Conference back40::soapbox

    man-made. ooooo. You just limited the discussion right there.
    
    ;-)

    I believe Nobel made his money in the explosives business.
    
    -Stephen

Note 104.2, Stephen
    
    >I believe Nobel made his money in the explosives business.
    
    Yes, Alfred Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer and philanthropist
    who, among other things during his 63 years of life, developed a business 
    that advanced the cause of human happiness by producing jobs and advancing 
    technology that lead to advancements in mining, that could not have been 
    achieved without explosives. He was one of the many hero's of this world. 
    
    ...Tom

    Why is there no Nobel prize for business?  Nobel prizes honour
    achievement in various fields of science, literature, and politics
    (i.e. the Peace prize), but not in the field of business.  (I don't
    think the Economics prize counts as it seems to be awarded to academic
    theorists.)
    
    If business achievement is so praiseworthy, why did Nobel not establish
    a prize honouring it?  Perhaps his view was different from yours?
    
    -Stephen  

Note 104.4, Stephen
    
    >If business achievement is so praiseworthy, why did Nobel not establish
    >a prize honouring it?  Perhaps his view was different from yours?
    
    If business isn't praiseworthy then let's outlaw it and see what happens
    to society. This of course would be rediculous. People can't survive
    without the competitive values of business. Try it some time and see
    how long you survive. You would have to quit your job, give away your
    home, become a self-sufficient farmer, learn all aspects of home 
    construction, food production, health care, etc., all things developed
    through business principles.
    
    Throughout history productive people have been busy earning livings and
    providing values to society. Because of their clean, simple,
    hard-working minds they could not conceive the dishonesties that were
    being presented. Dishonest people including politicians, ruling
    "authorities", clergymen, social "intellectuals, most lawyers, some
    bankers, some second generation business executives, certain media
    people, certain educators, certain psychologists and others parasites
    live by draining the effectiveness, prosperity and happiness of the
    productive people. How do they do this, by projecting false guilt onto
    the producer in order to conceal their motives, methods and
    intentions. They demand control and regulation of the producer when
    they themselves are incompetent to produce anything of value. Due to
    this feeling of guilt Nobel was unnecessarily ashamed and embarrassed of 
    what he had accomplished and the value he had provided to the world.
    
    ...Tom 

    
    Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin:
    
    "The first purpose of socialism, apart from social justice, is to give
     food to the hungry and to clothe the naked.  No socialist government
     has yet succeeded in doing that.  Capitalism may be wicked, it may be
     oppressive, it may be exploitative, it may be commercializing and
     vulgarizing culture and destroying moral values, but there is more
     freedom in it, more variety, more self-expression."
    

    I suspect Nobel may have felt that business success (usually measured
    in money) is its own reward.  Achievement in other fields doesn't
    necessarily bring riches.  He probably established the Prizes in order
    to provide material rewards to people whose work in these other fields
    benefited the human race.
    
    -Stephen

    re: .7
    
    Agree, however, your statement asked why Nobel didn't have a prize for
    business. Not why he had prizes on other subjects. I answered the
    first, you answered the second.
    
    ...Tom

    
    there is already a prize system in effect for successful 
    bidness folk. 
    
    pink stucco villas in Los Altos Hills (or faux chateaux
    in the more professorisal districts of Palo Alto).

  Business is what the dog must do before he's allowed back in the house.

  Most noble indeed,
  George

>>    Business is ... the most intellectual of all
>>    thinking, ...

	strangely worded, for sure, but anyways, how do you come to
	make that assertion?  the most "intellectual"?  how so?  how
	is it any more "intellectual" than the other myriad endeavors and
	fields of interest in which people involve themselves?

	never mind "noble".  

	How would business be different if we were not living
in such a material world ???.

	Business furthers the notion of "gather as much as you can
before you die". What if that wasn't the case any more. What if
knowledge is what it was all about ??. How would all this be
different, or the same ??.

    
    Well, actually, intelligence is over-rated generally, not just
    in business.  Give me self-discipline, honesty, pleasantness,
    diligence, or even orderliness in exchange and I'll have made a
    good bargain.  There are certain (rare) situations where pure
    intelligence of the problem-solving kind is a tremendous
    advantage.  But in most of government, business, and life, it
    gives its owner little advantage.  In some situations, smarts can
    even be bad for you.
    
    In an election, I certainly wouldn't recommend picking the brainiest
    candidates.  It would be a national disaster.
    
      bb

    re .12
    You speak of the UFP, which is still in the planning stages.

    Re: the last few
    
    Two fundamentally differant classes of people exist in a free or
    semi-free society, like the US. The first class consists of those who
    choose to live by exerting physical and mental efforts to produce
    competitive values for others and society, or those who are learning or
    striving to be producers. The other class are those who choose to live
    by avoiding competitive efforts in designing their lives to live off
    the efforts of others and society. The competitve action, in the
    production class results in business. I labeled it as "most
    intellectual" because it requires the most amount of conscious effort.
    An idea reflects only the first stage of thinking. In order to turn an
    idea into a value it has to become practical and be of benefit to human
    kind. Then the value needs to be placed where it can do the most good.
    All of this requires effort and business like thinking. If an idea
    isn't beneficial to others and society, it won't be a competitive value.
    Therefore the opposite is true. If it is a competitive value then it 
    is a benefit to others and society. This effort, resulting in the
    exchange of goods and services, is a benefit to both classes. Without
    it, survival is impossible in the 20th century and beyond.
    
