Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Starmer Resigns as British Prime Minister: A Post-Mortem

Two years after winning in a landslide, with his Labour group being given its largest majority in Parliament in decades, PM Starmer found himself polling as the least favored PM on record and was forced by the political reality of his political group to resign. Why? I contend that the actual reason, behind and obfuscated by the headlines, is rather basic, or fundamental.

Unlike Tony Blair, Starmer did not join an unpopular foreign war, and unlike Boris Johnson, Starmer did not hold parties during a pandemic. Neither did Starmer ruin an economy; the secession of the E.U. state of Britain could be blamed for that. According to CNN, Starmer’s “missteps were more mundane: an attempt to make wealthier pensioners pay more to heat their homes; a plan to cut some benefits to disabled people; accepting freebies; and, . . . a scandal over his appointment of Jeffrey Epstein-linked politician Peter Mandelson to the role of UK ambassador.”[1] Even though such policy “missteps alone cannot explain Starmer’s fall,” according to CNN, the American media company conveniently ignores a glaring, and perhaps the glaring, reason for Starmer’s stunning unpopularity.

It turns out that Starmer, who is Jewish, exploited a personal conflict of interest not only in standing up for Israel as it cut off power and water in Gaza, but also in having pro-Gaza protesters in Britain arrested as if they were aiding and abetting terrorists. Enabling a holocaustic genocide and impairing democracy at home are damning moves that the American media company utterly ignores in its post-mortem of Starmer. The combination of defending an apartheid state engaged in decimating Gazan cities and treating protesting British citizens as criminals rather than as heroes for standing up for other people’s human rights resulted in the prime minister falling like a rock in a pond in terms of popularity. When John Kennedy was campaigning for the U.S. presidency in 1960, not a few Americans feared that he, a Roman Catholic, would do the bidding of a foreign state—Vatican City—at the expense of American interests. The fear turned out to be overblown, but Starmer’s unfettered defense of Israel as it was destroying populated cities in Gaza arguably evinces the exploitation of a personal conflict of interest because Starmer is Jewish. This is not to say that every Jew is a Zionist. Noam Chomsky, for example, publicly stated that Israel no longer had the right to exist. U.S. Sen. Burnie Sanders lambasted Israel for its crimes against humanity. In utter contrast, Starmer was ignoring international law abroad and democratic principles of free speech at home. This is why he was forced out by his own political group. That CNN is silent on this rather obvious point speaks volumes about the relationship between giant American media companies and American foreign policy.

 


1. Christian Edwards, “Why Is Starmer Resigning, Two Years after Winning in a Landslide,” CNN.com, June 22, 2026.


Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Security Council Vetoes Styme the UN: Oil in the Strait of Hormuz

The United Nations was intended to obviate war, and failing in that mission, at least to safeguard economic trade especially if doing so staves off anticipated belligerent action by countries seeking to restore compromised trade. In 2026, when Iran’s stoppage of the one-fifth of the world’s oil that would otherwise go through the Strait of Hormuz triggered a military threat by the U.S., Russia and China vetoes a resolution in the Security Council aimed at reopening the strait and thereby obviating an escalation in the military fighting between the U.S. and Iran. Because not even a lopsided vote in favor—11 in favor, two against, and two abstentions—could activate the U.N. in its principle role of peremptorily obviating war by protecting trade, we can conclude that the organization had indeed effectively collapsed and could not be reformed from within, given that five members of the Security Council retained veto power. Meanwhile, military aggressors in the world were able to fill in the power-void left by the collapsing post-World War II world order to render might-makes-right the status quo in the twenty-first century.

At the time, an E.U. media outlet opined that it was doubtful that even if the resolution had been adopted, it “would have impacted the war” because the wording had been “significantly weakened in a bid to get Russia and China to abstain rather than veto it.”[1] In other words, the existence of the veto power in the Security Council was responsible for the impotence of the UN in protected trade and reducing pressures for war. Just that “Iran’s chokehold during the war . . . sent energy prices soaring around the world” should have been enough of a justification for UN protective action in the strait, but not even that rationale was enough for the UN to be able to use its own forces to protect oil tankers through the strait.[2]

Because higher oil prices were in Russia’s economic and thus military interests as that country continued its four-year invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s use of its veto exploited a conflict of interest, and yet the UN had no means of blocking such a use of a veto-power even though Russia’s invasion violated the UN’s charter, which bars offensive military action being inflicted by one country on another country. In other words, the UN could not even stand up to a blatant conflict of interest whose exploitation enabled further violations of the UN’s own charter.

