Our economic systems in my opinion in essence are all valid. Finding loop holes and other variables that in essence manipulate the spirit of these systems is what finally destroys the very reason we created them in the first place.

In many respects “doing it the right way” or “doing the right thing” seems to have been too onerous for people (using the benefit of hindsight pre our great economic recession) and as we have seen, greed has entered the system and living in moderation is just not enough. As you say, trying to invest a little more in others and trying to meet them mid-way is definitely one of several variables in my mind that make for good and health business…

To support your views even more I go back to Mr. Peter Drucker who spoke very wisely on good business and how enterprise is so intertwined in our societies today…unfortunately society’s trust in businesses today is at an all time low…let’s hope we can repair that trust and take some time to collaborate vs. plunder to achieve our material goals in life.

Check this site out on Peter Drucker…worth the read…

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_48/b3961001.htm

Bruce

It’s very tough for me to say that I would take this context of a poll to include your childhood experiences.

In short, a career is the path you have pursued in order to create income for yourself and your family. The path is not straight and has many choices, but it is a path clearly defined in this instance to the creation of income.

Therefore, relative flexibility usually comes at the expense of income until you have created passive income as an entrepreneur. Also, most careers that avail a certain level of company sponsored retirement preparation tie you to an “employee” situation, hence the term ‘golden handcuffs’.

The fortune answer stemmed from a conversation that a teacher in high school once had with me. He said that if anyone in our class gave him ultimate control over their lives he would make them a millionaire by the time they were 40. To my knowledge no one ever took him up on this opportunity. I suspect it was more of a lesson than an idea he wanted to put into practice. The lesson was that you would have to give up all freedom and a lot of life experience in order to make that money.

In an ideal world most people would want to be able to have all sorts of freedom, flexibility, autonomy, be rich, and have your retirement future secured at the most comfortable level, as well as have the value of being part of a winning team, and wear board shorts and flip-flops to work.

What I am asking is, since we are clearly not in Utopia, what would use choose over the others, not to the exclusion of other options. What path do you pursue and how do you choose to pursue it?