    ...Tom

	But what about many who have bright, if not brilliant,
ideas and can't bring them to society because of "business"
impediments. 

	Is the tobacco industry a business that benefits society ??

>	Is the tobacco industry a business that benefits society ??

The industry certainly does, regardless of whether or not their product
is a net benefit or detriment.

    	Well RJ Reynolds has developed an apparently smokeless cigarette.
    	They don't claim that it will improve the health of non-smokers
    	through second-hand smoke "because we don't have the scientific 
    	evidence to back it up".
    
    	More likely they don't want to make that claim because it will
    	contradict what they've been saying all along that smoking doesn't
    	cause harm to non-smokers, let alone the smokers themselves...

	what a noble bunch of intellectuals

    Joe, is that the brand that tastes like a turd and smells like a fart?
    (You had to see the movie!)

    	Actually Steve, the article I read about it said that this is the
    	second try at it.  The first was a flop because they tasted bad.
    
    	These are supposed to taste good.  (Whatever that means.  I always
    	thought that "good-tasting cigarettes" was an oxymoron...)

    I hear that you can by stickers that go over the warnings on the
    cigarette packs like :

    			 Hot Damn!
    		       I Like Smoking

    Another noble, intellectual venture. 8^)

    
    The problem with today's business world is that it requires a different
    set of personal virtues than those that *I* think are most noble.
    
    Judging from my very own experience, honesty, humblety, helpfulness and
    righteousness are neither wanted nor required nor beneficial for 
    success in business. I have noticed that those that are most successful
    are reckless, self-oriented and boastful.
    
    Heiko

    I think "noble businessman" is pretty much oxymoronic.
    While I consider business or the profit motive honorable, I hardly
    think of it as ennobling.  Certainly taken collectively, businesses are
    behaviorally akin more to wild animals than to human beings: they
    exhibit neither nobility nor ethics.  The larger the business, the more
    this is observable.
    
    But hey, I'm open to persuasion on this.  Point me to the part of the
    _Republic_ where Socrates discourses on the nobility of the businessman
    and I'll check it out 8^)

    Heiko:
    
    Like your former East Geerman brethern are honest, humble, helpful and
    righteous...I don't think so.

    
    Are we discussing how 'business' spoils noble characters or are we 
    discussing how 'der real existierende Sozialismus' spoiled noble
    characters.
    
    Don't read between the lines, when there's nothing hidden :-)
    
    Heiko
    

    no-ble adj. no-bler, no-blest.
    
    1. 	Possessing hereditary rank in a political system or social class
    	derived from a feudalistic stage of a country's development.
    2.	a. Having or showing qualities of high moral character, such as
    	courage, generosity, or honor. 
    	b. Proceeding from or indicative of such
    	a character; showing magnanimity.
    3. 	Grand and stately in appearance; majestic.
    4. 	Chemistry. Inactive or inert.
    
    Adjective:   Being on a high intellectual or moral level.  moral,
    high-minded, elevated.
    
    [_American heritage Dictionary_, online e4dition (thanks, Mac!)]
    
    As I said, these are not terms I associate with business
    (though I can think of business*persons* whom the adjective fits).

    Steve:
    
    I think you're broadbrushing "all businessmen" again.  I personally
    know of many who display characteristics of 2.a.  Now, Im not
    attempting to broadbrush "all businessmen" in the opposite direction of
    yourself, but again, you class envy is showing.

    What's this "class envy" stuff, Ron?  I dare say I make more than most
    of them.
    
    I just don't see business as a noble endeavor.

    
    
    
    
    Why not, Steve?  Sure there is business that will cut every corner and
    find every loophole, but there are also those that are very sound at
    the foundation.  One such that comes to my mind right away is Ben and
    Jerry's.  People start a business to make money, it's part of the free
    enterprise system.  Many of them have come to understand that the way
    to make money is to do what's right by the consumer and the worker.
    
    
    
    Mike

    Didn't Ben force Jerry out?

    A business doesn't automatically imply moral. All a business will do is
    serving a market. Businesses like selling illegal drugs or prostitution 
    are pretty successful in doing so.
    
    It's the law that enforces moral in business. 
    
    Klaus

>                           -< Business .ne. morale >-

This has certainly been proven at DIGITAL over the past several years.

    Re: .28
    
    Steve says this:
    
    |As I said, these are not terms I associate with business
    |(though I can think of business*persons* whom the adjective fits).
    
    And you somehow derive this:
    
    |I think you're broadbrushing "all businessmen" again.
    
    Perhaps you'd like to step us through it, because I didn't follow.

    Steve:
    
    I would guess that a good number of businesses get started out of
    trying to serve a need and fill a niche and they are started by
    well-intended moral individuals who, although profit is obviously a
    motive, trying to screw the workers or partners has not entered their
    minds when opening said business.
    
