVOIDING MASSIVE CRANIAL DAMAGE TO CAREER SUCCESS IN THE UNITED STATES

TOP NOTCH CAREER TIPS

By : Ms. Vanessa H. Breaker, M.S., University of Texas (Facilities Management); Founder and Chairperson, Help-U-Advance, Inc., a Career Management Consulting Bureau (Houston, TX); Author, You Can Do It : A 10-Step Formula to Achieve Wealth, Success, Money (And Yes, Love, Too); Owner, several real estate tracts in central Texas; Married; Cowboys fan.

Recently, a college graduate came into my office and asked: "How will I ever get a job in this economy? How will I ever pay my own rent?"

I can understand his frustration. By all accounts, times are very hard out there. For people just starting out in the world, life looks intimidating. No one is hiring. No one even gets an interview. And without a job, you can't pay your rent.

But success is possible. It is possible to defy the odds and live the American dream. Anyone can learn how to be successful. There is a recipe for success: You can learn it. Successful people all behave in a similar way. They all have similar habits. By learning those behaviors and acquiring those habits, you can be successful, too. And when you achieve success, you not only get the job, you get the promotion, the raise, the bonus and the beautiful wife, too! Doesn't that sound nice? You bet it does.

So what are successful behaviors and habits? Well, let us begin by stressing that success is a lifestyle. Success is not a hobby; it is a discipline. You must eat, drink and breathe success. You cannot tolerate failure. And you must be tough: This is a race; no one hires the runner-up.

Living success begins at an early age. Successful people get on the track to success when they are children. They understand what they want from life and they commit themselves to excellence. To that end, stable households produce more successful people than broken ones. After all, a child will not develop the basic skills needed to get good grades and work hard if he or she suffers parental sexual abuse and beatings every day. Those challenges make doing math homework difficult. And kids who fail math won't go to Harvard. In that light, a peaceful home is essential to growing up successful: It allows the focus needed to "home in" on success.

Successful people do not give in to distractions. To achieve success, it is necessary to "stay on track." That means working hard, getting good grades, going to bed early, taking instructions seriously and remembering your place. Yet it is easy to forget these rules when peers goad you to go dancing on Friday night, or when you'd rather watch television shows all evening than do your homework. Put simply, distractions surround us every day. And they threaten to derail us from the success track. To resist distractions, you must simply say: "I want to be successful. I will avoid these distractions." It is about mind over matter: Forget the video games: Think about the accounting job you want.

Education is essential to success in America. In bare outline, success means getting a good job at a good company, making good money and owning property. Yet good companies do not give good jobs to just anyone; they only give them to good people with good educations from good schools. In that light, success requires that you get a good education at a good school. That, in turn, requires that you live successfully without distractions. Only children who live appropriately during childhood will get into the schools needed to get good jobs. It is not so much about learning as it is about showing: Firms want to see good grades from good schools. As long as you get into a good school and show the good grades, you will get a shot at the good jobs. It does not matter whether you remember what you learned. And you will stand no chance at all if you don’t get into a good school: Good grades from bad schools will not impress good companies.

Still, successful living means more than just getting good grades. Once you actually get a job, it is essential to observe successful habits. Successful people keep their jobs because they know what is expected. That means they understand their employer's mission and loyally advance it. They also observe decorum by dressing appropriately, speaking respectfully and refraining from all distractions while carrying on the employer's business. In this sense, successful living is all about acting appropriately on the job: Loyal workers advance far. Ultimately, they rise through the ranks. Good companies love loyal workers who suppress their own interests to earn profits for them. Self-sacrifice is a hallmark of successful living: And it is rewarded.

Intangible factors also influence career success. For better or for worse, birth has much to do with success. Wealthy children stand a better chance to live stable early lives. That, in turn, prepares them to "get on the success track" without distraction. Additionally, powerful parents who attended good schools can assure that their children, too, attend those schools. Wealthy parents can also pay large tuitions and urge employers to hire their children. In some cases, wealthy parents are the employers; and they naturally award jobs to their own blood. In this light, the importance of fortunate birth cannot be overstated. Although it is impossible to "learn" how to be related to powerful people, blood is a sure way to get a big head start in the success race.