With Israel continuing its holocaustic genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, the U.S. having invaded Venezuela to capture its president, and Russia still invading Ukraine, the interest of the global family of nations in establishing an international governmental organization without vetoes and with its own enforcement power was so clear that the lack of any such formative action can itself be reckoned as signaling a problem. In other words, knowing that the post-1945 global order was collapsing while military aggressors were getting away with establishing might-makes-right as the new global default, governments nonetheless failed to actively create a new order institutionally so that could be the new default. That the very concept of international law was rapidly being treated as mere guideline rather than law demonstrates just how serious the UN’s de facto collapse was, and yet not even an informal coalition of governments seriously proposed an international institution—whether an organization or government—to pick up the slack and counter Putin, Netanyahu, and Trump. My point is that the inaction of the bystander governments is itself a choice, which could have been different, especially given the proliferation of war crimes and crimes against humanity being incurred at the time. The political inertia internationally favored malicious national leaders and the false belief that the UN was still operational as per its mission.  



Saturday, March 23, 2024

Democracy Waning in Former French Colonies in Africa

The subversion of democracy in former French colonies in Africa stymies the African Union from developing from a mere confederation, wherein all of the governmental sovereignty resides with the states, to modern federalism, whose chief characteristic is dual sovereignty. There is good reason for the requirement in the U.S. that the states be republics rather than dictatorships, for the latter would be more likely to ignore the federal jurisdiction within their respective states.

As of 2024, the president of Senegal “tried to cancel an election. In Niger, a military coup d’état toppled an elected president, who eight months later [was] still imprisoned in the presidential palace. In Chad, the leading opposition politician was killed in a shootout with security forces. . . . In Tunisia, once the only democratic success story of the Arab Spring rebellions, the president [was] steering the state toward increasing autocracy.”[1] With such political upheaval going on at the state level, any discussions at the AU level on whether the states should delegate any governmental sovereignty would only be stymied and thus useless. This in turn kept the AU impotent in being able to act as a check against tyranny at the state level. This vicious cycle cannot, I contend, be totally blamed on the former colonial status and the ongoing interventions of France, though both have been playing a secondary role.

To the extent that French governmental pressure led the former colonies to mimic the French system of government wherein the office of president is strong, France is culpable in inhibiting democracy in Africa. “After they won independence from France in the 1960s, nascent states modeled their constitutions on France’s, concentrating power in presidents’ hands.”[2] This statement implies that the former colonies wanted a system of government with a strong unitary leader. That the indigenous political culture in Africa emphasized the tribal chief figure likely figured prominently in the decisions to emulate the French system, rather than it being imposed from France.

To be sure, “France maintained a web of business and political ties with its former colonies” that has involved “propping up corrupt governments”—including autocratic ones.[3] The salience of news reports from Africa on France24 and TV5Monde alone attest to France’s continuing interest in Africa. France could arguably make a difference in reducing political instability and enhancing democracy in the former colonies were autocratic rulers and coups discouraged rather than encouraged. Perhaps French government officials fear, and thus seek to prevent, the potential rival power of the AU that could manifest were political stability improved at the state level. Such a narrow perspective would differ significantly from the American position that a stronger union in Europe is in America’s interest, especially considering the cost to America in having fought two World Wars in part in Europe.

