Category Archives: Technology

UPDATE II: Protesters: Walking Ads For Bounty Business Creates (Kanye Joins Smelly Rally)

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Technology, Trade

This detailed image titled “Down With Evil Corporations,” via LRC.COM, depicts the walking contradiction that the potentially violent Wall-Street protesters embody. The clothes they wear, the devices they use to communicate and transmit their (mostly) sub-intelligent message, the food they buy cheaply at the corner stand to sustain their efforts—these are all produced, facilitated or brought to market by the invisible hand these unproductive people wish to lop-off.

CLICK TO ENLARGE:

UPDATE I (Oct. Eighth): Myron you’re confused; your reasoning is backward. Corporations don’t have the powers you attribute them; to the extent that they have this list of powers you wrongly imbue them with—they got them from government. If government stuck to its constitutional (originalist) mandate, all else would fall into place. The feats you ascribe to companies are only ever made possible by state edict. I’m surprised you don’t see that Perry didn’t have to accept a bribe, the government doesn’t have to grant Microsoft all the H-1B visas it wants (while the IEEE reports that 4 percent of American engineers are unemployed), it doesn’t have to recapitalize the big banks, etc, etc.

UPDATE II (Oct. 11): Rapper Kanye West drops in on the Smelly Rally (“Occupy Wall Street”) “wearing $355 GIVENCHY shirt” and lots of gold, all fashioned by business for his pleasure.

Steve Jobs & The Paramountcy Of Privacy

Business, Capitalism, Celebrity, Conservatism, Ethics, Human Accomplishment, Media, Morality, Pop-Culture, Technology, The Zeitgeist

THE PARAMOUNTCY OF PRIVACY. I’m not particularly familiar or enamored of the new gadgets, although I fully appreciate their contribution to humans and to humanity. I tend to stick with CDs (for the best in sound), books for reading, and the Internet and email for communicating.

Still, as a capitalist and a communicator, I admired Steve Jobs greatly. I particularly liked the precision and sophistication with which he used language. I appreciated the amalgamation of drama and simplicity in the Job’s message. Jobs was never a blabber mouth.

But most of all, I identified with Steve Jobs’ acute sense of privacy. He was a very private man.

For one of the most recognizable men on earth, Steve Jobs was quite elusive. To me, that is paramount—and the very essence of greatness. Privacy is what made Jobs a conservative persona. The fact that Jobs knew the importance of boundaries between what a person shared with the world and what he kept to himself gave him the bearing of a champion. Only a private man, in my view, can strive to true greatness.

When Jobs died I was wrapping up a WND column about yet another repulsive character that is about to join the pantheon of American exhibitionists—liars, cheats, whores (not the good kind), and worse—who’ve shared (or will share) a couch with that vulgarizer, Oprah. What a study in contrasts!

In Ayn Rand’s magnificent words, “civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.” The heroic and creative inner struggle is what brings out the best in man. I repeat myself, I know: My heroes are in the Greek tradition: silent, stoic, principled yet private. That is what I saw in Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs (1955–2011)

America, Business, Capitalism, Celebrity, Ethics, Human Accomplishment, Morality, Pop-Culture, Technology

Ryan McMaken at Mises.org eulogizes Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs, one of the most important entrepreneurs and innovators of both the 20th and 21st centuries, has died. Will he receive the sort of veneration reserved to politicians when they die? That’s unlikely, although Steve Jobs typically did more good for humanity every day before lunch time than any politician has ever done in his whole life.
Jobs should be considered a great American icon in the same way that Michelangelo is associated with Italy or Mozart with Austria.
When foreigners walk into “American-themed” gift shops in America, they should be greeted with commemorative plates bearing Jobs’s face.
Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen since we have to honor great humanitarians like nuker-in-chief Harry Truman instead.
And of course, Jobs did great things for all humans, and not just Americans.

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs.

APPLE–Remembering Steve Jobs: “… Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built…”

Playboy before “The Girls Next Door”. Via LewRockwell.com, here is the definitive Playboy interview with Steven Jobs.

A Qwickster Response from Netflix

Business, Capitalism, Democracy, Free Markets, Technology, The State

Netflix upset its fractious, spoiled-rotten patrons by raising prices (which were at a rock-bottom low), and separating its on-demand internet streaming service from the DVD-by-mail business (now called Qwikster). No sooner did Netflix customers begin whining, than the company sprung into action—within weeks.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has been groveling to the only voters who count in the true democracy that is the free market: “I messed up. I owe you an explanation … we lacked respect and humility,” all ridiculous and untrue, but necessary if this shrewd businessman is to please his only lords and masters: the buyers.

Despite this Qwickster response, the same misguided patrons refuse to appreciate the wonders of free-market capitalism and will keep begging for more of Uncle Sam’s screw-you, coercive services.