Still, success is never guaranteed, even for people who enjoy all the advantages. After all, even a minor mishap along the path to success can sink an entire life. A student may develop a drug addiction, ruining his semester grades and costing him a job at a banking firm. A junior associate might have a relationship dispute and perform poorly at work. A promising employee might fall in love and show up late for work. A woman might give birth, requiring her to put off career focus. Put simply, things can happen in life. And they can easily knock a person off the "success track." Just one distraction can unravel a lifetime of work.

And that is to say nothing about the danger of massive cranial injuries. In the above examples, otherwise successful people gave in to distractions through some fault. In other cases, otherwise successful people might fail to achieve success simply because something massively damages their cranium.

Consider, for example, a first-class legal scholar who has done everything right. He has been born into a good family, his father was successful, he had a stable childhood, he followed instructions, he went to bed early, he dressed appropriately, he got into first-class schools and got first-class grades his whole life. He even landed a job at a first-class law firm and the managing partner said: "He is bound to be successful because he has successful habits." He worked hard his whole life and had every reason to expect success. But he amounted to nothing because someone shot him in the forehead with a .38 caliber revolver. This example proves that massive cranial injury can ruin even the most successful lives.

Consider, too, a respected office manager with an excellent salary. This man did everything for his company. He gave up personal relationships to make sure his employer profited. He worked nights and weekends as he advanced up the company ladder. Through his childhood, he followed instructions and did everything he was supposed to do. He never rocked the boat; people called him a square, but it never bothered him because he achieved success. But one day on his way to work he tripped over a piece of fruit and fell into the street, where a concrete mixing truck rolled over his head. Once again, massive cranial injury derailed an otherwise successful life.

These examples say nothing about all the potentially successful people who suffer massive cranial injury prior to achieving success. What about the countless young people who study hard for exams, refrain from drugs, avoid peer pressure and go to bed early, only to be shot in the head with rifles? What about the super interns who give up everything for the company and win glowing reviews from supervisors, only to have their brains dashed out by falling cinder blocks?

No matter the circumstances, these examples teach a clear lesson: Avoiding massive cranial injury is a crucial step on the road to success in the United States. While it is essential to learn positive behaviors to achieve success, it is also vital to avoid being fatally struck in the head while practicing those behaviors. After all, a lifetime of hard work, study, high birth and promise can be instantly destroyed by a single bullet to the brain. That is why the most successful people absorb this lesson: You must not only live successfully; you must also avoid massive cranial injury at all costs.

Massive cranial injury is a worse threat to success than distraction or inappropriate workplace behavior. After all, it is possible to rally from distraction or an office faux pas. But it is not possible to rally from having your skull crushed by a concrete mixing truck. A person's career can recover from an embarrassing extramarital affair or a "C+" on an exam. But it cannot recover from a pointblank shotgun blast to the face.

In all these cases, the lesson emerges: The real key to success in America is to avoid massive cranial injury. After all, no person who suffers massive cranial injury will ever achieve success. And any success he has achieved up to that point instantly vanishes. To that extent, massive cranial injury is the worst thing that can happen to a promising career. Interview mistakes, bad resumes, lackluster university performance and even drug abuse do not threaten careers as much as being brutally slammed in the head with a baseball bat.

You can fix a resume. But you can't fix a shattered cranium. And people with shattered craniums do not get promoted or hired.

In conclusion, if you wish to achieve success in America, remember what is important: Avoid massive cranial injury first. The rest is just details. Because even the best career habits can vanish the moment someone cracks your head open.

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HEARTLESS FORTUNATE PRICKS COMMITTED TO SOLVING EVERYONE ELSE'S PROBLEMS WITH CONDESCENDING PLATITUDES AND RUDE QUIPS

POLITICAL PARTIES FOR A CHANGING WORLD

By : Mr. J. Curtis Hinckley, Official Party Spokesman; Ph. D., Yale University (Business Communications); Former Chairman, Conrad, Killrath & Wedgeworth, P.C., A Professional Corporation Serving Professional Corporations in Professional Matters Professionally; Member, The United States Guild of Tax Examiners; Crossword Puzzle Expert; Married; Real Estate Owner (free and clear of all liens and encumbrances); Senior Partner; South Florida Responsibility Association; Untroubled Man.

