Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
There's been a lot on Jobs and OWS to synthesize over this past week. But I'm not sure anyone's really addressed what seems to me to be the key to understanding what the two have to say about each other. I take a stab in this week's Daily Caller column:
If Jobs’s death was indeed a where-were-you moment, surely the most ironic reply — and the best fitting to the moment — was “at Occupy Wall Street.” There, Jobs was more revered than respected, because to the archetypical Occupier, Jobs could only be a hero, never a role model. For the debt-laden postgraduate without prospects, Jobs’s geek-Romantic creed — half Siddhartha, half Legend of Zelda — is simply too late.
It’s not (just) that Jobs dramatically downplayed the selfishness and sacrifice required to self-actualize like he did. It’s that he didn’t give the intellectual time of day to the formerly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed who had lost their pivotal formative years in a scrim of opportunity costs. What would he have to say to them? “It’s never too late to become the person you once might have been?”
That’s a line from a different prayer book.
Matt Bai thinks the Creed of Steve will eventually make its way to Washington, where a polished new technocratic 'tude will renovate our fusty, inefficient governance. He misses the way that Jobs' ethos depended so much on its virtually total turn away from the burdens of politics. Occupy Wall Street lacks that luxury: is it a political or anti-political operation? The 'fierce urgency of now' of the OWS crowds stems not from a civil-rights-era apprehension of what they can do, politically, now, but from an all-too-contemporary sense of all that they can't. From that point of view, Steve Jobs lived out his days in an earthly iHeaven far beyond their reach. And the implications of that shared sentiment take us back to political problems Jobs himself set neatly aside.
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May '10
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
I presume James, that the irony you note is between the do-something Jobs and the do-nothing occupiers. But what about the more basic irony that Wall Street allowed Apple to be Apple and that only in the U.S. culture of risk capital do the sorts of breakthrough innovations typified by Jobs and Apple occur. It was risk capital that allowed the company to be formed and then reformed. It was Wall Street where Jobs could be rewarded for his vision and management talent And it is Wall Street where myriad union pension funds, 401K investors and retail investors propel AAPL shares and allow the company to continue to attract the best and the brightest. It is only in a country with an energetic and transparent market fueled by self-interested greed that you find a culture of iconoclastic innovation.
Aug '10
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
The difference between Steve Jobs and these kids? Though Jobs took time out to find himself, he also attended after school lectures at Hewlett-Packard and meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club.
He was thinking about making things, and not breaking things.
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
Indeed, Trace. And Nathaniel, that reminds me of a line that didn't make it in the piece -- relative to a heap of debt that can never be discharged, a net worth of zero, a.k.a. nothing left to lose, really does seem synonymous with freedom. Hard to be a rolling stone when you're chained to your creditors, even in a country without debtor's jail.
Mar '11
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
Mr Jobs represented the America that Mr Obama and OWS (but I repeat myself) want to fundamentally transform.
The contradiction is apparently lost on them.
May '10
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
Trace, was that about Wall Street investment banks? I've seldom seen anything from them until the important battles have been won already by venture funds and RAIN investors. You have to have the big tranche and IPO guys- though we are better off if they are privately held to keep the "skin" at risk- but I don't think the critical stages lend themselves to the insider skim games that characterize too much of The Street since the '90's.
May '10
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
Duane Oyen
Trace, was that about Wall Street investment banks? I've seldom seen anything from them until the important battles have been won already by venture funds and RAIN investors. You have to have the big tranche and IPO guys- though we are better off if they are privately held to keep the "skin" at risk- but I don't think the critical stages lend themselves to the insider skim games that characterize too much of The Street since the '90's. · Oct 10 at 11:51am
That's not fair Duane. The banks facilitate the transition of these businesses from private to public hands and provide the payoff that motivates the venture investors in the first place. All of these folks are cut from the same cloth. You can't have noble venture investing without meretricious investment bankers ready to usher in the next stage. This is not to say that all are above reproach, but in the end every vice comes right back down to the individual mutual fund holder or pensioner who is ruthless in his quest for ever higher returns.
May '10
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
Trace, I didn't say that they didn't need to exist- I said that they should be privately held instead of joint stock and have a healthy chunk of their personal skin in the game so that they take personal risks of out of pocket loss, not just reduced payout. I still see Drexel Burnham as an excellent example- they were creative, they fostered the opportunity for a bunch of companies, and paid a price (though arguably the wrong price due to overzealous regulators) when the games got out of hand.
I am with Russ Roberts on this one. Until real free market reform is in place- as opposed to the Dodd-Frank nonsense that shuts the industry down and is built on corporatism and bail-outs for the connected- is in place to take the bonanza away from those who kill the investors and walk away personally rich, we will continue to get such nonsense. The creditors (e.g., Goldman Sachs loans to AIG) should have been bailed out in 2008 to the extent needed to remain viable, but they should never- never- be made whole 100 cents on the buck.
May '10
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
I agree with all of that. But it's a far more subtle argument than the one being made by the, ahem, demonstrators.
May '10
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
Trace Urdan
I agree with all of that. But it's a far more subtle argument than the one being made by the, ahem, demonstrators. · Oct 10 at 1:19pm
Boy, Trace, there's a low bar you set for demonstrating wise subtlety! But we now have restored the customary comity to our discussion....
May '10
Re: Not Even Steve Jobs Could Save Occupy Wall Street
By the way, Trace, I agree partly with Richard Salzman- they should have bought toxic assets, not injected capital, for which I blame Henry, and disagree with his whining about bank stock values. The TARP idea was not unreasonable at all, and the execution was screwed up- especially when it became a slush fund in 2009.