    The best way for an individual to become a business owner is to turn a
    hobby into profit by charging for what you do.  A good number of
    craftsmen I know come to mind.  I'd not trade their morales for a
    typical Fortune 500 employees morales any day.
    
    BTW, in my wife's business, we meet many small business people who are
    just like you and I, Steve.  They put on their pants the same way, they
    have the same problems and concerns, and I won't say their EVYL...
    
    I've encouraged many disgruntled employees to start out on their own
    because they have what it takes to make a living.
    
     

    You address small businesses.  But "business" tends to invoke the image
    of big business first and foremost.

    Ron, I agree with you.  Ken Olsen certainly comes to mind as a moral
    man -- I would even say a noble one -- who started a business.
    When Digital had its tacit employment-for-life pact with its workers,
    everyone was happy, we Did the Right Thing, and we made lots of money.
    
    Somewhere between those early days and today Digital, like all large
    corporations, lost its soul.  Now it is just another mindless beast in
    the market jungle, reacting to whatever stimuli it encounters, laying
    off 10,000 loyal workers here, outsourcing 10,000 vital resources
    there, saying anyone who doesn't accept outsourcing is presumed to have
    resigned (my favorite 8^(, doing "whatever it takes" to survive without
    regard for -- hah! -- nobility.

    .37
    
    digital lost its soul when it discovered that having a soul was costing
    it sagans.  adapt or die.

              <<< Note 104.38 by SMURF::BINDER "vitam gustare" >>>

>    digital lost its soul when it discovered that having a soul was costing
>    it sagans.  adapt or die.

Ahhh, tis true. And therein lies the proof of the thesus: business is not a 
moral endeavor, but an economic one. To endow business (as apposed to 
individual business persons) with the qualities of virtue or nobility 
is folly -- and dangerous folly at that.

    Business is fundamental, and essential.  It's done well, and badly, by
    people with good and bad motives. Probably a combination of motives, as
    is true with most human activities.
    
    Anthropomorphizing it with human virtues (all positive) is weirdly
    meaningless on the face of it, but insulting to humans at base.
    
    Kit  

    Chelsea:
    
    Of course I was addressing small businesses, but I guess you don't
    classify small businesses as really being in business, do you.
    
    I agree with Wordy about the tendencies of larger corporations, but
    again they'll only tendencies.  To broadbrush every Fortune 100 company
    is blatantly wrong.
    
    Right off the top of my head I can think of 5 such companies that have a 
    compassion for it's employees, they want to do the customer right, and
    of course, they want a win/win situation so that they can make a
    profit. 

    Re: .41
    
    >but I guess you don't classify small businesses as really being in 
    >business, do you.
    
    I said nothing about classification, only connotation.

    
	Reality is that business is what keeps the world moving and advancing. 
    	Without business we would still be living in caves. The facts dictate 
    	that probably only making love, totally nude, in the forest is the only 
    	thing that doesn't involve business. That is unless you drove to the 
    	forest wearing clothing and that your partner hadn't been bribed with 
    	food and entertainment.

	Face it, everything that a person does, in 1994, involves some sort of 
    	business. If we look at what would be required to live without business
    	we would find that a person would have to be born in the forest, have 
    	worn clothes that were produced by the hands of their parents and 
    	themselves. This would include raising animals for food and leather, 
    	farming for food and fabric, fabric which would have to be produced on 
    	a homemade loom by a member of the family. Transportation would have 
    	to be by walking unless one roped a wild horse and raised domesticated 
    	horses. The fact is that if any of it required purchasing, or selling 
    	business would be involved.

	For some reason people today put down business as some sort of evil, 
    	when in fact doing the thinking, planning and effort required to 
    	provide the needs and wants of life to human beings is of the highest 
    	moral standard. In fact, business providing the means for people to 
    	support themselves and their families by providing the required jobs 
    	and careers may very well be the highest standard of all.

	Who are those who put down business? It is either those who live by not 
	exerting the required effort and use man made, forced backed 
    	organizations, to compel and coerce those who are willing to make the 
    	effort, into turning over their earned values, or by those who are 
    	deceived by these usurpers into thinking that business is the cause of 
    	evil. When in fact it is the usurper of business that is the real cause
    	of human misery. Business is what moves technology, medicine and 
    	science forward, by providing a better and better competitive
    	products for which people are willing to pay. 

	For example, if a person wants to purchase a new car, that person will 
	investigate all possible automobiles and companies until s/he locates 
    	the car that best meets their needs. In order for a business to 
    	survive, it needs to produce the product that people want to purchase. 
    	If not, they would go out of business. Now let's look at the 
    	anti-business people. They operate by forcing people to pay for what 
    	they deem good and do not have to make the effort required to produce 
    	what is wanted. They will never go out of business even when producing 
    	an inferior product, because we are forced to buy from them. Now that 
    	we are forced, they do not have to make any effort in giving us good 
	products, because there is no incentive to provide the best product 
    	possible.Now they can live a lazy effortless life at the expense of 
    	business and the producer. This is the condition in which we find 
    	ourselves when looking for value from politicians, lawyers, clergy, 
    	second generation business people, some college professors, some 
    	media journalists and others, who live by putting down valuable 
    	producers, when in fact they need business and producers to usurp 
	their lazy lives.

