Success Quote by Kenneth Lay

A man who ran Enron didn’t just sell electricity and natural gas; he sold a story about electricity and natural gas. “We see ourselves as first helping to open up markets to competition” is corporate self-mythmaking in its cleanest form: the executive as pioneer, the company as civic-minded midwife to a freer, more efficient world. The phrasing is doing quiet work. “We see ourselves” frames a contested political project as a matter of perspective, not power. “Helping” softens agency, as if deregulation simply needed a gentle nudge rather than lobbying, regulatory pressure, and strategic deal-making. “Open up markets” borrows the moral glow of liberation language, implying closedness, stagnation, even injustice. And “competition” arrives as the magic word that ends the argument: who could be against it?

The intent is defensive and preemptive. Lay isn’t describing a neutral business strategy; he’s laying cultural track for deregulation, presenting Enron’s profit motive as public service. It’s a pitch aimed at regulators, politicians, and the public: trust us, we’re not capturing the system, we’re improving it.

The subtext, sharpened by Enron’s later collapse, is that “competition” can be engineered. Market opening isn’t a natural event; it’s a redesign of rules. Companies that “help” write those rules often position themselves to win, turning the rhetoric of free markets into a tool for private advantage. Lay’s line works because it sounds like reform while quietly claiming authority over what reform should look like.