Jobs, Who Built Most Valuable Technology Company, Dies at 56
2011-10-05 23:45:04.437 GMT
by Jim Aley
Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Steve Jobs, who built the world’s
most valuable technology company by creating devices that
changed how people use electronics and revolutionized the
computer, music and mobile-phone industries, died. He was 56.
Jobs embodied the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He was a
long-haired counterculture technophile who dropped out of
college and started a computer company in his parents’
garage on April Fools' Day, 1976. He had no formal technical
training and no real business experience.
full article at:
Bill Gates also dropped out of college. Are these merely two exceptions that prove the rule about college being critical for life success? I don't think so. I believe these examples prove definitively that college is clearly NOT a prerequisite for success in business or life.
Yes, there are many successful people who went to college. But, it is possible they succeeded despite college not because of it. We mix up correlation and causation in our obsession with how important college is for life success. The cost or benefit of college can only be determined by each individual based on their own specific skills, resources, subjective preferences -- and individual opportunity costs.
There are two reasons it is impossible to say that proving some public subsidy for someone who otherwise would not go to college is better off if he gets the subsidy and goes to college. Firstly, we don't know and can't know what the opportunity cost is for the individual for going to college instead of pursuing an alternative course of action. Secondly, we know for certain that subsidies create cancerous systemic distortions in the economy and large subsectors of economy such as education, health care, banking, etc. etc. This is because the economy is a spontaneously forming natural complex system that follows certain ironclad laws of complex systems including the law of unintended consequences.
What this means is that any attempt to ensure certain desired outcomes, such as higher college graduation rates via publicy and subsidies, are bound by the law of unintended consequences (TLUC). TLUC says that well intended social engineering will trigger a train of negative unintended (and often invisible) consequences that make society over all poorer and worse off -- and often times the target group that is targetted for subsidies is not helped but is hurt in the end as well. So not only do we get negative results for the groups that government is trying to help, we also get negative results for society as a whole.
it seems counter intutive that we humans can't ensure outcomes in something we created in the first place. If we look around at the economy, didn't we create it? we invented cars and computers and we built all of the roads, houses, sky scrapers, etc. isn't the economy "man-made"?
No the economy is not man made. the economy is made up of man made objects, but the whole of the economy is larger than merely the sum of its man made parts. The economy is a large complex system of exchange that hasn't been planned by anyone. The economy's future cannot be determined by human design. Until we get our arms around human limitations to intervening in the economy, we will continue to pursue what we assume are objectively logical, scientifically justified interventions that are ultimately counter productive.
Humans are like gods in our ability to create new technologies like computers and rockets. We are like gods to the extent we can land a man on the moon. We are like gods in the sense we can launch massive war machines on another country and turn it to rubble. But we are not like gods in our abilty to manage and engineer complex natural systems.
it is plain old hubris to assume we humans can inject positive outcomes into society via enlightened government policy.
it is plain old hubris to assume we humans can inject positive outcomes into society via enlightened government policy.
just because we can land a man on the moon does not mean we can engineer the economy or society. Landing a man on the moon is a basic engineering problem. Engineering the economy is in a radically different and more complicated class of problems.
This is because the economy (and human society) is a complex system of exchange that is beyond the understanding and design and/or manipulation of human technology. A certain class of natural complex systems (such as human economy and weather systems and the earth biosphere) are beyond human or computer computation / modeling. These natural complex systems of matter and energy exchange are non-reducable.
They are self-determining as they evolve. Thus, no computer or human mind can predict how these complex natural systems will evolve. If we try to intervene in these systems to determine certain outcomes we decide are for the common good, what happens is we introduce a foreign variable into the system that sows systemic distortions.
This is because the economy (and human society) is a complex system of exchange that is beyond the understanding and design and/or manipulation of human technology. A certain class of natural complex systems (such as human economy and weather systems and the earth biosphere) are beyond human or computer computation / modeling. These natural complex systems of matter and energy exchange are non-reducable.
They are self-determining as they evolve. Thus, no computer or human mind can predict how these complex natural systems will evolve. If we try to intervene in these systems to determine certain outcomes we decide are for the common good, what happens is we introduce a foreign variable into the system that sows systemic distortions.