	Business is the provider of value, anti-business is the robber of 
    	value. They rob all of us by foisting guilt upon us for obtaining the 
    	earned values gotten honestly by the producer and dishonestly by the 
    	non-producer. Material goods obtained through business effort is good 
    	for everyone in society. Goods obtained through anti-business 
    	usurpation effects everyone adversely and could eventually destroy us.

	...Tom

    re: Note 104.43 by DASHER::RALSTON
    
    Screwing may be business, but as long as it's not commerce, the 
    government can't interfear.

    re: .43
    
    Some state governments do!
    
    ...Tom

    It seems a bit odd,pontificating whether business is noble or not.
    
    Frankly,who the hell do you think puts your food on the shelves in
    supermarkets,makes your cars,makes the clothes you wear and builds
    your houses?
    
    Probably not a nice man full of principles and morals. But you need
    him all the same.
    
    Ahem.
    

    
    One buisness idea - haquer trading cards!

                                    
    Note 14.2530
    
    Replying over here before Di creates a new topic.  ;^)
    
    >Neither exists very long without the other. There is only so much a
    >single person, however talented, can do. By the same token,
    >entrepreneurs provide workers with something to do, with value to add.
    >It is a two way street.
    
    Agreed. 
    
    >On an individual basis, however, entrepreneurs
    >are more valuable and valued.
    
    Well...maybe...as long as what they can do everything themselves.
    Once they start farming out work, the entrepreneur simply *has* to
    start losing some of the credit.
    
    I've got nothing against entrepreneurs...it's just that I see people
    like Tom constantly forgetting or ignoring the fact that people like
    Gates don't just *get* rich; they make their money off of the labour
    of their employees, and the labour of their customers.  Without those,
    Gates could be the most brilliant man in the world and still not have
    four bits to rub together.
    
    jc
    

    >people like Gates don't just *get* rich; they make their money off of the
    >labour of their employees, and the labour of their customers.
    
     People who also make a living as a direct result of their continued
    employment by people like Gates...

    
>>    Replying over here before Di creates a new topic.  ;^)

	nah, i wouldn't have done that.  not arbitrary enough.

    
    .49:
    
    True.  Never said otherwise.
    

    
    Note 14.2538
    
    >Excuse me, but what you said was:
    >
    >>The blind-luck purchase of DOS 
    >>Bill was lucky, not savvy.
    
    Nice try, Tom.
    

    >Nice try Tom
    
    Thank you, but did I miss something??
    
    And FWIW I don't "constantly" forget the labor of the working people. I
    have always said that the mutual free exchange of values is key to
    human happiness. The one sidedness seems to be in somebody elses lap,
    not mine.
    
    ...Tom

    Fine, Tom.  You claim that you don't "constantly" forget the working
    man's contribution.  The quotes below are what fooled me.
    
    jc
    
    
     Note 14.2517

    >...as a direct result of the value produced by Bill Gates
             ^^^^^^
    
     Note 14.2520

    >However, Bill gates did all the hard effort work to make the
                             ^^^
    >value possible in the first place.
    
     Note 14.2523
    
    >Yes, Bill Gates started the company on his own. It was his idea and his
    >thinking that contributed to all the value now produced.
                                  ^^^
    

    
    
    RE: .54 look at the alls in context and you will see that Tom is
    correct.
    
    
    Mike

    
    Bill wrote DOS?
    

    
    
    Tom never said that Bill wrote DOS.

    
    I know that.
    

    There is no torment so horrible that it should not be inflicted on the
    person or persons who foisted DOS off on an unsuspecting world.

    
    Your wish, Binder, will apparently not come true.
    
    :^)
    

    
      Ah, but Binder, he got most of the billions from Windoze !
    
      bb

    Windoze, as ugly as it is, is at least an attempt at a decent user
    interface.  It's not Bill's fault he and his hirelings aren't good
    enough to develop a windowing interface that a) is elegant and
    b) works.

    >RE: .54 look at the alls in context and you will see that Tom is
    >    correct.
    
    Thanks Mike. That's what I thought as well.
    
    ...Tom

    Well, of course, I don't agree, Tom (or Mike).  Let me clarify:
    
     Note 14.2517

    >...as a direct result of the value produced by Bill Gates
             ^^^^^^
    
    ...gives no credit to others in his organization whose ideas and 
    vision and hard work also contributed to the value of Microsoft.
    
     Note 14.2520

    >However, Bill gates did all the hard effort work to make the
                             ^^^
    >value possible in the first place.
    
    No, Bill did *not* do *all* the hard effort work.  Who wrote DOS?
    Who wrote Windows?  Who wrote....
    
