Why psychopaths rule the world
Every person at the helm of every major organisation is someone who really does not care about the people under them.
Working with a machine is easy. It has no emotions. If you are mowing a lawn, and the lawn mower does not work, you can kick it to see if it gets started again. If it does not work still, you can take it apart and fix it. Still, further, throw it and get another one.
If you have a coworker who is not delivering, you cannot kick him/her to see if it would get them started. You can certainly not take them apart; firing is an option but not always in your hands.
Dealing with other people, even if you are totally extroverted, is hard. It takes something out of you. You cannot even explain what it takes out of you frankly.
Having an encounter with one moron during peak traffic can leave your entire day fucked up. It would have been just 5 minutes. It would not have even led to anything more than a few words being thrown around. But it can claim your entire day!
Dealing with people, in general, is a path to burnout.
When you see someone in pain you feel a modicum of compassion depending on where you lie on the psychopathy spectrum.
Dealing with the problems people face causes pain. This is part of the reason healthcare workers burn out and quit. They are subjected to too much of other people’s pain. There is a point after which the glass just overflows.
Burnout at work is usually a result of having to deal with too many human needs. You would have never heard of a factory worker suffering burnout. But you would often hear of doctors having burnout because they have to constantly balance their compassion with their work. Investment bankers suffer burnout because their entire day is spent manipulating both sides of the deal. Salespeople, bankers, front desk workers, hosts and hostesses in any kind of hospitality setting, all tend to suffer from burnout.
We live in a world where success and failure are often measured by one’s ability to go on doing more and more of what one is good at.
A doctor can carry on being a doctor without burnout if they have no compassion for their patients. The longest-lasting ones have to be borderline psychopaths. And the longest-lasting ones will rise to the top.
Same with CEOs in companies. Their only job is to deal with people. Not one CEO does anything remotely operational. Do you know a CEO who is tucked away in the corner of the office writing code? By extension dealing with various human needs would render them burnt out unless they are psychopaths.
It is estimated that 1% of humans are psychopaths. It is also known that 1% of people hoard 90% of the wealth in the world.
Coincidence? Maybe not.
And you can't now blame Ayn Rand for creating Psycopaths. Can you?