Some people have it. Some don't. Some people grew up in stable households with good parents. Others frittered away and went off track. Basically, some people have problems and can't move on.

It takes some skill and good fortune to achieve success in America. We are happy to say that we are both skillful and fortunate. We are successful men and women. We never faced life-threatening illnesses, financial misfortunes or even the occasional insult during childhood. Rather, we had it pretty easy all the way through: We got jobs, we advanced, we made money and here we are at the top of the heap. Our parents always helped us. And they didn't die until we were good and ready for them to.

Life is not that difficult as long as problems don't materialize. It takes stability to achieve success, and problems make stability impossible. For example, it's impossible to get good grades all the way through high school, college, professional school and beyond if your mother falls ill and no one can take care of her. And without good grades, you can kiss a good job goodbye. Stability is essential to success. Yet it's so easy to experience problems. But when you have your eyes on the prize, you can't let yourself get bogged down in illnesses, love affairs, obsessions or far-flung emotions. You need to focus in and get the job done.

As successful people who never experienced significant problems, we find it extremely tiresome to hear about people with problems. After all, we made it. We could really care less whether someone else makes it. And in most cases, we are quite certain that other people don't make it because they are just not smart enough to overcome their problems. For a long time, we simply kept to ourselves and enjoyed our success. But we've had enough listening to others whine about their troubles. That is why we came together to form the National Association of Heartless Fortunate Pricks Committed to Solving Everyone Else's Problems with Condescending Platitudes and Rude Quips. If people want to complain about difficulty in their lives, we are ready to help out with glib, dismissive, smug and mean offhand comments.

Look: We don't have anything to worry about. We pay our bills. We get along fine at our jobs. We have stable families. That gives us a unique insight into others' lives. When we see others with problems, we can sit back and identify what's wrong. Then we can pronounce a cursory judgment about what to do. True, not everyone can enjoy a problem-free life. But we are happy to lend our one-line wisdom to everyone who is doomed to struggle in this world.

Let us start with unemployed people who are looking for work. They say they have been searching for months. They say they attend job fairs and troll internet postings. They say they have circulated resumes to hundreds of potential employers. They say that no one is hiring. They say that they are even willing to work for lesser pay and no benefits. They say they can no longer collect State unemployment insurance. They don't know anyone who can find them a job. They are worried to death because they have families to feed and rent to pay.

We have a simple answer for job-seekers: "Get a job." We are Heartless Fortunate Pricks. We are not unemployed. It's too bad that you don't have a job. But hey, you just need to try harder. Just get up and get a job. It's not rocket science. You can do it if you try hard enough. If you've already been trying for over a year, well, sorry. Gotta dig a little deeper there, pal.

Frankly, we find all these complaints so tiresome. After all, we never had to worry about getting a job. We had jobs waiting for us from day one. It is inconceivable to us how a person could not have a job. That is why we say: Just go get a job, already. How hard can it be? For goodness sakes, just go do it.

Let us move on to people with health problems. Some people do not achieve success because they come down with some debilitating illness. Some people get cancer and give up on life. Some people develop mental disorders, like depression and anxiety. Others suffer horrible accidents that leave them paralyzed or maimed. Still others have chronic diabetes, HIV, liver problems, kidney difficulty and even carpal tunnel. No matter what ailment plagues them, their complaint is always the same: I can't achieve my goals because I am sick and I am in pain.

Sick? In pain? So what? Success comes to those who work at it, whether they are sick or not. As Heartless Fortunate Pricks, we have a platitude for these folks: "Keep your chin up." Sure, you might call that a dumb thing to say, but who really cares? We still have our houses and jobs while you're staring death in the face. We even get to have sex four times a week while you're bed-ridden and eating through a nose-tube. Too bad for you. Look, we're trying to help you out here. Just keep your chin up and you'll be fine. You've got nothing to worry about. And for all those people who say they are "depressed," we have something else to say: "It's all in your mind." We don't really understand what you're going through, but from our perspective it all looks pretty silly. Just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and get on with it.