     Note 14.2523
    
    >Yes, Bill Gates started the company on his own. It was his idea and his
    >thinking that contributed to all the value now produced.
                                  ^^^
    
    DOS wasn't his idea.  He bought it.  And I'm willing to bet that many
    other Microsoft products were proposed by people other than Gates.
    His ideas and his thinking contributed to *part* of the value, not
    *all* of the value.
    
    jc
    

    >...as a direct result of the value produced by Bill Gates
             ^^^^^^ 
    >...gives no credit to others in his organization whose ideas and 
    >vision and hard work also contributed to the value of Microsoft.
    
    If it wasn't for Bill Gates there would be no others. However, we weren't
    speaking of all the other valuable participants at the time, just BG.
    
    >However, Bill gates did all the hard effort work to make the
                             ^^^
    >value possible in the first place.
    
    >No, Bill did *not* do *all* the hard effort work.  Who wrote DOS?
    >Who wrote Windows?  Who wrote....
    
    Read on..... "IN THE FIRST PLACE"
        
    >Yes, Bill Gates started the company on his own. It was his idea and his
    >thinking that contributed to all the value now produced.
                                  ^^^
    
    >DOS wasn't his idea.  He bought it.  And I'm willing to bet that many
    >other Microsoft products were proposed by people other than Gates.
    >His ideas and his thinking contributed to *part* of the value, not
    >*all* of the value.
    
    contributed implies there were others.
    
    ...Tom
    

    > Windoze, as ugly as it is, is at least an attempt at a decent user
    > interface.  It's not Bill's fault he and his hirelings aren't good
    > enough to develop a windowing interface that a) is elegant and
    > b) works.

    As smart as you are Dick, and I acknowledge that that is very
    smart indeed, I'd say you're pretty much unworthy for butt
    pimplehood on two people who I know who were responsible
    for Windows design: Lester Waters and Fred Einstein (both
    of whom, by the way, were once Digital employees; but rather
    typically, the _really_ smart ones got away).

    -b

Actually, I was going to comment on Dick's remark about Windows as well.
Having worked with it for just over 7 months now, I've found that I sort
of like it.

Then again, I liked IAS and RSX-11D, too.

    
    .65
    
    >If it wasn't for Bill Gates there would be no others.
    
    If it wasn't for "others", who would Bill Gates be?  Some former
    video-game-programmer-turned-hacker-security-consultant?
    
    Two sides of the same coin, Tom.  Without Gates, there would have been
    no Microsoft.  So...what...the entire PC O/S and Application market would
    have gone unfilled, right?  Or would Apple currently employ all the people
    Gates currently employs?  If you drew a line on Microsoft's personell
    roster, with Gates on the one side, and all other employees on the
    other, which of those two could be done away with without interrupting
    the day-to-day operations?
    
    >Read on..... "IN THE FIRST PLACE"
    
    And if there had been no DOS to buy, then what?  Frozen concentrated
    orange juice futures?  Maybe he would have written his own O/S, and
    it might even have been better than DOS.  Or, maybe not.
    
    Do Microsoft employees owe their jobs to Gates?  Or does Gates owe his
    fortune to the efforts of his current and former employees?  I suspect 
    both are true.
    
    jc
    

    >Do Microsoft employees owe their jobs to Gates?  Or does Gates owe his
    >fortune to the efforts of his current and former employees?  I
    >suspect both are true.
    
    The differance may be that the employees hired on and contributed and
    these employees can leave. But, BG can shut the doors. BG will still have
    his 12 billion and the employees will have unemployment checks. Whom do
    you think depends more on whom??
    
    ...Tom

    
    .69
    
    >But, BG can shut the doors.
    
    Well, it's my suspicion that he *couldn't* simply *shut* the doors.
    Sell it, maybe.  For big bucks, even.  But Microsoft, or the work it
    does, would continue in one form or another, and the workers would
    mostly remain employed.
    
    >BG will still have his 12 billion and the employees will have 
    >unemployment checks. Whom do you think depends more on whom??
    
    Well, he's obviously self-sufficient now.  Moreso if he sells.  But
    that doesn't change the fact that he could not have gotten to where he
    is now without the smarts and the hard work of many other people both
    before AND after Microsoft was born.
    
    jc
    

A recent letter from Cypress's president and CEO T.J. Rodgers to The
Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia's Doris Gormley, OSF -- sent also to
all Cypress shareholders -- has set the business community abuzz...so much
so that, in its edition of July 15, 1996 The Wall St. Journal carried a
long story on the "CEO who took on a nun in a crusade against 'political
correctness'."

Because of the growing national interest in the exchange and the ideas
represented by it, we present here the background to T.J. Rodgers' response
plus his letter in its entirety.

On April 23, 1996, Cypress received a letter from the Sisters of St.
Francis of Philadelphia. The latter is a religious congregation of
approximately 1,000 women and was, at the time the letter was written, the
beneficial owner of a number of Cypress shares. The letter was a form
letter, and it carried the stamped signature of Doris Gormley, OSF.

In the letter, Sister Doris, speaking for the Sisters of St. Francis of
Philadelphia as a Cypress shareholder, expressed the view that a company
"is best represented by a Board of qualified Directors reflecting the
equality of the sexes, races, and ethnic groups." The letter went on to say
that it is the congregation's policy "to withhold authority to vote for
nominees of a Board of Directors that does not include women and
minorities."

