I didn't get to hear most of President Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night. I only heard a bit of the ending in my car. However, what I did hear was the Republican rebuttal delivered by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. There was a specific statement in it that caught my attention, and I think the attention of many others as well:
"Contrary to the president's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew." --Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, in the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
Wow, that's quite a bold statement to make, no matter who you are. So apparently one individual's endeavor overshadowed the attempt of an entire country. But before we go any further, let's consider the veracity of Daniels' statment. Apple currently employs about 60,000 workers in the U.S., while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the number of jobs created by the $800 billion-plus stimulus at 1.4 million to 3.3 million. Realistically, Jobs has directly created more jobs (no pun intended) in China (the 300,000+ workers at Foxconn building his products), than in the U.S. Of course, there are two sides to this argument. People argue that a number of the 1.4-3.3 million jobs created by the bailout are only temporary, menial jobs that didn't help most people in the long run. I personally thought the 2008 Economic Stimulus was a bit of a fiasco, but the purpose was not to create long-term stable jobs, but temporary jobs that allowed families to carry on while the economy slowly recovers.
There are also people that argue that Steve Jobs indirectly created more jobs through programmers designing apps and features for his products, employees of retail stores that sell his products, and transportation workers who deliver his products and product parts, etc., etc., etc. Well, that all sounds great, but if you think about it, those software developers and programmers were designing and writing code for other devices before Apple products, and those retail stores workers were working in the same store that sold other devices prior to Apple, and considering how parts for Apple devices are assembled as well as manufactured in factories in China (which is one of the many reasons why Apple doesn't do manufacturing in the U.S.), I wonder how "American" those transportation workers are.
Also, we have to consider that business is business, and one product or service's success often comes at the expense of another product or service. The i-phone is a great product, but look at what it did to competition in the cellphone market. Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) recently announced that it will layoff 11% of its workers. Once the market leader in mobile operating systems, RIM has lost considerable ground due to Apple's success. Nokia, still the world's leading phone-maker despite losing market share to Apple, announced in November 2011 that it will layoff 17,000 employees worldwide. Many other wireless equipment makers like Ericsson and Motorola have also seen their markets shrink as Apple grows. If Steve Jobs is going to get credit for the jobs he indirectly created, he should also be held accountable for the jobs he indirectly destroyed.
Daniel's refers to business as a noble pursuit, but no profession is noble. There are immoral professions (the world's oldest profession, for example). It is the person, not the profession, that can be noble or not. There are noble businessmen as well as ignoble businessmen. In fact, during the time of kings and castles, there were nobles who weren't very "noble". I'm not trying to belittle Jobs, I think he was a brilliant entrepreneur, but Daniels is portraying him as a Messiah-like figure that can save this country's economy. We can't do anything to save ourselves, neither Obama nor the government can do anything to save us, only more individuals like Jobs who need to rise from obscurity can. Very noble and ideal thought Daniels, but reality isn't so rosy and human nature isn't so altruistic.
But what I really want to ask is: why are we still talking about Steve Jobs? Can't we put this man to rest? Why are we treating him like some epic hero? Let's look at what his man did. He turned two companies into huge successes and revolutionized mobile device capabilities. That's pretty good. But he didn't invent the lightbulb or introduce genetically engineered crops that saved an estimated 1 billion people in developing nations. But Thomas Edison and Norman Borlaug are rarely the topic of our conversations (many of us have never even heard of the latter). If Daniels really wanted to mention a businessman who is "noble", in every sense of the word, he should have chosen Bill Gates, someone who is as big of a philanthropist as he is an entrepreneur (the man just pledged $750 to global AIDS research http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-davos-aids-idUSTRE80P0GL20120126). But everyday, everywhere I go, everyone's talking about Jobs. Talking about his biography, reading his biography, listening to his audio biography, even talking about the Steve Jobs movie, which will be directed by the same guy that directed "The Social Network." Everyone is talking about a man that was a visionary, a perfectionist that was on a mission to create the perfect product. I've read and heard parts of the biography as well, but I get a very different image of Jobs. I see an impatient, oppressive, obstinate and emotionally fragile man that stole ideas from others, didn't give those working for him credit for their ideas, and broke down and cried when a product didn't come out the way he envisioned it. He may be a great businessman, but he's far from being a noble businessman.
And we need to keep it real and stop lying to ourselves. At its roots, business is about the pursuit of profit. A good businessman is one who can maximize his profit, either through increasing his sales, minimizing his expenses, or both. Steve Jobs has done both through his operations in China. The cheap cost of labor and parts allows him to minimize the expenses involved in the assembling of his products, while the massive workforce and manpower can be harnessed to produce an incredible amount of these devices for sale. He can care less about the jobless rate in the U.S. as long as Americans continue to purchase his devices. But Steve is not the only one involved, outsourcing to developing countries is so prevalent today that one can hardly be a good businessman without doing so, but for Mitch Daniels to use Jobs as an example is more than inappropriate. What would the founding fathers think if they heard that a man who exploits laborers in developing nations, deprives his own countrymen of manufacturing jobs but instead sells products to his own countrymen at a premium cost, is used as an example of a heroic patriot?
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