[maddalab]

I am going to guess, what you really mean, is that you have not met successful people who have been mean to you or someone you associate with, or your inference is driven by a sampling bias.

Some points I agree with (a) Increasingly you win not by fighting to get control of a scarce resource, but by having new ideas and building new things. (b) that being mean makes you fail (* increases the likelihood of you failing) (c) Start ups win by transcending

Some points I disagree with (a) Mean people fail (b) Successful startup founders, programmers, professors, aren't (all) mean (c) Startups are not just one random type of work in which meanness and success are inversely correlated -- This is just a sampling bias