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There Are No Good Executives: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''"The hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain."''|'''Napoleon'''}}
This trope ''can'' be [[Truth in Television]], but just as likely not. While ''some'' businessmen are evil, deceptive, and depraved, it is extreme hyperbole to consider ''all'' of them to be so. Indeed, it is quite reasonable to argue that [[Evil Will Fail|evil conduct is (in the long run) bad for a business]]; would ''you'' want to do business with a [[Eats Babies|baby-eating]], [[Kick the Dog|puppy-kicking]] [[Complete Monster|psychopath]]?
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You may note that millionaire entrepreneurs [[Uncle Pennybags|do not always]] fall into this trope. These people are often depicted as independently wealthy [[Self-Made Man|Self Made Men]] who have wits and spirit enough to carve out their empires, and if not, they at least are in charge and take responsibility of them, tied to them in a way a king may be to his realm. Corporate executives, on the other hand, climb in an already established hierarchy, the leadership (thus also responsibility for any wrongdoing) of which is decentralised into some shadowy group, like "the board of directors"; going back to our feudal analogy, they would have more in common with [[Evil Chancellor|court intriguers]].
{{examples}}
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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** Maxwell Lord, the CEO and founder of Justice League International, used to be a decent guy, albeit arrogant, but he's been retconned into a villain for no apparent reason.
** Steve Dayton (aka [[Doom Patrol|Mento]]) is also a subversion. He's a genius with enough wealth to make Bruce Wayne look middle class. His periods as a bad guy have nothing to do with his money and everything to do with the fact that he has some nasty mental illness issues.
* This is completely averted by [[DuckTales (1987)|Scrooge McDuck]], of course. Is he a stern, demanding taskmaster? Sure. Is he a hard bargainer who doesn't suffer fools easily? You bet. Is he always ready to exploit whatever openings an opponent might leave him? Absolutely. Is he dishonest, corrupt, or evil like his [[Evil Counterpart]] Flintheart Glomgold? Not a chance.
** ...Except for one chapter of ''[[The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck]]'', where he [[Jumped Off the Slippery Slope]] because he got sick of being the aversion ("Why should ''I'' have to be the only honest man in this cockeyed world? ... Why can't I take shortcuts like everyone else? ... Who died and left ''me'' in charge of morals?!")
*** Considering that it got him a buttload of guilt and a zombie pursuer for several decades, he quickly learned to accept it.
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* Over at [[Marvel Comics|Marvel]], [[Norman Osborn]], aka [[Super-Powered Evil Side|the Green Goblin]] is the poster child for this trope, along with many of [[Iron Man]]'s enemies, like Justin Hammer and Obadiah Stane.
== [[
* Subverted to a great extent in the
== [[Film]] ==▼
* J.K. Robertson in the movie ''[[Time Chasers]]'' was not at all deterred from proceeding on the Time Transport project, even after its inventor returned from a second visit to the future to reveal that the future had changed to one of anarchy as a result of the Time Transport being used as a weapon. In fact, he has the inventor and his love interest arrested, and later pursues them into the past, killing the love interest and murdering his own reluctant companion. ▼
** To be fair on the first score, he thought knowing about the future would enable him to prevent it (surely anarchy isn't good for business after all), which makes sense because the future had changed once already in the film. ▼
*** Waitaminute, is this ''Time Chasers'' as in the ''MST3K'' film? Because if so ... well, that kind of explains any and every characterization fuckup fairly instantly...▼
* Without exception, every single person on the corporate side of UBS in ''[[Network]]'' is an amoral, money-grubbing monster. The film ends with {{spoiler|the main character being shot by a hitman hired by UBS, the voiceover stating that he was killed [[Screwed by the Network|due to his show's failing ratings]]}}.▼
** Even most of the [[Bomb-Throwing Anarchists|Marxist terrorist gang]] are greedy capitalists! One of the main executives gives a speech about how Communist nations are run the same as large American corporations.▼
* ''[[Tron: Legacy]]'' had an infamous scene with the Encom boardroom, where they're boasting about their latest and greatest operating system. The only subversion in the room points out that they're charging schools and non-profits a fortune - what are the customers getting in return? The idiot CEO shrugs and says "it has a 12 on the box..." This is meant to demonstrate that the company has fallen from its innovative times under Walter Gibbs and Flynn Sr. while cementing sympathy for Sam's [[Playful Hacker|annual]] [[Like Father, Like Son|practical joke]]. ▼
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Jennifer Government]]'' has two types of executives: bastards and [[Complete Monster|John Nike]].
* ''Market Forces'' by [[Richard Morgan]]: [[Mega Corp
* [[Peter F. Hamilton]] deliberately set out to invert this trope with Julia Evans, the young idealistic CEO of Event Horizon in his trilogy about psychic detective Greg Mandel. She keeps most of her industry in Britain to provide work and a strong economy (of course, this also increases Event Horizon's power and influence within Britain) and quashes [[The World Is Not Ready|potentially harmful technologies]] rather than make a profit from them.
* ''The Dogs of War'' by [[Frederick Forsyth]] is pretty anvilistic about the role business interests played in various bloody African wars. The bitterness the mercenary protagonist feels over this is a major reason behind his [[Face Heel Turn]] at the end.
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* The show ''[[Leverage]]'' pretty much runs on this trope. Half the episodes are about some evil executive(s) or entire corporations abusing their power.
** There have been notable subversions - the president in "The Top Hat Job" seems to be a decent guy, and an executive is their ''client'' in "The Lonely Hearts Job".
