24. “A powerful business leader has far more opportunity to influence the course of a community or a nation than does any government official.”
Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
Historical examples of both influential¹ public officials and influential business leaders abound². However, the power of the modern-era business leader is quite different from that of the government official. On balance, the CEO seems to be better positioned to influence the course of community and of nations.
Admittedly the opportunities for the legislator to regulate commerce or of the jurist to dictate³ rules of equity⁴ are official and immediate⁵. No private individual can hold that brand of influence. Yet official power is tempered by our check-and-balance system (制约平衡制度) of government and, in the case of legislators, by the voting power of the electorate⁶. Our business leaders are not so constrained⁷, so, their opportunities far exceed those of any public official. Moreover, powerful business leaders all too often seem to hold de facto legislative⁸ and judicial⁹ power by way of their direct influence over public officials, as the Clinton Administration’s fund-raising scandal of 1997 illuminated¹⁰ all too well.
The industrial and technological¹¹ eras have bred such moguls of capitalism¹² as Pullman, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Gates, who by the nature of their industries and their business savvy¹³, not by force of law, have transformed our economy, the nature of work, and our very day-to-day (adj. 日常的, 逐日的) existence. Of course, many modern-day public servants have made the most of their opportunities—for example, the crime-busting (bust: to break or smash especially with force;) mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the new-dealing President Franklin Roosevelt. Yet their impact seems to pale next to those of our modern captains of industry.
In sum, modem¹⁴ business leaders by virtue¹⁵ of the far-reaching impact of their industries and of their freedom from external constraints¹⁶, have supplanted¹⁷ lawmakers as the great opportunists of the world and prime movers of society.

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