It never ceases to amaze me why we give power
over to those who do not themselves produce
Also, I assume you meant "those who did not themselves produce" because one of the most frustrating things about management is that you don't get to produce much. That sucks, but it's part of the job (I hate leaving work when my big accomplishment for the day was to talk to a bunch of co-workers, but it's my job...).
Actually, why do we view 'business' as its own separate
field when it doesn't mean anything in a vacuum?
Computer science doesn't mean anything in a vacuum either. What if you wrote a program and you couldn't market, sell or support it?
What if you wrote a program and you couldn't market, sell or support it?
People do this all the time, it's called open-source software
and people come upon it by merit of the quality of the code.
You've also dismissed all of the activities of Business because they're done in Business, but some activities are done in almost all groups-of-people.
It doesn't need buzzwords, jargon, sales, and demographics numbers.
The MBA disease - and this is what the article is about, obliquely - is thinking you don't need to know anything about the business itself to manage it, because business as a whole is a uniform set of actions. At Lilly this was endemic to the point that people were advised - I kid you not - to avoid learning any technical information or anything too specific about their areas, because it would harm their careers. Lilly people were discouraged from associating too much with contractors, because contractors were hired to do specific domain-knowledge things like, oh, develop key software that governed their manufacturing procedures, including generating all expiration dates for the company. (God forbid anybody at Lilly should sully themselves with learning how expiration dating works - I sure enjoyed it, though.)
So you're right, business administration is an essential set of skills, but the point here is that without knowledge of the business you're administrating, you can't make valid decisions - except on the basis of short-term financial goals that ultimately result in the downfall of society.
(Lilly was unreal. They don't have fountains in the courtyard, they have water features. The whole place reeks of pretentiousness. Corporate headquarters rocks, though; long, long ago, Eli Lilly himself ended up buying the whole street of old brick buildings, which are now perfectly preserved under a common roof. Architecturally fantastic! The Lilly people hate it; it's too old and has weird corners. They are all idiots.)
that without knowledge of the business you're [XYZing],
you can't make valid decisions
That said, we got too damn many MBAs...
It's like the difference between the flu and AIDS - if the disease targets the immune system you're dead.
Regarding discovering it, though, speak for yourself about the just-nowness. When the corporate raider became front magazine cover hero in the 80's, that's when it became endemic. Since then, America has been eating its seed corn.
I was in high school and college at the time, so I didn't know what was going on, but looking back, it should have been obvious. And like I say, I figured it out in the early 90's. I've been self-employed since that job and never regretted it.
Musicians are legendary for having this problem.