Sister Doris's letter was written after she received proxy materials for
the Cypress Annual Shareholders' Meeting, from which, she said, she deduced
that "Cypress...has no women or minority Directors." Therefore, she said,
her congregation "voted (its) proxy accordingly," and she closed her letter
with the exhortation, "We urge you to enrich the Board by seeking qualified
women and members of racial minorities as nominees."

T.J. Rodgers' response follows.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 23, 1996

Doris Gormley, OSF
Director, Corporate Social Responsibility
The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia
Our Lady of Angels Convent - Glen Riddle
Aston, PA 19014

Dear Sister Gormley:

Thank you for your letter criticizing the lack of racial and gender
diversity of Cypress's Board of Directors. I received the same letter from
you last year. I will reiterate the management arguments opposing your
position. Then I will provide the philosophical basis behind our rejection
of the operating principles espoused in your letter, which we believe to be
not only unsound, but even immoral, by a definition of that term I will
present.

The semiconductor business is a tough one with significant competition from
the Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans. There have been more corporate
casualties than survivors. For that reason, our Board of Directors is not a
ceremonial watchdog, but a critical management function. The essential
criteria for Cypress board membership are as follows:

   * Experience as a CEO of an important technology company.
   * Direct expertise in the semiconductor business based on education and
     management experience.
   * Direct experience in the management of a company that buys from the
     semiconductor industry.

A search based on these criteria usually yields a male who is 50-plus years
old, has a Masters degree in an engineering science, and has moved up the
managerial ladder to the top spot in one or more corporations.
Unfortunately, there are currently few minorities and almost no women who
chose to be engineering graduate students 30 years ago. (That picture will
be dramatically different in 10 years, due to the greater diversification
of graduate students in the '80s.) Bluntly stated, a "woman's view" on how
to run our semiconductor company does not help us, unless that woman has an
advanced technical degree and experience as a CEO. I do realize there are
other industries in which the last statement does not hold true. We would
quickly embrace the opportunity to include any woman or minority person who
could help us as a director, because we pursue talent -- and we don't care
in what package that talent comes.

I believe that placing arbitrary racial or gender quotas on corporate
boards is fundamentally wrong. Therefore, not only does Cypress not meet
your requirements for boardroom diversification, but we are unlikely to,
because it is very difficult to find qualified directors, let alone
directors that also meet investors' racial and gender preferences.

I infer that your concept of corporate "morality" contains in it the
requirement to appoint a Board of Directors with, in your words, "equality
of sexes, races, and ethnic groups." I am unaware of any Christian
requirements for corporate boards; your views seem more accurately
described as "politically correct," than "Christian."

My views aside, your requirements are -- in effect -- immoral. By
"immoral," I mean "causing harm to people," a fundamental wrong. Here's
why:

I presume you believe your organization does good work and that the people
who spend their careers in its service deserve to retire with the
necessities of life assured. If your investment in Cypress is intended for
that purpose, I can tell you that each of the retired Sisters of St.
Francis would suffer if I were forced to run Cypress on anything but a
profit-making basis. The retirement plans of thousands of other people also
depend on Cypress stock -- $1.2 billion worth of stock -- owned directly by
investors or through mutual funds, pension funds, 401k programs, and
insurance companies. Recently, a fellow 1970 Dartmouth classmate wrote to
say that his son's college fund ("Dartmouth, Class of 2014," he writes)
owns Cypress stock. Any choice I would make to jeopardize retirees and
other investors from achieving their lifetime goals would be fundamentally
wrong.

   * Consider charitable donations. When the U.S. economy shrinks, the
     dollars available to charity shrink faster, including those dollars
     earmarked for the Sisters of St. Francis. If all companies in the U.S.
     were forced to operate according to some arbitrary social agenda,
     rather than for profit, all American companies would operate at a
     disadvantage to their foreign competitors, all Americans would become
     less well off (some laid off), and charitable giving would decline
     precipitously. Making Americans poorer and reducing charitable giving
     in order to force companies to follow an arbitrary social agenda is
     fundamentally wrong.

   * A final point with which you will undoubtedly disagree: Electing
     people to corporate boards based on racial preferences is demeaning to
     the very board members placed under such conditions, and unfair to
     people who are qualified. A prominent friend of mine hired a partner
     who is a brilliant, black Ph.D. from Berkeley. The woman is constantly
     insulted by being asked if she got her job because of preferences; the
     system that creates that institutionalized insult is fundamentally
     wrong.

Finally, you ought to get down from your moral high horse. Your form letter
signed with a stamped signature does not allow for the possibility that a
CEO could run a company morally and disagree with your position. You have
voted against me and the other directors of the company, which is your
right as a shareholder. But here is a synopsis of what you voted against:

   * Employee ownership. Every employee of Cypress is a shareholder and
     every employee of Cypress -- including the lowest-paid -- receives new
     Cypress stock options every year, a policy that sets us apart even
     from other Silicon Valley companies.

