"He is also known, as he admitted during the New York Times Dealbook conference on Wednesday, for being "an arrogant prick." And he thinks more leaders should be. "The critique I get on Wall Street is I'm an arrogant prick," Karp said, gripping both sides of his chair and leaning precariously forward in his usual animated style. "Okay, great. Well, you know, judge me by the accomplishment.""
"Karp's central argument was that corporate and political America has broken the fundamental relationship between decision-making and consequence. He lambasted a class of business leaders who make "completely stupid decisions," go to the White House for a bailout, and collect a bonus a year later. In his eyes, they privatize their wins and socialize their losses. "The only people who pay the price for being wrong in this culture, in complete fashion, are poor people," Karp said. "The rest of us somehow outsource all the times we're wrong and stupid to the whole society.""
Arrogance functions as a leadership survival mechanism when decisive correctness matters despite unpopularity. A culture of elite insulation enables leaders to privatize gains and socialize losses, undermining the link between decision-making and consequence. Poor and marginalized people face disproportionately severe penalties for mistakes, while some elites secure bailouts and bonuses. An alternative corporate approach emphasizes long-term decisions, accountability for failures, and acceptance of risk. That approach rejects bailout culture and seeks to align responsibility with outcomes so that leaders cannot outsource the costs of being wrong onto broader society.
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