Silicon Valley hubris watch, Mary Meeker edition
blogs.reuters.com
blogs.reuters.com
In general and ignoring party affiliations, why wouldn't we want a successful business person running for office? They have experience in hiring people and tax policies. Who is not full of hubris when they run for office?
Once of the many problems with Medicare has been fraud. The government has not dealt with it like a business would. The government doesn't have the same incentive. It seems that if the government had a lot more business like tendencies in its governance, it might be a lot more efficient. The reasons businesses exist are that they are a pretty efficient organizational tool (not perfect, but nothing is).
The prejudices laid out in that second paragraph really make it hard to really look at what the rest of the article says. He may be right in this instance about this report, but it seems like an opinion piece of poor value.
In government the goal is to serve your people. If you're in government and lose sight of this goal, then you end up like Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gadafi etc :-) All of them created value for their "shareholders", be they foreign oil companies or the domestic businesses that were run by the local oligarchy.
All this being said, I still want to know the qualifications of a person who should run for office that isn't seen as hubris by this author. It is a serious sign of problems and out of touch politics when we have a professional political class divorced from participation in commerce. If a government leadership has no or little understanding of commerce than how the heck can they make rules that economically work? It is like asking a non-techincal manager about coding standards.
Here's the thing about your second paragraph: There is self-confidence, which is an absolute requirement if you want to start/run a business, a political campaign or even a war.
Then there is hubris. Hubris is when you haven't bothered to vote (the most basic civic duty) for 28 years, and then run for Governor of California based on the fact that you've been CEO of a Silicon Valley company. To me this is worse than asking a non-technical manager about writing coding standards.
Its like a non-technical manager TELLING you how to write a coding standard.
I get your definition of hubris, and go along with that in one case, but read the writing in the article makes it very much sound like all business people should stay out of politics. I am very sure that is not and has been shown to be a bad idea.
I think business people should definitely be involved in politics. I think everyone should be involved in politics, as a matter of fact. Democracy is a wonderful thing.
But I don't think being successful at business automatically means you're going to be successful in politics as well.