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PharaohsIt took Khufu twenty-three years to build his Great Pyramid at Giza, where some eleven hundred stone blocks, each weighing about two and a half tons, had to be quarried, moved, and set in place every day during the annual building season, roughly four months long. Few commentators on these facts can resist noting that this achievement is an amazing testimonial to the pharaoh__ iron control over the workers of Egypt. I submit, on the contrary, that pharaoh Khufu needed to exercise no more control over his workers at Giza than pharaoh Bill Gates exercises over his workers at Microsoft. I submit that Egyptian workers, relatively speaking, got as much out of building Khufu__ pyramid as Microsoft workers will get out of building Bill Gates__ pyramid (which will surely dwarf Khufu__ a hundred times over, though it will not, of course, be built of stone).No special control is needed to make people into pyramid builders__f they see themselves as having no choice but to build pyramids. They__l build whatever they__e told to build, whether it__ pyramids, parking garages, or computer programs.Karl Marx recognized that workers without a choice are workers in chains. But his idea of breaking chains was for us to depose the pharaohs and then build the pyramids for ourselves, as if building pyramids is something we just can__ stop doing, we love it so much.