On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 8:17 PM, David Shemano <[email protected]> wrote: > While not the most flattering Jobs story, what this exemplifies is that Jobs > was the exemplar of the entrepreneur and the primary role the entrepreneur > plays in wealth creation. As technologically brilliant as Wozniak was, > without Jobs, Wozniak would have been just another successful engineer -- he > had no vision, drive or willpower to turn Apple into what it became. Without > Wozniak, Jobs undoubtedly would have found a Wozniak replacement and Apple > would still have developed substantially the form we know it today. I am at > a loss to understand at how Leftists/Marxists can look at the history of > Apple and then deny that wealth creation is ultimately the product of the > vision, drive and willpower of individual entrepeneurs and instead attribute > wealth creation to the labor of the other 99%, or deny that wealth creation > is dependent on social structures that enable the Jobs of the world to pursue > their vision as opposed to hindering them. >
I happen to agree with you that without Jobs, Apple as we know it does bot exist. Without a Wozniak it probably still would. And consequently I agree with you that a Steve Jobs poses a problem for the standard leftist critique of the enterpreneurial system. As far as I can tell, he really is a real-world example of a Ayn Randian hero. My own response to this is that Jobs is something of an exception. For every creative genius like Steve Jobs who arguably really "earned" his billions, there are a dozen vulgar mediocrities like Steve Schwarzman or Donald Trump who plainly didn't do anything good for the world to earn their fortunes. You are wrong to use the very few Steve Jobs of the world to justify the fortunes of the many Donald Trumps. -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