We are healthy. We have really good lives. We don't feel pain every day, nor do we suffer from life-altering disabilities. We have all our limbs and we even urinate comfortably. We don't catch diseases and we are not about to die. We don't even know anyone who suffers from heart trouble. As Heartless Fortunate Pricks, we live in a contented world. That is why we are uniquely situated to pass judgment on your problems. We are pleased to offer you Rude Quips and Condescending Platitudes to help you make it through your adversity.

Next we consider people who claim that "family problems" make it hard for them to cope with everyday life. These problems include abusive husbands who browbeat and whip their wives every night with a belt. Or a mother who struggles to raise 10 mentally-handicapped children without a partner or an income. It might even include a child who grows up in a broken home surrounded by drugs, crime, violence and despair.

These folks say that they are "emotionally disturbed" because they have no "peace at home." Without peace at home, they cannot focus on schoolwork, careers or advancement. Put simply, because they do not have stable family lives, they cannot achieve success.

We have advice for people with "family troubles." To the wife with an abusive husband, we say: "Stand up to him and be tough." To the mother who struggles to raise 10 mentally-handicapped children without a partner or income, we say: "Hold the course; you'll make it." And to the child living in a broken home, we say: "Don't blame your family for your own shortcomings."

In all honesty, we find these "family problems" to be poor excuses for failure in life. Just because a husband abuses his wife does not excuse the wife from earning a living or winning a promotion. A strong woman can persevere through everything, even daily beatings. Success is there for the taking; strong people take it no matter what challenges they face. And just because a mother tries to raise "special needs" kids without an income does not entitle her to sympathy for failure in life. After all, she's healthy and strong. If she really had the desire, she could change diapers, buy clothes, clean the house, manage medications, take the kids to doctor visits during the week, commute, cook meals AND hold down four full-time jobs in two States.

What's stopping her? "I'm so stressed out," she wails. Bullshit. She's just flat-out lazy.

There's nothing wrong with our families. We've never dealt with violence or drug use in the home. We've never had to care for "special needs" kids or mentally-handicapped midgets. We have obedient wives, good kids and plenty of money to pay the bills. Everyone has health insurance in our house. Everyone follows a predictable daily schedule. We know how to live. We don't have "family problems," and they don't distract us from giving our all at work. That is why we simply do not understand how so many people can complain about their "family lives." From our perspective, they just need to dust themselves off and get a grip.

You can solve your problems. In America, it's your responsibility to manage your own life. If you can't hack it, that's your problem. Don't look to others for help. No one has an obligation to help his neighbor in this country. Still, although we are Heartless Fortunate Pricks, we are happy to provide Condescending Platitudes and Rude Quips to help you through your toughest times. We don't claim to understand your issues. But we are prepared to minimalize, trivialize and ridicule them for your own good.

So for the last time, we say to everyone who has problems in the world: "Just get out there, get up, get a job, work harder, move on, feel better and do it right."

Trust us. You'll be fine. There are plenty of people who have it worse than you. But we don't.

OBAMA IS GENETICALLY RELATED TO STALIN, MAO AND CASTRO : I HAVE PROOF

PALIN ON POLICY

Families are very important in America. I, for example, come from a very strong family. Alaskans believe in good family values. That's one of the reasons I entered politics. It saddens me to see declining family values in America. Children have babies out of wedlock. Parents divorce. And relatives abandon each other when one family member suffers a health crisis. Why? Because too many people have ignored traditional family values.

I am glad that I never turned my back on family values. My family is strong. We practice traditional American family values. I come from strong roots. I can prove who my father was. I even know my mother and grandmother. We all believed in the same things: Freedom, liberty, justice, nature, stag hunting, business opportunities, low taxes, gun ownership. We all liked the same things. We even kind of all looked the same, too. Family always gives you away; if you ever doubt who you are, just look at old family pictures and you'll remember where you come from.