Even if France has been propping up cozy autocratic rule in the former colonies, the disillusionment with democracy has been stronger in the former French colonies than in other African states, according to Boniface Dulani, a director at Afrobarometer.[4] “While a majority of Africans polled [in 2024] still say they prefer democracy to other forms of government, support for it is declining in Africa, where approval of military rule is on the rise—it has doubled since 2000. That shift is happening much faster in former French colonies than in former British ones.”[5] Such sentiment may be a preferment for political stability precisely because of the extent of political instability in the former French colonies. In an indigenous soil of tribal chieftains, the allure of a “strong man” to restore and maintain political stability could easily thrive even though it would come at the cost of political freedom. Perhaps in the former British colonies, with the notable exception of Sudan, there is less reason to bear the cost of foregone political freedom. “Eight of the nine successful coups in Africa [between 2000 and 2024] have been in former French colonies.”[6] The coups themselves reinforce the allure of autocratic rule as providing for political stability, even though such stability can only be until the ground shifts again enough for the next coup. This cycle too is difficult to break. In the meantime, the AU has been stuck as a mere confederation, powerless to provide a breakthrough. 

It is not for nothing that the founders of both the U.S. and E.U. emphasized that the states be democratic republics. This lesson finds harder ground where the historical culture is not in line with democracy. So perhaps the quest for the AU might be how to go from being a confederation to embrace modern, dual-sovereignty, federalism by making it in the interest of state-level dictators even though a system of modern federalism would include viable constraints of the power of the states. Delaying the constraints so the current dictators would not face federal strictures would be key, as well as the inevitable political deal-making that is basic to any political animal.


1. Ruth Maclean, “Democracy Teetering in African Countries Once Ruled by France,” The New York Times, March 23, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.


Friday, September 21, 2018

China or USA: Which Will Rule Trade?

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced at its meeting in November 2012 that it would host negotiations among its members on “a sweeping trade pact that,” according to the New York Times, “would include China.” The trade agreement would include not only the ten countries that are in the association, but also six other countries that have free-trade agreements with the association. In addition to China, those countries include Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. Half of the world’s population would be included in the pact. Notably absent is the United States. This is no accident, as the Obama administration’s own proposal for an eleven-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership excludes China. In other words, the contending proposals may be more about a “control battle” between two contending empires—the United States and China—than anything else. Moreover, which proposal succeeds could say something about whether China succeeds the United States as the hegemonic super-power of the twenty-first century.
Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao: A contest of wills at the East Asia Summit in 2012.   Jason Reed/Reuters
That the immediate issue was that of China’s inclusion or exclusion can be gleamed from Barak Obama’s statement during one of the presidential debates in 2012. “We’re organizing trade relations with countries other than China so that China starts feeling more pressure about meeting basic international standards.” The inclusion of basic can be read as a slight against China. However, that protecting state-run enterprises as done by China would continue to be allowed under ASEAN’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership suggests that what the U.S. takes to be settled in terms of what constitutes the basics of international trade may not have been so settled after all. China could point to U.S. companies being able to deduct expenses on their income tax forms as a form of government aid to the home team. Since at least the mercantilist era in the seventeenth century, governments have carried out industrial policies designed to profit domestic companies and increase tax revenue. Laissez-faire-based trade may not be realistic, considering the myriad ways in which governments interact with business. Regulation itself, in being of a strategic to some firms more than others, could have a differential impact on domestic and foreign firms. It is unrealistic to assume that governments would stop regulating just so the trade is “fair” as well as “free.”
As the twenty-first century was coming into its own, two major economic powers in the world were contending not only for economic dominance, but political hegemony as well. Would it be another American century, or would power follow economic growth over to Asia? The “control battle” itself ostensibly about ordering trade alliances could be an indication that power was about to shift on a massive scale in terms of which economic power would become the definitive superpower.

Source:

Jane Perlez, “Asian Nations Plan Trade Bloc That, Unlike U.S.’s, Invites China,” The New York Times, November 21, 2012.  

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Autocratic Regimes: Subject to the Domino Effect?

