Our Strange Fascination with the Businessman

The Age of the MoneyMan: What Happens When We Stop Listening to Anyone Else

It feels like we woke up one day, and businessmen were in charge of everything—not just of corporations but of countries, policy, and our collective imagination. Macron and Trump were elected in 2017. By 2025, a real estate developer, a tech bro, and a hedge fund partner are suddenly leading the world. Governments, institutions, cultural organizations, and civil society must be run like businesses. Leadership is measured in shareholder returns. The world, it seemed, had read The Art of the Deal and decided it was more efficient than our constitutions.

This didn’t happen overnight. Our cultural obsession with the businessman- the idea that he is the apex of human achievement- grew over five decades. As neoliberalism took hold and economic deregulation reframed wealth not just as success but as virtue. In this worldview, efficiency became morality, competition became character, and the market became the ultimate arbiter of value. Culture quickly followed. Hollywood gave us Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, Dallas’ J.R., or Succession’s Logan Roy. Magazines turned CEOs into celebrities, while self-help bestsellers promised to unlock the secrets of their time-maximizing minds. We began idolizing l’homme pressé—always moving, consistently monetizing—whose value lay in output, not insight.

Culture played a role, but I feel extra money played an even bigger role. With an unprecedented surplus, the businessman colonized everything: education, philanthropy, media, even activism. Americans have a cute expression: “he who pays the piper calls the tune”. A few years ago, I wrote about how LGBTQ+ organizations were gradually colonized by the private sector through sponsorships and board seats until the historic leaders of our movement were nowhere to be seen. As a result, fundraising considerations, the ultimate ROI, have often overridden the mission. This is the root of recent aberrations such as our (continuous) boycott of the NY Times.

This wasn’t always the case. I vaguely remember when other types of people were valued for leadership. The philosopher-king governed with wisdom and reflection. The civil servant was guided by duty and the long view. The community organizer understood the power of collective action. The teacher, the healer, the artist, the diplomat, the historian, the cleric—people whose authority was moral or relational, not transactional, have seen their stocks continuously go down.

The leaders in our movement were examples of the power of plurality: Frank Kameny, the astronomer and federal employee; Harry Hay, the labor organizer; Urvashi Vaid, the lawyer; Larry Kramer, the playwright; or Barbara Gittings, the librarian.

During the pandemic, there was a brief moment when the spell broke. In NYC, we opened our windows at night and clapped for nurses and teachers. When faced with extinction, we remembered that ROI does not always reflect value. Then, we reverted quickly. "If they were truly valuable," we were told again, "they’d be paid more." Or worse: "they’d be in business."

In 2022, I visited a Housing Works facility on the Board I serve, where I met the night shift manager. He described how he sometimes calls in at 3 a.m. to resolve resident conflicts. I remember thinking, “Why would a college-educated man take this job?” I think similarly of my children’s teacher and how exhausting it must be to guide two dozen preteens daily. There is a world of deeply needed, barely paid people whose life philosophy is almost inaudible.

The current worldview increasingly admits instead that care is inefficient, contemplation is weakness, competition overrides collaboration, and domination is the only valid ambition.

History reminds us that the businessman wasn’t always at the top of the pyramid and that other archetypes were valued during specific periods. In the Ancien Régime, nobles were forbidden from commerce—it was beneath them. Merchants were tolerated, but rarely admired. Money was something others handled: often Jewish people, because handling money was considered spiritually tainted in Christian Europe. In ancient societies, it was the medicine man, the high priest, the eunuch advisor who guided emperors. Many archetypes held power: warriors, clerics, and scribes. The dominance of the businessman is a modern invention, which seems to rely on the flawed assumption that the goal of individuals, nations, and humankind mirrors that of businesses.

This is a strange piece to write in a newsletter whose primary audience is LGBTQ+ business leaders. I value business and businesspeople. I’d better, both of my ventures, the Association and Koppa, are about LGBTQ+ people finding their proper place in economic activity. But I also see it as a means to a larger goal: for our community to have the means to fulfill its potential. “I am a civil servant”, I like to say to the horror of my interlocutors, and then I add “my allegiance is to my community”.

The new orthodoxy insists that governments should be lean, regulation is bad, and public institutions should mimic the private sector. It treats shareholder value as sacred and dismisses anything that can't be monetized. These business dogmas dominate because other worldviews have been pushed to the margins. This mindset is dangerous. The next logical steps are to deny business responsibility in child labor, human trafficking, corruption, and environmental harm. Business is not exempt from human rights obligations, and when profit becomes a shield against accountability, it’s always the most vulnerable who pay the price.

One of the issues I work on is governance. For years, I predicted— too optimistically—that social justice voices would find their proper place in the boardroom. I used to joke that it would be like tech bros hiring rappers for their birthday parties: social justice professionals would be highly valued for the rarity of their knowledge in business. I believed this inclusion would come when the public demanded that the companies they work for, buy from, and invest in earn a social license to operate.

I was wrong. The pendulum swung the other way. We are witnessing a backlash against ESG, Social Corporate Responsibility, DEI, and any voice that disrupts the shareholder-first mantra.

So why include this off-topic reflection in my newsletter? The commonality is the need for us to value plurality.

It’s about the need for multiple archetypes, lenses, and truths. Queer people offer a different sensibility by the nature of their experience. They live outside prescribed roles. They ask uncomfortable questions. They see gaps that others ignore. That, to me, is the strongest argument for inclusion: it expands our horizons (see Is there such a thing as an LGBTQ+ voice?).

Similarly, there must be intentionality if we want voices like the teacher, the foundation leader, or the public intellectual to shape public life. People whose leadership is rooted in justice, imagination, and stewardship don’t rise to influence by accident in a profoundly biased system. We must elevate these archetypes—those who lead with purpose, empathy, and a long view—and give them real space to be heard. Otherwise, our institutions will remain dominated by a single lens, blind to the richness of plural perspectives.

The businessman is having his moment. He may yet have more. But perhaps we are nearing the end of this experiment, not at its pinnacle. I suspect the future will be more balanced once we pay the price for our obsession. It will make space for other ways of knowing, being, and leading.

Suppose that this future doesn’t arrive soon enough. In that case, we should individually clap louder for the teacher, give the philosopher a seat at our table, and diversify the voices in our organization's boardrooms.