Barack Hussein Obama does not believe in family. That is why he is destroying this country. It is no accident that he is a socialist. People from broken families turn into socialists or worse. Sometimes they become intellectuals or terrorists, or even intellectual terrorists. Over the last year, he has made war on traditional American values, like the freedom to buy private health insurance and the freedom to work for little pay. In short, Obama has already struck a grave blow at America's golden virtue: Responsibility. And only the right kind of families can cultivate responsibility.

This is not my grandfather's America. It is not even my mother's America. It is new and shocking. Government is telling everyone what to do. It is taking away people's property. It is sentencing old people to death under Obama's new "rationed" health care system. It is freeing convicted African killers and allowing them to rape white women. It is imposing unfair burdens on credit card companies. It is even paying for people's college education and freeing them from debt.

How could this be happening in America? What happened to our "do-it-yourself-no-help-thank-you" attitude that transformed us from frontiersmen into the greatest Nation on earth? What happened to paying our own way? What happened to me first, you second? Basically, what happened to the families?

Let's look closely at Obama. It is no surprise that he is ruining the country because he does not come from the right kind of family. People did not think that Obama would become a socialist once he won the White House. But I knew better. After all, I have uncovered evidence that decisively proves Obama's socialist ancestry. I hold an Honorary Degree in Investigative Biology from the University of Alaska at Elk's Bush. Using my expertise, I discovered some truly startling facts. Americans have long been worried about Obama's citizenship. But my research shows far more than Obama's lack of citizenship. It shows that he is genetically related to the worst socialists in history. I even have photographs to prove my points.

Let's begin.

Barack Hussein Obama's father was an African. Look at him; it's obvious:

Socialism runs rampant in Africa. Should we be surprised that son followed father? But the trail does not end there. No, Obama's father had an uncle in Southern Russia who was related to notorious Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Family does not lie. Look at the resemblance:

Should we be surprised that Obama is dismantling the free market system? He is related to Joseph Stalin, for goodness sakes!

I wish this were the only bad news I discovered during my research. Unfortunately, it is not. I also found out that Obama's great uncle lived in China. By no small chance, that great uncle was Mao Zedong's cousin. Again, look at the resemblance:
Obama's socialist roots run deep and cross continents. He is related to Mao and Stalin by blood. He is an internationalist by family bond. If ever there were a time for America to stand up against this tyrant, the time is now.

But there is even more. Thanks to help from a prominent Genetics scholar at Elk's Bush, I uncovered another disturbing link in Obama's family tree. Specifically, after proving Obama's definitive relationship to Stalin and Mao, I determined that Obama's great-great-great-grandfather was seized in Africa and sent to the West Indies as a slave. Over the generations, Obama's forefathers intermingled with the local Spanish population in Cuba. One of his descendants is Fidel Castro. Again, let's examine the resemblance:
Can anyone deny the genetic link? I have the records and the photographs to prove that Obama is communist dictator-spawn. This is America. We believe in families, not dictators. And Obama descends from the wrong kind of family, make no mistake about it.

We must take action. Our "President" is related to infamous socialists from three Continents. When he talked about diversity during the campaign last year, this is not the diversity we had in mind. We he talked about international understanding, we had no idea he was the living embodiment of worldwide socialism. If we care about American families, we must stand against Obama. He is not an American. He is a frightening communist-African-Chinese-Cuban-Russian amalgam seething with anti-capitalist venom. He represents everything America detests. We cannot allow him to take a single step further.

This is about families. I care about family because I come from a strong American family. We take our commitments seriously. I refuse to allow Obama to destroy this Nation with his poisonous ancestry. It is my duty to inform the American people about who is really leading them. This is not an American. This is a socialist with bona fide socialist roots. If you see a dog, you can pretty much bet it will act like a dog. That is why Americans need to know about Obama's ancestry. Obama's relatives murdered millions and made war on free market economics worldwide. How can we tolerate a ruler who might do the same here in America? If we lose the free market, what do we have left?