"In Beirut, gunfire broke out and crowds of people waved Egyptian flags. In Yemen, they gathered in front of the Egyptian Embassy chanting, 'Wake up rulers, Mubarak fell today.' In Gaza, they fired shots in the air and set off fireworks. . . . [However,] in a telling sign of the divide between the rulers and the ruled, the region’s leaders, presidents and monarchs remained largely silent." This depiction by The New York Times of ripple effects across the Middle East in the wake of the resignation of Egypt's Mubarak in February, 2011 intimated the hoped-for and feared possibility that the popular unrest could spread.  Moreover, the entire world, which had been been glued to the events unfolding in Cairo, wondered if a domino effect might be in store in countries under autocratic rule. Indeed, The New York Times wrote of a possible domino effect quite explicitly: "The popular uprising that started . . . in Tunisa had claimed its second autocratic government, this time in the largest country in the Arab world. With more protests planned in coming days, some governments were clearly worried they could be next." But do autocratic governments fall like dominos?  That is, is revolution contagious? Fawaz Traboulsi, a prominent Lebanese writer and columnist, thought so in the days following Mubarak's resignation. “All the regimes are shaking now . . . They are becoming more and more fragile. This is just the beginning.” In Bahrain, King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa apparently thought so too, for he ordered the equivalent of $2,650 be given to every Bahraini family a few days before a planned "Day of Rage" protest. “Arab people discovered their ability to make change,” said Nabeel Rajab, a human rights activist in Bahrain. “And with Egypt in the leadership once again, the change will reach all the Arab world.” In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced he would suspend constitutional amendments that allow him to remain in his office for life. He also raised salaries for the military and civil servants and cut income taxes in half. In Algeria, the government promised to lift the state of emergency that had been in effect since 1992. To be sure, nineteen years is a rather long time for an emergency.  Such efforts can be likened to building up wetlands or widening a beach to take the wind out of the hurricane out at sea should it hit. In other words, it appears that there was "revolution watch" in effect for the Middle East in the wake of the fall of the Egyptian regime. One might reasonably question, however, whether revolutions are contagious.

It could be that autocracy itself had been weakened by the success of the protests in Egypt.  On the other hand, there had been revolutions before and dictatorship was not evicerated from the face of the earth. The belief that the Tunesian and Egyptian revolutions were the start of a wave that would flood all autocratic powers in the Middle East (or the world) might also consider that even autocratic states differ in their respective internal conditions. To use the hurricane analogy, some beaches are better protected than others. If the unrest in Tunesia and Egypt were linked in such a way that other countries could be impacted internally, the ensuing domino effect could perhaps be compared to that among Wall Street banks in September 2008.  The collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch as independent or viable going concerns contained a momentum that was beginning to bring down Morgan Stanley and threaten even Goldman Sachs when the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs at Treasury effectively pushed for the construction of a fortified sand-dune (TARP) a.k.a. an infusion of funds into the remaining banks from the U.S. Government and the Federal Reserve.  As a result, the force of the strengthening winds ceased to intensify and began to diminish, leaving the economy in a long rainy season (i.e., a recession and a subsequent nearly jobless recovery).

In the wake of the fall of the Egyptian regime, were the other regimes in the Middle East like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs after Lehman Brothers declared bankrupcy?  In other words, are autocratic regimes subject to a "run on the bank" in another? If so, there would still be a notable difference between the big banks and the governments.  Namely, the banks were deemed too big to fail, while the autocratic rulers were deemed too powerful to rule. That is to say, the continued viability of the Wall Street pillars was deemed essential to the world economy, while it was thought in the wake of the Egyptian regime of Mubarak that the world was better off less one autocratic regime. Hence there would not be likely to be a TARP program arranged to prop up dictators. Even with this difference noted, I contend that both big banks and big dictators are too big to exist in a world that values freedom and individual rights. Perhaps we ought to have been cheering the domino effect on Wall Street just as we cheered the fall of the Tunesian and Egyptian dictators. In both cases, destabilization that could lead to the collapse of the global economy and civic order would of course need to be avoided.  However, I contend that the U.S. Government could have intervened to maintain order on Wall Street by assisting as the big banks split into pieces, none of which being too big to fail and thus more in the public interest than retaining the big banks as such.  In the case of public autocratic regimes, their demise and replacement can typically be handled domestically, as in the cases of Tunesia and Egypt, rather than by an international organization such as the U.N.

