[quote=AN][quote=davelj]I disagree completely. (And Nassim Taleb is with me here, for what it’s worth.) What I see is a thin layer of very smart, hard working folks – none not particularly different from the others. The only real difference between them is “luck” and the degree of said luck. For example, take the top 25% of the graduating class of Wharton, Harvard Business School, or Pick a Class (the name and major is not important). All of these folks are very smart, motivated and hard working… the dramatic difference in outcomes is largely the result of luck. Some went into the right field, others didn’t; some met the right people, others didn’t, etc. But the great disparity in outcomes between them is not something inherent or the result of “harder work” or “more intelligence,” it’s … luck (or as Taleb would put it, “randomness”).
Even the “winners” will attest to this – they all have stories of many folks who were smarter and harder working then themselves who didn’t end up in the same place.[/quote]
What you fail to understand is guys like Zuckerberg, Page, Brin, Gates, Jobs, etc. are all the same. They’re just born in different generation. When Gates and Jobs started Apple and Microsoft, there were no internet. Yet, they still made their millions. The reason why I say they all are the same is because they all are problem solvers. They see (what most people don’t) the problem that many people have and they set out to find the solution to the problem. Sometimes, their first solution fail, but they’re the type that try and try again. I would put guys like Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, etc. in the same categories as well. The see the problem at the time and they set out to solve the problem. That made them Millions (adjusted for inflation, it’s probably Billions). This is why I say even if there’s no interest, some of the internet billionaires will still be at least millionaires. They might not invent Facebook or Google, because the internet doesn’t exist. However, they’ll see the problem we would have (whatever it may be, and there are many problems) and find solutions to the problem. Some of those solutions will make them a lot of money.
Then there are the many many entrepreneurs. Although they are not as successful, they’re not that much different. They see problems people have and they want to come up with solutions that will help fix the problem and make them a lot of money. Many times, they don’t succeed the first or the second time. However, they try and try again until the succeed. The point is, even without the internet, there are still many problems people have and these entrepreneurs will try to find solutions to them. Maybe, one of them will try and start a company that will come up with the internet.[/quote]
Exactly what “problem” did Mark Zuckerberg solve? He’s a spoiled, snot-nosed hacker who illegally and unethically hacked into Harvard’s databases and student e-mail accounts in order to bully and harass other students. That was the genesis of Facebook. He didn’t create social media, nor did he really improve it (IMHO). If anything, he created huge privacy issues; and when one considers Zuckerberg’s past behavior WRT hacking private accounts, giving Facebook your personal information is probably not the best idea.
Also, computer technology and the beginning stages of the internet already existed when Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were young children, most of that technology was publicly funded, too. Gates and Jobs simply arrived at the perfect time, when technology was developed enough to begin moving information onto smaller, personal devices. Sure, they were smart and creative, but much of their work was built upon what others had already developed.
As you know, Apple benefitted from PARC’s technology, and PARC benefitted from scientists who were trained and employed by the govt:
“In 1969, Chief Scientist at Xerox Jack Goldman approached Dr. George Pake, a physicist specializing in nuclear magnetic resonance and provost of Washington University, about starting a second research center for the company.
Pake selected Palo Alto, California, as the site of what was to become known as PARC. While the 3,000 mile buffer between it and Xerox headquarters in Rochester, New York afforded scientists at the new lab great freedom to undertake their work, the distance also served as an impediment in persuading management of the promise of some of their greatest achievements.
PARC’s West Coast location proved to be advantageous in the mid-1970s, when the lab was able to hire many employees of the nearby SRI Augmentation Research Center as that facility’s funding from DARPA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force began to diminish. Being situated on Stanford Research Park land leased from Stanford University [4] allowed Stanford graduate students to be involved in PARC research projects, and PARC scientists to collaborate with academic seminars and projects.”
Need we go into the public money that was spent educating so many of these scientists and engineers? Public grants and facilities, defense spending, etc. that enabled so much of this technology to come about?
If being “smart and innovative” is all that’s necessary for success, and if one is solely responsible for that success, why do we see so few (if any) great innovations coming from countries without stable governments and significant public spending?