   * Excellent pay. Our employees in San Jose averaged $78,741 in salary
     and benefits in 1995. (That figure excludes my salary and that of
     Cypress's vice presidents; it's what "the workers" really get.)

   * A significant boost to our economy. In 1995, our company paid out $150
     million to its employees. That money did a lot of good: it bought a
     lot of houses, cars, movie tickets, eyeglasses, and college
     educations.

   * A flexible health-care program. A Cypress-paid health-care budget is
     granted to all employees to secure the health-care options they want,
     including medical, dental, and eye care, as well as different life
     insurance policies.

   * Personal computers. Cypress pays for half of home computers (up to
     $1,200) for all employees.

   * Employee education. We pay for our employees to go back to school, and
     we offer dozens of internal courses.

   * Paid time off. In addition to vacation and holidays, each Cypress
     employee can schedule paid time off for personal reasons.

   * Profit sharing. Cypress shares its profits with its employees. In
     1995, profit sharing added up to $5,000 per employee, given in equal
     shares, regardless of rank or salary. That was a 22% bonus for an
     employee earning $22,932 per year, the taxable salary of our
     lowest-paid San Jose employee.

   * Charitable Work. Cypress supports Silicon Valley. We support the
     Second Harvest Food Bank (food for the poor), the largest food bank in
     the United States. I was chairman of the 1993 food drive, and Cypress
     has won the food-giving title three years running. (Last year, we were
     credited with 354,131 pounds of food, or 454 pounds per employee, a
     record.) We also give to the Valley Medical Center, our Santa
     Clara-based public hospital, which accepts all patients without a
     "VISA check."

Those are some of the policies of the Board of Directors you voted against.
I believe you should support management teams that hold our values and have
the courage to put them into practice.

So, that's my reply. Choosing a Board of Directors based on race and gender
is a lousy way to run a company. Cypress will never do it. Furthermore, we
will never be pressured into it, because bowing to well-meaning,
special-interest groups is an immoral way to run a company, given all the
people it would hurt. We simply cannot allow arbitrary rules to be forced
on us by organizations that lack business expertise. I would rather be
labeled as a person who is unkind to religious groups than as a coward who
harms his employees and investors by mindlessly following high-sounding,
but false, standards of right and wrong.

You may think this letter is too tough a response to a shareholder
organization voting its conscience. But the political pressure to be what
is euphemistically called a "responsible corporation" today is so great
that it literally threatens the well being of every American. Let me
explain why.

In addition to your focus on the racial and gender equality of board
representation, other investors have their pet issues; for example, whether
or not a company:

   * is "green," or environmentally conscious.
   * does or does not do business with certain countries or groups of
     people.
   * supplies the U.S. Armed Forces.
   * is "involved in the community" in appropriate ways.
   * pays its CEO too much compared with its lowest-paid employee.
   * pays its CEO too much as declared by self-appointed "industry
     watchdogs."
   * gives to certain charities.
   * is willing to consider layoffs when the company is losing money.
   * is willing to consider layoffs to streamline its organization
     (so-called downsizing).
   * has a retirement plan.
   * pays for all or part of a health-care plan.
   * budgets a certain minimum percentage of payroll costs for employee
     training.
   * places employees on its Board of Directors (you forgot this one).
   * shares its profits with employees.

We believe Cypress has an excellent record on these issues. But that's
because it's the way we choose to run the business for ourselves and our
shareholders -- not because we run the business according to the mandates
of special-interest groups. Other companies, perhaps those in older
industries just trying to hold on to jobs, might find the choices our
company makes devastating to their businesses and, consequently, their
employees. No one set of choices could be correct for all companies.
Indeed, it would be impossible for any company to accede to all of the
special interests, because they are often in conflict with one another. For
example, Cypress won a San Jose Mayor's Environmental Award for water
conservation. Our waste water from the Minnesota plant is so clean we are
permitted to put it directly into a lake teeming with wildlife. (A game
warden station is the next door neighbor to that plant.) Those facts might
qualify us as a "green" company, but some investors would claim the
opposite because we adamantly oppose wasteful, government-mandated,
ride-sharing programs and believe that car-pool lanes waste the time of the
finest minds in Silicon Valley by creating government-inflicted traffic
jams -- while increasing pollution, not decreasing it, as claimed by some
self-declared "environmentalists."

The May 13, 1996 issue of Fortune magazine analyzed the "ethical mutual
funds" which invest with a social-issues agenda, and currently control $639
billion in investments. Those funds produced an 18.2% return in the last 12
months, while the S&P 500 returned 27.2%. The investors in those funds thus
lost 9% of $639 billion, or $57.5 billion in one year, because they
invested on a social-issues basis. Furthermore, their loss was not simply
someone else's gain; the money literally vanished from our economy, making
every American poorer. That's a lot of houses, food, and college educations
that were lost to the "higher good" of various causes. What absurd logic
would contend that Americans should be harmed by "good ethics?"