In general terms, the "run on the bank" in Tunesia and Egypt may or may not be contagious in its nature, yet a consideration of the possibility of a domino effect can remind us of the domino effect that we witnessed in September of 2008 on Wall Street. Making this connection might prompt us to ask whether autocratic governments and big banks aren't both too big to exist. In other words, the collapse of one badly run bank after another and the subsequent need to deal with the question of such banks as going concerns can perhaps be likened to the collapse of one badly run government after another.  Was the world finally noticing around the end of the first decade (and the beginning of the second) of the twenty-first century that enormous concentrations of private capital (and thus power) and of public autocratic authority were not necessarily givens, and thus could, and perhaps should, be taken down? In other words, were long-standing givens finally seen as replacable?  The world was stunned when huge investment banks that had been around for more than a century were suddenly collapsing, just as the world was stunned when the government of the largest Middle Eastern country suddenly fell after two weeks of popular protests. Pillars, even those that are thought vital, can indeed fall, and the world can discover through the experiences that they are not essential--and they might even be bad for the public good. Surely this is the sense of the free world concerning autocratic governments, yet we are less convinced concerning the danger in continuing to allow banks too big to fail to continue to exist as they have for decades. In both cases, the domino effect may be natural and good, provided it is managed so public order does not collapse in the process. 


Saturday, March 18, 2017

European Officials at the G20 Grapple with a New American Trading Position: Beyond the Joint Communiqué

It is perhaps only natural---only human—for us to take ourselves and our produced artifacts too seriously. Diplomats and other government officials, for example, fret arduously over mere words. When those words are etched in governmental or treaty parchment, the effort is understandable. The flaw of excess is evident in all the time and effort that go into the joint communiques of international conferences and meetings. I submit that the real politic at such occasions is much more significant even if nothing shows from it for some time.
At the March 18, 2017 meeting of the Group of 20, which includes the E.U. and U.S., the joint statement “became an unlikely focus of controversy” issuing in “a tortured compromise stating, in effect, that trade is a good thing.”[1] I submit that the use of such language is spurious—certainly much less than the attendees and even their principals back home supposed. The real politic was instead that the U.S. was “overturning long-held assumptions about international commerce,” and such transformational change takes time even just to register in minds ensconced in the status quo. That is to say, the real shift in power would need to play out in actual negotiations on trade, rather than in how to word a meeting’s joint statement.

A European official, Wolfgang Schauble, perhaps straining at the meeting to understand the new American position. (source: NYT)

“We thought that it was very important for the communiqué to reflect what we discussed here,” Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, said at the time.[2] He added that the historical language was not relevant. I submit that neither was it important that the joint statement reflect what was actually discussed, for such discussions—laying out the initial bargaining positions for upcoming negotiations—had legitimate importance. Yet even such importance was only as “the first shots,” for the true importance lie in the arduous negotiations to come, for the tyranny of the status quo never gives up without a struggle. At that G20 meeting, the American government’s “lack of reverence for existing norms and treaties” was “particularly unsettling to the change-averse Europeans.”[3] It is precisely such a struggle that is so important—for real shifts in power must somehow be accommodated or defeated. In relative terms, the importance of what to hand to the press after an initial meeting is but a napkin dwarfed by the real politics underneath.
Therefore, we need not be distraught that the best the Group of 20 could come up with on that Saturday was this: “We are working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies.”[4] Such an obvious statement is worth only scant time. Much more important were efforts of the Europeans to understand—in the sense of comprehending—just what the new American perspective was, for something new that does not fit within the existing modus operendi takes effort to be understood, and only from this basis can real negotiations begin.


1. Jack Ewing, “U.S. Breaks With Allies Over Trade Issues Amid Trump’s ‘America First’ Vows,” The New York Times, March 18, 2017.
2.  Ibid.
3.  Ibid.
4.  Ibid.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

On the Cruelty of Gadhafi's Libyan Troops from a Nietzschean Perspective

Gadhafi, or any tyrant who violates the human rights of citizens, can be reckoned as weak rather than strong from a Nietzschean standpoint. Such an analysis could embolden (i.e. awaken) protesters around the world who remain under the subterfuge of a ruler's enforcement of his or her assumed dominance.

USA Today reports that “(t)roops loyal to Moammar Gadhafi may be torturing and executing rebel prisoners.”[1] This is according to human rights workers and physicians near the front lines. Such treatment would constitute war crimes under the Geneva Convention. Physicians said the bullet wounds on one man's body weren't meant to kill, but to torture. "When you put a gun to his head, that's execution," said Mohammed Hussain, the head of intensive care at a hospital near the front lines. "When you shoot him here and here and here, that's something else. That's torture. They want him to feel the pain."[2] This last remark struck me as particularly revealing.

