Alex

the first and primary function of the card was to identify buyer to seller and seller to buyer. [...] The seller would receive good funds in local currency and the buyer would be billed later in the currency of their country. Thus, the second primary function was as guarantor of the value data. Clearly, it warranted to both buyer and sell

Making good judgments and acting wisely when one has complete data, facts, and information is not leadership. It's not even management. It's bookkeeping.

It had all the characteristics of the bank card mess of the late sixties. The internal strife was immense, pitting one segment of the industry with another in constant conflict for dominance. Each segment had messiahs preaching one gospel or another--governmental monopoly, unrestrained competition, state regulation, vertical integration,

people with power to write and enforce rules rarely spend much time following them.

Nor is corporate power restricted to power over the employed. Global corporations now have implicit sovereignty over people throughout the world, since they are beyond the reach of any nation-state. [...] They do so by the simple expedient of bargaining one government against another for the claimed economic benefit of their presence.

organizations increasingly unable to achieve the purpose for which they were created, yet continuing to expand as they devour resources, demean the human spirit, and destroy the environment

Everything is accelerating change, with one incredibly important exception. There has been no loss of institutional float.

It comes down to both an individual and collective sense of where and how people choose to be led. In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led.