In 1976, high school friends Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs built their first computer — the Apple 1. http://t.co/pl9US5FPBI—
ClassicPics (@History_Pics) April 27, 2015
The Apple 1– Updated
28 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, technological progress Tags: Apple, creative destruction, innovation, Steve Jobs
I read a Steve Jobs biography 15 years ago when you couldn’t find him on this chart
21 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, entrepreneurship, financial economics, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: Apple, creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, Steve Jobs
People really forget how awesomely powerful IBM was in the 1980s: @evankirstel http://t.co/TkpuU5sAXg—
Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) April 04, 2015
Steve Jobs and the Twitter Left
11 Apr 2014 Leave a comment
in entrepreneurship, personnel economics, politics Tags: Steve Jobs
We saw the movie Jobs:
- I could not work out what Steve Jobs actually achieved on his own by the time the film ended in about 2001.
- Jobs was portrayed as a thoroughly unlikable fellow who was a terrible CEO who deserved to be fired in the mid-1980s.
- If he had been hit by a bus in 2000, no one would remember him now. I read a biography of Jobs around that time.
By 2012, Jobs had been labelled “Greatest entrepreneur of our time”, “brilliant, visionary, inspiring”, and “the quintessential entrepreneur of our generation” and CEO of the decade.
My estimations of Jobs did go up later when I found out that after resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programmes. Jobs said he felt that expanding Apple would do more good than giving money to charity. This is a great point by him about the role of economic progress in abolishing poverty. There is no public record of Jobs giving money to charity apart from product RED.
Good to see that having a driven personality can still get you a pass on your membership of the top 0.1% of income earners in the eyes of the Twitter Left or should it be the IPhone Left.
The economics of Dennis Lillee and Steve Jobs
15 Mar 2014 1 Comment
in cricket, entrepreneurship, human capital, labour economics Tags: Apple, Bill Gates, CEO pay, cricket, Dennis Lillee, Kerry Packer, regulatory capture, Steve Jobs, superstars, top 1%
Dennis Lillee was paid £1,200 to tour England in 1972 for five months. He was paid the same to tour for three months in 1975. Now a world-class fast bowling coach, he would probably not get out for bed for £1,200
When Kerry Packer bid for the Australian cricket rights in the 1970s, he offered $500,000 per year. That was about ten times what the ABC was paying at the time
The Australian cricket TV rights sold for over $500 million in 2013 for a 5-year deal.
Today’s international cricketers are millionaires – widely respected and beloved members of the top 1% of income earners. Most think it is great that top sports people make millions over their career. No plans for the Occupy Wall Street crowd to occupy the MCG, Wimbledon or the Olympics to complain about superstar sports salaries and prizes.
Lillee and other top athletes, celebrities, actors, musicians and entertainers are all paid much more for much the same reason that CEOs, money market managers, top lawyers and tech entrepreneurs are paid much more than in the past.
They are superstars who are able to leverage their talent through communications technology advances on a national and global level. They can apply ‘their talent to greater pools of resources and reach[ing] larger numbers of people thus becoming more productive and higher paid’.
- Why is there envy over the pay of businessmen but not for superstar entertainers and athletes?
- Did people boo World Series Cricket in 1977 because those cricketers could now make a decent living?
- Do people complain when musicians and actors make it big?
Why is Steve Jobs strangely immune from top 1% envy despite his cheapness and meanness to others while Bill Gates is reviled as some sort of monopolist despite his giving most of his wealth away?
Was Jobs worth his pay? Apple shares went up and down in billions on news of Steve Jobs’s health.
When Hewlett Packard’s CEO Mark Hurd resigned unexpectedly, the value of HP shares dropped by about $10 billion! This makes his $30 million in annual compensation a bargain for his shareholders. Oracle’s shares rose 6% on word of Mr. Hurd’s hiring as co-president on an annual base salary of $950,000 and being eligible for up to a $10 million annual bonus. Perhaps he is under-paid?
See Kaplan, Steven N., and Joshua Rauh. 2013. It’s the Market: The Broad-Based Rise in the Return to Top Talent, Journal of Economic Perspectives 2013 for more.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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