What sort of mentality derives a feeling of pleasure from perceiving another person in pain? To what extent is it the other person feeling the pain that is pleasurable to the person watching? Alternatively, the inflicting of the pain could be pleasurable. The inflicting pleasure for the inflictor might involve the pleasure of having power, as in having control of another person against the other person’s will. Such a will to power is a principal motivator, according to Nietzsche. He avers that human beings are primarily motivated to feel the pleasure that comes with exercising power. Yet such pleasure is in the exercise of one’s strength rather than in cruelty itself.  It is the weak, who, in being driven to dominate beyond their innate strength, delight in cruelty as a means to enforce their domination. In other words, the weak who have an irresistible urge to dominate have to instill (or inflict) their dominance because they are not strong and thus naturally to be respected as powers.

Therefore, the troops loyal to Gadhafi were displaying their condition of weakness rather than their strength by devoting time and energy to being cruel.  With the strong, damage is incidental to the charge rather than intended; the strong relish their experience of strength in conquering and therefore they are not interested in cruelty.  That is to say, harm is a byproduct of the vanquishing by the strong, as the latter conquer out of their overflowing confidence of strength. This can perhaps be thought of in terms of stepping outside in the cold after building up a sweat from exercise—the excess heat radiates outward from one’s body such that one does not even feel the cold air. What is the cold to me?  Similarly, what are the parasites to me who fall by the wayside as I take the village?  Any intent to be cruel to a parasite would be a waste or diversion from the strong vanquisher’s self-confident feeling of power that naturally issues out in his or her strength. Only weakness with a relentless instinct to dominate would be oriented to cruelty as a means, for the feeling of pleasure of strength is not available or realizable.

For example, "Col. Gadhafi's militias are brutal," said Mustafa El Gheriany, media liaison for the Transitional National Committee according to USA Today. "They did that probably on purpose to scare our young men, to show them that they are not taking prisoners.”[3] This motivation would be an alternative to simply wanting to inflict pain or to see another person feel it. Even so, the use of cruelty as a means is ultimately to impose one’s dominance, which means that the person’s strength is not sufficient. In other words, the person using cruelty to send a message has an urge to feel more pleasure from power than his or her weakness can proffer in itself.

Essentially then, human rights advocates point to the tactics whereby the weak who suffer from a hypertrophic drive to dominate seek to enforce, or take, beyond their native pith. This investigation can lead to the following questions. Why is it that certain persons of weak constitutions seek to dominate nonetheless, rather than simply to be content with whatever pleasure naturally issues from the power in the strength they do have? Furthermore, is dictatorship as a form of government a weak form in that autocrats do not simply lead, but are almost invariably oriented to efforts to enforce their dominance by intentionally inflicting pain on protesters?  It would be ironic were unarmed protesters in the streets stronger than the rulers whose dominance is being questioned or repudiated.  Indeed, such repudiation strikes at the core of the effort of the weak to dominate; hence such violence as was evinced by Gadhafi should be no surprise.

To the weak who are driven to dominate, the refusal of others to acknowledge the imposition or enforcement of their claim must be utterly intolerable. “How dare they!” the weak dominator is apt to exclaim even though the strong naturally rebuff the pretentions of the weak.  In fact, Nietzsche thought it remarkable that the weak are able to hoodwink the strong into taking the autocratic enforcement mechanisms seriously.  In the case of the mass protests, enough fortitude among enough unarmed protesters could simply overflow the boundaries invented by the tyrants. Were the people itself mobilized, the autocrat might realize that were the entire populous killed, he would have no one to dominate!  There would be no feeling of pleasure in exercising power over a dead city. The strength in the people as a whole lies in simply being able to say no, yet this strength is typically hid from the strong by the weak who benefit from the subterfuge.

1. Greg Campbell, “Libyan Doctors Suspect Brutal War Crimes,” USA Today, April 12, 2011, p. 6A.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

On Nietzsche applied to business, see: On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available at Amazon.