Greed and fear have shaped the design of the modern Anglo American company. Belief in the potency of greed drove the trend to tighter links between wages and performance. Belief in the potency of fear drove the subjection of managers to the takeover threat, policed by the capital market. The economics profession took pride in this bleak realism, gleefully extending the model to the family and smugly contrasting itself with the gentler communitarian values of the softer social sciences. Uncomfortably, perhaps reflecting the internalisation of these values, psychology tests revealed that economics graduate students were unusually selfish.
貪婪和恐懼左右了現代英美企業的設計。對貪婪威力的迷信，促使工資和績效之間的聯繫趨於緊密。而對恐懼威力的迷信，則驅使管理層甘受資本市場的控制，屈服於被收購的威脅。經濟學界以這種冷冰冰的實用主義爲榮，高高興興地將這種模式推廣到家庭，並自鳴得意地將它與社會科學領域那些更爲溫和的團隊合作主義價值觀進行對比。令人不安的是，一些心理測試顯示，經濟專業的畢業生明顯要自私得多，這或許反映出他們已被這些價值觀同化。