Stand with me against Obama and his socialist pedigree. Obama may have fooled America into thinking he was a pillar of hope against economic despair. But my research shows otherwise. We must band together to stop his socialist machinations before it is too late. In one year, he has already made it more difficult for health insurance companies to deny customers coverage. That is the first step to communism. And if we care about economic freedom, we must act now. Because when insurance companies are not free to act as they please, we have fallen into socialism.

Let's tell this Maoist Stalinist Castro-African bandit that we don't appreciate socialism in America. America is for American families, not your kind of families.

"A FAMILY OWNED BUSINESS" IS STILL A BUSINESS; AND IT'S NOT YOUR FAMILY

OESTERHOUDT STRIKES

Corporations are private profit machines. In prior essays, I noted that corporations are “legal entities” that pool money and labor for a single reason: To generate returns for shareholders. They concentrate management authority in a “Board of Directors” that makes “prudent decisions” solely to benefit the shareholders. Directors must observe a “duty of loyalty” to the corporation, meaning all their actions must serve the entity. Directors, then—as well as corporate employees and officers—are simply glorified servants. Like vassals in medieval times, they are “duty-bound” to support their corporate lords. They must not think about themselves. Their time belongs to the corporation and the shareholders who own it. The corporation pays them “compensation” for their pains; but they do not share in the overall profit unless they own stock. In short, true “business corporations” channel individual self-interest and multiply it a thousandfold. There is no room for altruism, compassion or charity. In fact, corporate leaders who spend money on others can be legally sanctioned. See, e.g., Dodge v. Ford Motor Co., 204 Mich. 459 (1919).

Corporations act largely in silence. Not many people know how they actually work. In fact, most people look upon them with some respect. After all, they look official. They own properties all over the country. Their employees wear uniforms. They have recognizable logos. Everyone can identify corporate goods, like Mercedes cars and Whopper® sandwiches. In short, major corporations play a visible role in people’s lives. They wield almost as much influence as the State. But this is the central error: Corporations have nothing to do with the government. While the State accords them special legal status, they are still private entities. They exist to sustain private enterprise. They owe no duties to anyone except their own shareholders; and their shareholders want profits. In that sense, corporations have a duty to act selfishly. There is nothing noble or glorious about their motives.

Yet corporations must cultivate a good image to win customers. If people did not to some extent “trust” a corporation, they would not buy from it. And no corporation can make a profit without customers. In that light, corporations cannot blatantly reveal that they just want to make profits. They need to advertise in such a way as to suggest that they “care” about their customers. They need to appear that they care, even though they only have one legal duty: To enrich the shareholders. This is no easy feat. After all, people do not like unabashed selfishness. So how do corporations mask their true intentions while convincing customers that they are “trustworthy” and “caring?”

I will not discuss every possible corporate ploy intended to fool customers into thinking that “corporations care.” That would take much too long. Rather, I want to discuss a specific corporate practice, namely: Advertising the company’s “family roots.” Many corporations do this. On trucks, billboards and even television commercials, they proudly claim: “We are Blah-Blah-Blah Corporation, a Family-Owned Business,” or “XYZ Inc. Family-Owned Since 1980.”

In effect, these companies want to associate themselves with the concept “family.” Why? In my view, it is quite insidious. After all, we all have a tender place in our hearts for own families. Even if we hate our siblings and our parents, we nonetheless grew up with them. We never completely forget them. On a very profound psychological level, we depend on our families for our identities, our names and even meaning in life. No matter how much we think Mom screwed us up, we still love Mom on some level. And when we think “family,” we think intimacy, familiarity, comfort, love, mutual caring, compassion, trust and “home.” This is not to say that all families nurture these positive things. Indeed, family life often brings great unhappiness and discord. But the fact remains that the word carries a generally positive connotation. No matter how bad our own family relationships may be, our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters know us and somehow understand us. We are “linked by blood.” We are not “just strangers.”

Companies exploit these associations when they paint themselves as “family businesses.” They attempt to forge a link between their private, undifferentiated profit-seeking and the positive, “caring” complex inherent in “the family concept.” They attempt to lull customers into thinking that they will not be “just another customer;” rather, they will be like a “family member” who deserves trust, respect, love and caring. These companies want to distinguish themselves from “regular corporations” that do not involve “families.” Those corporations are “cruel, cold and uncaring” because they are not “family-like;” they are just “companies” that “don’t care.” By contrast, a “family business” wants you to think that they care about you. It wants to believe that you are “special” because “families care,” while “regular businesses” do not.