Despite our disagreement on the issues, The Sisters of St. Francis, the
ethical funds, and their investors are merely making free choices on how to
invest. What really worries me is the current election-year frenzy in
Washington to institutionalize "good ethics" by making them law -- a move
that would mandate widespread corporate mismanagement. The "corporate
responsibility" concepts promoted by Labor Secretary Reich and Senator
Kennedy make great TV sound bites, but if they were put into practice, it
would be a disaster for American business that would dwarf the $57 billion
lost by the inept investment strategy of the "ethical funds." And that
disaster would translate into lost jobs and lost wages for all Americans, a
fundamental wrong.

One Senate proposal for "responsible corporations," as outlined in the
February 26 issue of Business Week, would grant a low federal tax rate of
11% to "responsible corporations," and saddle all other companies with an
18% rate. One seemingly innocuous requirement for a "responsible
corporation," as proposed by Senators Bingaman and Daschle, would limit the
pay of a "responsible" CEO to no more than 50 times the company's
lowest-paid, full-time employee. To mandate that a "responsible
corporation" would have to limit the pay of its CEO is the perfect,
no-lose, election-year issue. The rule would be viewed as the right thing
to do by voters who distrust and dislike free markets, and as a don't-care
issue by the rest. But the following analysis of this proposal underscores
the fact that the simplistic solutions fashioned by politicians to provoke
fear and anger against America's businesses often sound reasonable -- while
being fundamentally wrong.

Consider the folly of the CEO pay limit as it applies to Intel: the biggest
semiconductor company in the world, the leader of America's return to
market dominance in semiconductors, the good corporate citizen, the
provider of 45,325 very high-quality jobs, the inventor of the
random-access memory, the inventor of the microprocessor, and the
manufacturer of the "brains" of 80% of the world's personal computers.
Suppose that Intel's lowest-paid trainee earns $15,000 per year. The 50 to
1 CEO salary rule would mandate that the salary of Intel's co-founder and
CEO, Andy Grove, could be no more than $750,000. Otherwise, Intel would
face a federal tax rate of 18% rather than 11%. Last year, Andy Grove
earned $2,756,700, well over that $750,000 limit, and Intel's pretax
earnings were $5.6 billion. Seven percentage points on Intel's tax rate
translates into a whopping $395 million tax penalty for Intel.
Consequently, the practical meaning of this "responsible corporation" law
to Intel would be this gun-to-the-head proposition: "Either cut the pay of
your Chief Executive Officer by a factor of four from $2,756,700 to
$750,000, or pay the federal government an extra $395 million in taxes."

The Bingaman-Daschle proposal would limit the pay of the CEO of the world's
most important semiconductor company to less than that of a second-string
quarterback in the NFL! That absurd result is not about "responsible
corporations," but about two leftist senators, out of touch with reality,
making political hay, causing harm, and labeling it "good." Their plan is
particularly immoral in that it would cause the losses inherent in
practicing their newly invented false moral standard to fall upon all
investors in American companies, even though the government itself had not
invested in those companies.

Meanwhile, my current salary multiple of 25 to 1 relative to our
lowest-paid employee would qualify Cypress as a "responsible corporation,"
only because we are younger and not yet as successful as Intel -- a fact
reflected by my lower pay. If Cypress had created as much wealth and as
many jobs as Intel, and if my compensation were higher for that reason,
then, according to the amazingly perverse logic of the "responsible
corporation," Cypress would be moved from the "responsible" to the
"irresponsible" category for having been more successful and for having
created more jobs! A final point: Why should either Intel or Cypress, both
companies making 30% pre-tax profit, be offered a special tax break by the
very politicians who would move on to the next press conference to complain
about "corporate welfare?"

How long will it be before Senators Kennedy, Bingaman, and Daschle hold
hearings on the "irresponsible corporations" that pay tens of millions of
dollars to professional athletes? Or are athletes a "protected group,"
leaving CEOs as their sole target? If not, which Senate Subcommittee will
determine the "responsible" pay level for a good CEO with 30% pretax
profit, as compared to a good pitcher with a 1.05 earned run average? These
questions highlight the absurdity of trying to replace free market pricing
with the responsible-corporation claptrap proposed by Bingaman, Daschle,
Kennedy, and Reich.

In conclusion, please consider these two points: First, Cypress is run
under a set of carefully considered moral principles, which rightly include
making a profit as a primary objective. Second, there is a fundamental
difference between your organization's right to vote its conscience and the
use of coercion by the federal government to force arbitrary "corporate
responsibilities" on America's businesses and shareholders.

Cypress stands for personal and economic freedom, for free minds and free
markets, a position irrevocably in opposition to the immoral attempt by
coercive utopians to mandate even more government control over America's
economy. With regard to our shareholders who exercise their right to vote
according to a social agenda, we suggest that they reconsider whether or
not their strategy will do net good -- after all of the real costs are
considered.

Sincerely,

T.J. Rodgers
President CEO

    
    re .72
    
    We have individual stocks in a few companies and shareholder proposals
    such as the one in .72 are now the norm with each proxy we receive.
    Actually multiple proposals are the norm.
    
    Greg
    

    re: .72
    
    <applause>

    Sounds like a great company to work for.

    Sounds like a great place alright, does anybody have any first hand
    experience with them they can tell us about?