Thus, in my view the government should not subsidize college education or be in any way be involved in the direct or indirect financial support of secondary or graduate education. The same goes for primary education.
We should have a radical separation of education and state, just like we have separation of church and state. Why should the government have an effective monopoly over primary education? Why shouldn't we have freedom of education, same as freedom of religion?
Progressives are generally against evil monopolies except when the monopolies are run by what is assumed to be benevolent government. The irony is that in a competitive market there is no such thing as a sustainable monopoly. Companies win market share by providing a superior product. If a company tries to reduce supply or increase prices beyond what is a market clearing price in a competitive market, then this behavior will beg competition. There will always be a better mouse trap that an entrepreneur develops that can compete and win market share from a so called monopoly. if a company has what is considered a monopoly market share, then we should not care. Either that company is providing what the market wants -- or if not -- if the monopolist is cheating the public, some other firm will come into the market and compete for customers.
The only sustainable monopoly is one created by the public sector through laws and coercive enforcement!!! In fact, trust busting is typically a way for companies to defeat a competitor through government intervention when it can't compete in the market! trust busting typically hurts consumers and benefits big business -- because big business uses trust busting as a competitive tool to compete in markets where it is non competitive. high market share is no proof of a company taking advantage of public good via monopoly power. what if the high market share is related to the company providing a superior product at a low price!!!
typically companies are convicted for monopolistic predatory behavior for dumping!!! dumping is selling below market price NOT above as the theory has it that assumes private companies which have high market share will screw customers by reducing supply and hiking prices!!!
The logic goes that monopolistic companies dump first in order to kill competition so they can raise prices later. There is no evidence in the eocnomic history of the US of a company successfully killing competition by dumping first and then raising prices later. This doesn't work in a globalized world. if a company tries to kill competitors in a local market by dumping, they'll have to offset the costs of dumping by raising prices in another market. if the competitor in local market are smart, they will sell in the markets where the aspiring monopolist has to raise prices!!! This is exactly the history of how DuPont turned into a global company. A german company in early 1900s tried to dump certain product in the US to wipe out Dupont, which was a nascent competitor. What Dupont did is expand business overseas to markets where the German's raised prices to pay for dumping product into the US. the Germans failed in the US and Dupont gained massive share in overseas markets turning it over night into global power house.
Monopolies tend to reduce supply and increase price (either directly or through lower quality, slower delivery, fewer product options, etc) over time because they can!!! There is no feed back mechanism to force monopoly to meet true market demands. Thus, the monopoly will gradually and ineluctably provide lower quality, higher priced goods and services. this is an iron law of monopolies. It is why monopolies don't exist very long in competitive markets. IF a company tries to screw customers with its monopoly power, this will merely beg other companies to enter market and offer better product, thus undermining monopolist ability to "screw" customers.
The only truly sustainable case for a monopoly is one that is protected by public sector laws and enforcement. No matter how poorly the public sector monopoly performs, it will always be bailed out by bottomless fiscal well -- until the country goes bankrupt -- something we are seeing across the developed world today - in the EZ, in Japan also in the US in the form of massive public sector debt overhangs.
In the case of public schools, the teacher unions have hijacked the system for their own selfish interests. Resources are directed to teacher compensation, thus draining resources for children's education. Sionce there is no competition to public education, the children are effectively held hostage by what eventually turns into a dysfunctional public monopoly.
TO the extent secondary education works as well as it does in the US, this is because there is a large percentage of private colleges competing for students in the system. To the extent secondary education is at risk of systemic and secular decline (which it is in the US), this is because the public sector has involved itself so much by providing interest free loans and other massive subsidies for secondary education, which acts to sow systemic risk and dysfunction into the system as a whole in the form of tuition inflation. The more we subsidize specific student populations to go to college, we price the middle class out of education!!! College education is for the super wealthy (who can pay for it) and minorities (who get the biggest subsidies). minorities gain in some way but are also screwed because the only minorities who enter the system are those who are selected. forget about getting a job and paying for a superior education. the middle class is also screwed because they don't get need based scholarships and yet tuition rates are unaffordable.