But this is all a naked fraud. It does not matter who owns a corporation; it is still a corporation. Corporations exist to enrich private shareholders, whether those shareholders are total strangers or whether they are blood relatives. Put another way, it is irrelevant whether a “family” owns the company because it is not your family. Only your family cares about you and your needs. The family that owns the corporation will look to its own members, not you. It merely wants you to think that it cares about you by tying its name to the concept “family.” Advertisers know how to exploit average people’s mental processes. They know that the word “family” carries unusually hypnotic power. It is no accident that modern psychiatry dwells largely on “family development” and “family trauma” to identify psychological problems. Our family lives play a significant role in forming our personalities and character. Families nurture—and corrupt—our instincts for love, caring and emotion. Companies know that “family rhetoric” packs a devastating subconscious punch. That is why they attempt to link their image to “the family.”

How crass is this? How shameless? What does petty commerce have to do with our unique family life? Can companies really stoop this low? Yes, they can. In fact, they have a legal duty to resort to any means—ethical or legal, unethical or illegal—that generate more profits than costs. If triggering a fallacious connection between “family caring” and “corporate service” generates more profit than it would without the connection, then a company will adopt it. It might be utterly groundless and tasteless, but good reason and taste mean nothing next to the bottom line. In fact, if shareholders learned that the company made less money without the “family business” tag than it did with the tag, it could hold the Directors liable for failing in their fiduciary duties to them. In the free market, companies compete for customers and profits. They need to be inventive in order to obtain an edge. In this competition, delicate tastes will not prevail. Rather, only the strong survive. And the strong are not afraid to resort to any means needed to win the competition, tasteless or not. If that means falsely insinuating that the business is “one, big caring family,” then the company will insinuate it.

This is not just hot air. Many extremely large companies claim that they are “family businesses,” not just mom-and-pop shops in small towns. Du Pont Corporation claims to be a “family business.” So does Disney. These are not “close-knit, caring organizations.” These are ruthless capitalist titans who would sooner run over their competition than show mercy or compassion. Such ruthlessness is not thematically consistent with the concept “family,” yet these moguls do their best to cultivate a “family image” in order to better pursue their fundamentally “un-family-like” private ambitions. In essence, it makes no more sense to trust a “family business” than it does to trust a “Fortune 500 Company.” They are all the same because they all seek the same thing: Private shareholder enrichment at any cost. Self-interest dictates a corporation’s actions, not family-like compassion or mercy. If a corporation is a “family business,” it does not treat its customers or its competitors any better than the cruelest industrialist would. In that sense, “family businesses” only act like “families” with their own shareholders. The family gets the profit and the riches, not the outside world. This is the central irony in the whole “family business” fraud: Corporations want you to think that you are “part of the family;” but in fact you are simply paying to keep their family wealthy. You are not “part of the family.” You are an outsider. Again, if it is not your family, you should not expect it to treat you like a family member.

It is difficult for me to write about corporations without mentioning cynicism. Cynicism provides an ideal analytical framework to understand corporate action. After all, cynicism assumes that self-interest motivates all human behavior. Cynicism immediately penetrates corporate activity because corporations institutionally enshrine self-interest. Shareholders pool their money in a corporation to advance their own self-interest for minimal personal risk. A corporation exists to enrich its shareholders, not others. This is institutional selfishness; it provides fertile ground for cynical analysis. In fact, it would be illegal for a corporation to act altruistically because altruism implies acting for another’s benefit, not your own. When corporations act for others, their shareholders sue them for deviating from the “self-interest principle.” Against this background, it is possible to deconstruct every corporate ploy and expose its selfish roots. In virtually every case, when a corporation tries to “appear caring,” cynicism instructs us to mercilessly doubt its motives. Put simply, corporations do not care about others. To that extent, when they adopt measures intended to “appear caring,” a cynical explanation will quickly reveal the true motive.

