Re: ruthless: I think this comment bears consideration within the context of a point I made. Mean people may not be mean all the time. What kind of ruthlessness are we talking? Is it the kind that, for instance, could cause competitors to lose jobs? Causing someone to lose their sustenance is pretty mean. I think we are kind of fibbing if we say it is not. We also can't say that such an act "isn't meant/intentioned" that way, either - a savvy business owner is aware his actions may harm competition and should be generally aware of how and how much, to boot. Someone is mean depending on who you are to them: the bug, the car, the windshield. Someone may only be mean to you once but sometimes once is devastating - loss of a job or, if you're the bug, your life. I feel like the very separation and defining of people as belonging to one of two discrete, disparate, opposing entities is problematic for me in regards to this article. You either are mean or you aren't. But who do you know that exists as such a caricature? Not-mean and successful or mean and a failure? Sometimes, I think, we are all mean, or can be, or have been. Maybe what keeps us from being more mean than we are (individually and on average) is not much more than a matter of luck: a few inches there or a few seconds here. Narrowly missing being t-boned at an intersection and left in chronic pain for the rest of your life. Happening to run into a rich investor and catching his ear at the supermarket. A drunk driver damaging your car, your house, or your family. That teacher in undergrad who should have failed you based on attendance but didn't. The friend who loaned you $500 to pay your bills once and never let you pay it back. Some of these life experiences make it easier to be nice. Some make it harder. If you live a blessed existence full of mostly the one it is easy to be nice - but is it true? How true? If you are not nice when push comes to shove then are you nice at all? When push comes to shove is being nice really the best thing for you to do?