What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness.

Stanley Bing. What Would Machiavelli Do?: The Ends Justify the Meanness. New York: HarperBusiness, 2000.

Are there places in the world for kind, considerate, fair-minded people? According to Stanley Bing, the author of What Would Machiavelli Do?, today's business environment is not one of them. Bing, who writes a satire column for Fortune magazine, says evidence from both ancient and contemporary history suggests that people who are obnoxious, self-centered, greedy, needy, overly aggressive, vain, immature, and, above ail mean, are destined for all the good things that power and money bring -- including but not limited to: vast numbers of servile associates, state-of-the-art electronic gizmos and cars, and numerous spouses.

Bing contends the path to power over other people and to a completely unquestioned expense account was first laid down more than 500 years ago by Niccolo Machiavelli, a mid-level bureaucrat in the court of Lorenzo de Medici, a powerful and ruthless prince who ruled Renaissance Florence back when that was a very big deal. Machiavelli, who had been imprisoned for backing the wrong corporate venture at some unfortunate point in his career history, decided to offer his boss a brief, punchy, and completely amoral how-to on central issues of senior management. That book was The Prince, and it was perhaps the most famous mixture of useful philosophy and superior sucking up in the annals of corporate politics. While Machiavelli is dead now, and unable to enjoy his royalties, his ideas live on through Bing.

Among those ideas are the following:

* Be unpredictable -- Bing says that Steve Brill, Founder and CEO of Brill's Content magazine, achieves this by doing things such as writing "Have you ever considered suicide?" across the copy of a writer he has just treated to a lavish lunch.

* Get rid of people you don't need -- In this book you will learn how to follow the example of Ted Turner who fired his son over dinner one evening.

* Lie, when it is necessary -- Bing writes, "lying for a good business reason has become so prevalent today that they had to invent a new, less censorious word for it. They call it positioning ..."

* Do anything to maintain loyalty -- Bing suggests, "Between [the] blows, goads, pressure, manipulation, [and] exploitation you visit on others -- tell them you love them."

Bing challenges the reader to leave his or her common decency behind, rise above boring notions of good and evil that govern sane and normal people, and develop the willingness to squash other people as if they were tiny bugs. But if that's too much to do and you'd rather just read about these things, I suggest perusing a copy of What Would Machiavelli Do?. I found it a very enjoyable satire.