** One noteworthy thing is that the producer has pointed out that many of their villainous plots are ''toned down'' versions of real-life corporate scandals, because [[Reality Is Unrealistic|if they put the whole thing on-screen nobody would believe it]].
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* ''[[Dilbert]]'', of course, although its viewpoint might be better described [[Humans Are
** One of the strip reprint books was titled ''I'm Not Anti-Business, I'm Anti-Idiot''.
▲== [[Film]] ==
▲* J.K. Robertson in the movie ''[[Time Chasers]]'' was not at all deterred from proceeding on the Time Transport project, even after its inventor returned from a second visit to the future to reveal that the future had changed to one of anarchy as a result of the Time Transport being used as a weapon. In fact, he has the inventor and his love interest arrested, and later pursues them into the past, killing the love interest and murdering his own reluctant companion.
▲** To be fair on the first score, he thought knowing about the future would enable him to prevent it (surely anarchy isn't good for business after all), which makes sense because the future had changed once already in the film.
▲*** Waitaminute, is this ''Time Chasers'' as in the ''MST3K'' film? Because if so ... well, that kind of explains any and every characterization fuckup fairly instantly...
▲* Without exception, every single person on the corporate side of UBS in ''[[Network]]'' is an amoral, money-grubbing monster. The film ends with {{spoiler|the main character being shot by a hitman hired by UBS, the voiceover stating that he was killed [[Screwed by the Network|due to his show's failing ratings]]}}.
▲** Even most of the [[Bomb-Throwing Anarchists|Marxist terrorist gang]] are greedy capitalists! One of the main executives gives a speech about how Communist nations are run the same as large American corporations.
▲* ''[[Tron: Legacy]]'' had an infamous scene with the Encom boardroom, where they're boasting about their latest and greatest operating system. The only subversion in the room points out that they're charging schools and non-profits a fortune - what are the customers getting in return? The idiot CEO shrugs and says "it has a 12 on the box..." This is meant to demonstrate that the company has fallen from its innovative times under Walter Gibbs and Flynn Sr. while cementing sympathy for Sam's [[Playful Hacker|annual]] [[Like Father, Like Son|practical joke]].
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* ''[[Shadowrun]]'' lives and breathes this trope, since the player characters are the tools the corrupt and supremely powerful [[Mega Corp
** Deconstructed with Horizon, a media and PR [[Mega Corp]] based out of Los Angeles. Ever since bursting onto the scene in the wake of Crash 2.0, Horizon has made its name as "the personable company". Employees are actively encouraged to be involved in community events, sports teams, and other personal projects. They are given handsome benefits and free time. The company's business practices are downright respectable compared to the strip mining and law shredding of other major [[Mega Corp|MegaCorps]]. The online shadow community (which provides running commentary throughout the sourcebooks) has worked themselves into apoplectic fits trying to find ''some'' dirt on Horizon and coming up empty. ''Any'' dirt. There is absolutely nothing anywhere to suggest that Horizon is anything other than a personable, respectable company, but that fact is driving Shadowland to distraction, since there ''has'' to be something underhanded about them, and the fact that they can't find it is downright creepy. After a Shadowland hacker quit his job there and reported on his observations, Horizon's CEO emailed him to thank him for his service, offer him his job back anytime he'd like it, provide up-front answers on various questions the hacker had been looking into, and show his willingness to help him and "his friends" out however he can in the future. Creepy.
** The Horizon tie-in fiction in the 20th Anniversary Version of the 4th edition core rules does show that Gary Cline, Horizon's CEO, is very likely a sociopath. Seeing as how when a former executive from a rival megacorporation burst into his office intending to kill Cline for ruining his career by getting the better of him in a business deal and took Cline's executive assistant hostage, Gary Cline's response was... to tell his assistant that Gary had been upset with the way his assistant had fumbled a recent project anyway, that he had [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|outlived his usefulness]], and Cline then killed his secretary himself. He then congratulated the gunman on his assertiveness and planning skills, and offered him a job with Horizon. The story vignette ends with the guy asking Cline if Horizon has a good vacation plan. And the professional-salesman's smile never left Gary's face the entire time.
** And, the late 4e supplements such as ''Corporate Intrigue'' and ''Storm Front'' have made it abundantly plain that if Horizon ever was remotely decent at one time—a matter the writers went to some effort to cast into doubt—they definitely qualify for this trope ''now''. Some highlights include:
*** Trying to score a PR victory vs. Aztechnology by hiring mercenaries to rescue prisoners from an Aztlan POW camp, and then ''massacre them themselves so as to blame the war crime on the Azzies''. (Which in addition to being cartoonishly evil is also inexplicably stupid, as there's only about twenty billion or so genuine war crimes you could already blame Aztechnology for.)
*** Being caught secretly bribing politicians to pass harsher and more discriminatory laws vs. technomancers, a constituency that Horizon publicly supported from the beginning—because the worse life gets for technomancers, the more desperately they'll cling to their supposed 'benefactor' Horizon.
*** Having Horizon's first major social engineering triumph—the rehabilitation of Tir Tairngire after its post 3rd-edition regime change—retconned to be 'well, actually, we just created a Potemkin village, then secretly imprisoned and murdered every dissident who might have blown the deal'.
** Basically, remember [[Marvel Cinematic Universe|the big reveal with HYDRA in "Winter Soldier"?]]. Yeah, that's what they did to Horizon.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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