Applying cynicism, we can easily deconstruct the “family business” ploy. Now, if we assume that all corporations have a legal duty to enrich their shareholders, we can also assume that all their actions will advance that duty. Enriching shareholders requires business success. Business success, in turn, requires loyal and trusting customers who funnel money into the corporation. It is not easy to convince undifferentiated customers to fork over cash, especially when competitors offer the same goods or services. Thus, success requires some gimmick, some special “catch” that convinces customers to choose one business over another. Customers must have some mental connection to the corporation that distinguishes it from the competition. Claiming that a company is a “family business” amid ostensibly “cruel competitors” can forge the necessary “mental connection.” After all, “family” carries a positive, “caring” connotation. An average customer would respect that connotation when choosing between undifferentiated commercial competitors. That extra “zing” might increase the chances that a new customer would choose the “family business,” leading to increased sales, more money and more “shareholder enrichment.” In the end, it does not matter whether the company treats the new customer “like family.” All that matters is that the customer spent his money with the company, not the competition. That fulfills the core corporate mission. The shareholders win. They advance their self-interest by exploiting “family” appeal with average customers.

Does it matter whether the company treats the customer “like family?” Certainly not. From a cynical perspective, it does not matter whether a company means what it says. It does not matter that the method is dishonest or even facetious, because results matter more than methods. When analyzing corporate action, I have learned to expect dishonorable, unethical conduct. After all, corporate action is all about the profit. If an unethical method wins more profit than an ethical one, a corporation must adopt the unethical method in order to please its shareholders (provided, of course, that the unethical method does not generate costs down the road). There is no honor in corporate practice. When results matter, methods become irrelevant. There is no room for principle. Corporations want results, not the psychic satisfaction that flows from vindicating impractical abstractions such as “honesty.” As long as the company appears honest to the extent necessary to maintain customer trust—and keeps healthy profit levels—there is no need to actually be honest. This is dishonorable. But it is also practical. And in corporate life, practicality beats abstraction every time.

From a principled perspective, a private business corporation cannot in good conscience claim that it is a “family.” Private business corporations are not “caring institutions.” They do not show love. They do not raise children. They do not nurture tenderness or show mercy to relatives. Rather, they are legal entities dedicated solely to their shareholders’ private profit interests. To suggest, then, that a company will “treat others like family members” is hypocritical in the extreme. Commerce is war. It is a war for profits, customers, market share and success. Commerce is no place for warmhearted “family feelings.” If a company treated its customers and competitors “like family,” it would fail almost instantaneously. There is no room to be tender or merciful in commerce. A “good corporation” wins accounts and collects its money. By contrast, a “good family” forgives its wayward sons and let them off the hook with a kiss. Families forgive, forget and nurture. Corporations pursue, win and collect—by contract and suit if necessary. These are not consistent ideologies. In that light, it is both misleading and fraudulent to equate “corporate values” with “family values.”

We should expect both deception and fraud from corporations because deception and fraud reveal dishonor. Honor means adhering to principles, no matter the circumstances. Honor means suffering for ideas, even when abandoning those ideas might abrogate the suffering. Corporations, however, cannot be honorable. They must win profits. That means “going with the flow” and breaking principles when necessary. In short, corporations must be “flexible,” not “honorable.” It is honorable to “tell the truth” and “to be honest.” But if honesty and truth endanger results, a corporate leader can be neither honest nor truthful. He has a duty to enrich his shareholders by any cost-effective means necessary. That is why he resorts to misleading characterizations, such as calling his for-profit entity “A Family Business.” If corporate leaders were honorable, they would refuse to equate their quest for private profit with tender family emotions. Yet they do not refuse. They serve their shareholders because they have a duty to make them rich. If calling the business “family-like” wins profits, they have no choice but to be dishonorable.

In the world of corporate morality, deception and fraud are not ethical transgressions. They are “calculated measures intended to win maximum profit for minimal risk.” A good corporation knows how to be unethical without ever arousing suspicion. Conscience and honor play no role in this analysis. It is unfortunate. But it is a jungle out there; and commerce is commerce.