David Shemano 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. <
The story describes Jobs as a liar and a cheat. Are you saying that _all_ entrepreneurs are that way, but that it's okay, since the ends justify the means? You seem to assume that the creation of Apple computer was enough of a good thing (enough of a worthwhile end) so that prevarication and cheating -- -- and use of sweatshop labor, etc. -- were acceptable violations of morality. But was it really worth it? Money Libertarians assume that entrepreneurship and innovation are always a good thing. What about the entrepreneur who invented and then started the distribution of that famous innovation, crack cocaine? what about that well-known entrepreneur, Bernie Madoff? He has some very innovative ways to get people's savings for himself. Even if we look only at the happy side of the story, it's quite possible that the "market" could have found an Apple replacement which would have developed "cool" products like the Mac. (They could have been better ones! after all, the Amiga was quite cool.) After all, it was possible that others could have lifted ideas from Xerox PARC. Unfortunately, we can't go back and see what would have happened if Jobs had decided to go into law or accounting instead, just as we can't go back to see how Jobs would have done if he hadn't been able to leech off of Wozniak. > 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 am at a loss to understand how the Money Libertarians can look at the history of the world and ignore not only the bad side of entrepreneurs (see above) but also how their success could not happen without the social institutions in which they operate. Jobs couldn't have made it if a large number of people hadn't been willing to write code late into the night despite insufficient pay. He couldn't have made it without our antiquated patent system which rewards those who hoard knowledge rather than sharing it with humanity (cf. Max's comment). He couldn't succeeded if he hadn't had financial help at a crucial time from Microsoft and if IBM hadn't created the overall market by making the PC into an almost ubiquitous household appliance in affluent countries. His iMac could not have succeeded if the Pentagon hadn't created the ARPANET, the basis for the Internet (which was helped by not-for-profit organizations). And it would have been very hard for Jobs to have succeeded if Wozniak had sued. And how the MLers miss the fact that "wealth" means different things in different social situations. Wealth is not an objective fact. Even actual goods and services (use-values) aren't valuable to people unless they want them, while people can be manipulated. (There's a whole group of "entrepreneurs" who specialize in manipulating them, sometimes successfully.) On top of that it's only in a market-oriented (commodity-producing) society such as capitalism that rewards a small number of people with the money that gives them the ability to order lots of other people around, constraining and controlling their lives. Even if Steve Jobs had been a saint, do we wish to give people that kind of power over others? BTW, why does the discussion of Jobs (on pen-l and elsewhere) mention his design partner, Jony Ive, who seems to have created the aesthetic side of the products that so many people give Jobs full credit for? The aesthetics represent at least half of these products' popularity. -- Jim Devine / "In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness." -- George Bernard Shaw _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