There is no way of increasing college graduation rates via direct or indirect public policy without at the same time sowing systemic risk and distortion into the system as a whole. This is the law of unintended consequences that undermines ALL well intended public policy aimed at engineering social outcomes.
We are seeing the most insidious and dangerous inflation in two sectors of the economy that are also the most subsidized by the government: health care and education. another sector, housing, has also been massively subsidized over the past 50 years which helped fuel a massive price bubble in 2003 to 2007 which ended in a bust. The same crash is approaching in health care and secondary education.
The knee jerk answer for solving problems in education, health and housing is more government intervention. if only we could see clearly that the current problems are due to excessive government intervention, not the free market.
Steve Jobs epitomizes the American dream. the American dream doesn't include the "right" to universal health care, universal college education, a living wage, social security, or universal housing.
Education, housing, health care are results of the AMerican dream not causes. if we treat the results of the American dream as the causes, then we will be stuck in a self defeating circle of well intended public policy aimed at engineering and guaranteeing outcomes instead of the best we can do which is guarantee the right of each of us to pursue our dreams based on our right to private property and the pursuit of happiness.
if the government guarantees outcomes, such as making college education or health care a right, what this does is it requries government to cynically trample on the rights of some for the supposed collective good. This is the upside world view held by progressives who justify their well intended interventions by what is really a BRUTE FORCE, corecive and ultimately an inherently evil logic justified by the basic premise that good social ends justify goverment coercive or collectivist means. Progressives may argue their vision of government isn't coercive or evil if everyone (or most people) agree with a collectivist program. if i give up my individual rights for good of society then the logic goes, i am not being coerced by government, i am doing it by my own choice. But this is a thinly veiled example of a coersion by another name, in this case, tyranny of the majority. As long as progressives can get 51% agreement for their collectivist policies, they believ that the resulting policy is not coercive even if 49% are violently opposed to the policy and believe their rights are being trampled.
classical liberal theory focuses on reciprocal rights in society and the right to agree to disagree with others and with the idea of what is the collective good. If government guarantees individual rights and freedoms, then an ethical and sustainable society will naturally and spontaneously emerge. If government tries to guarantee outcomes aimed at the collective good, the result will be a society conflicted and separated by deep ideological divisions and fractures.
Who is in charge of defining what is in the collective good? Progressive pretend there is some scientific objective way to determine the collective good -- and that we can create incentives and rules that aim society toward this goal of collective good. my researh on complex natural systems (of which society and the human economy are examples) suggests that we humans cannot guarantee or engineer macro social or economic outcomes without sowing self destructive seeds that cause hidden damage that makes society worse off than it would have been without the well intended intervention.
The best we (i.e. the government) can do is ensure reciprocal rights of individuals to pursue their individual self-interest based on their own subjective needs, wants, desires and understanding of the world. any imposition by the government on society of what is determined by some expert or policy maker or nobel prize laureate or philosopher king as an "objectively" positive social outcome will result in some social dysfunction or systemic disease in the body economic and politic. There is no such thing as an objective social good, because to deliver this so called objective social good, this requires government coersion of some form or another (which includes ostensibly Democratic political institutions such as collective goods determined by majority vote. Direct "Democratic" rule is no social panacea, it is merely tyranny of the majority replacing tyranny of the despot or elites ).
-----Original Message-----
From: DAVID HURTARES, FREIMARK BLAIR & COM [mailto:dhurt1@bloomberg.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 9:24 PM
To: Sam Baker
Subject: Jobs, Who Built Most Valuable Technology Company, Dies at 56
From: DAVID HURTARES, FREIMARK BLAIR & COM [mailto:dhurt1@bloomberg.net]
Sent: Wednesday, October 05, 2011 9:24 PM
To: Sam Baker
Subject: Jobs, Who Built Most Valuable Technology Company, Dies at 56
Jobs, Who Built Most Valuable Technology Company, Dies at 56
--
Sent from Bloomberg for iPhone
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