Doesn't anybody care about Paris Hilton any more? How about reality T.V.? On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Sean Andrews <[email protected]> wrote:
> on the contrary, these are rather linked: in your hypothetical > scenario, Jobs is able to solve his problem (and not have to worry > about fixing dinner) because he can rely on someone else to bring it > to him. Of course there is the I, Pencil understanding of this--which > is a good start, but which fails to recognize the variety of public > inputs to the process that aren't just about self interested Randian > entrepreneurs. > > The fact is that you can't really separate the "actual" and > "proximate" causes in this scenario. The only way that Jobs is able > to concentrate on being some isolated, driven genius is that there is > an entire social system creating all the other inputs he needs to be > productive. Sure there are more or less, Jobs... > > - attended public schools > - likely hired people who attended public schools > - created arrangements early on to sell Apple computers to public schools > - worked in an industry, as Doug Henwood (and countless others on the > LBO list) pointed out, that was initiated almost entirely out of > defense department and/or public university research. > - Benefited from government policies that favored China as a trading > partner starting in the early 2000s - and benefited from the low > income, high tension workplaces that these trading arrangements have > helped create (not so much a subsidy as the state setting up a > favorable structure for business.) > - very likely benefited from the kinds of pure science inputs of > public research, as our very own Perelman documents in "steal this > idea." > - benefited from a variety of crowdsourced/open source inventions like > the visual browser, etc. > - built social marketing into the iPod development, for instance by > making the white ear buds a signal of the iPod, a fashion accessory, > and therefore turned every iPod user (or wannabe ear bud wearer) into > a billboard for the product. > -benefited from the quiescence of leftist politics which allowed for > cheap credit and a culture of debt to cushion the silent > redistribution of wealth upward in a historic reversal of the post war > policies of progressive taxation > - etc. > > Besides the point in the passage below is not just that there are a > variety of inputs. It is that the very concept of the individual is > only possible in society. While at the margins there may be these > kinds of Randian superheroes, even their success is largely a result > of the social resources they were able to exploit. In any event, the > libertarian fundamentalism in your lreply is clearly motivated by > current circumstances. And on this topic, there is no evidence that > Jobs would have been any less likely to do any of this if his marginal > tax rate last week were the same as when he began his journey as an > entrepreneur. The last twenty years have been exceptionally good for > people like Jobs, but the median household has had it pretty rotten. > As the EPI has shown, ALL of the growth in income (and it has been a > pitiful amount of growth compared to the post-war average) has gone to > the top 10%, over 50% of it to the top 1%. Whatever you think about > this philosophically, it is obviously unsustainable economically. In > this, it doesn't actually matter what "marxist/leninists" believe: it > is an animosity borne of the penury of the mass of Americans. Just > sift through the stories on this blog and tell me how many potential > Steve Jobs are now languishing in near poverty > > http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/ > > Is it simply that they are not worthy of life, that they haven't > struggled enough or overcome enough? Do you really believe that > students leaving college this year have the same kind of job > opportunities (particularly relative to the debt they have accrued, > due largely to the disproportionate growth of tuition costs and the > cutting of public expenditures on higher education) as students > leaving school ten or twenty years ago? > > s > > On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 11:43, David Shemano <[email protected]> wrote: > > Responding to Sean Andrews: > > > > This is a red herring. The issue is not whether Jobs creates wealth by > himself or outside of a network of social relations. No one disputes that > that an Apple product, like a pencil, is the product of widely dispersed > knowledge contributed by a multitude over generations, and the product would > not exist without the contribution of each. Instead, the issue is the > difference between what lawyers call "actual cause" (i.e., but-for > causation) and "proximate cause." The fact that a software engineer working > late one night to solve a key problem and a pizza deliveryman who delivered > a pizza to the engineer that night might both be "actual causes" of the > final product does not mean that the contributions are in any way > meaningfully comparable, so we can say that the engineer's contribution was > a "proximate cause" of the product while the pizza delivery was not a > proximate cause. In this sense, when we search for the primary "proximate > causes" of Apple products, Jobs stands far above the rest, because (1) as a > matter of historic judgment, his contributions were relatively greater and > more important than the contributions of others, and (2) Jobs, the > individual person, was unique and irreplaceable, while all other > contributors, as individual persons, including Wozniak, would have been > replaceable. > > > > David Shemano > > > > "The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, > and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging > to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the > family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of > communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clan. Only > in the eighteenth century, in ‘civil society’, do the various forms of > social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his > private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this > standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the > hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations. > The human being is in the most literal sense a Zwon politikon[3] not merely > a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the > midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society – a > rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the > social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the > wilderness – is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language > without individuals living together and talking to each other. There is no > point in dwelling on this any longer. The point could go entirely > unmentioned if this twaddle, which had sense and reason for the > eighteenth-century characters, had not been earnestly pulled back into the > centre of the most modern economics..." > > _______________________________________________ > > pen-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > _______________________________________________ > > pen-l mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > -- Sandwichman
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