Hacker News Reader

Comment by mpg33 | Hacker News Reader

> This is what you get when a company/group/effort/community is lead by a "benevolent dictator" - someone with an absolutely pure vision of what they want their output to look like and the autonomy and strength to make it so no matter what.

Good explanation of Steve Jobs as well IMO

View on HN

Unfortunately not. Apple's success was many times despite Jobs. He was indeed a visionary, but 'benevolent' is the precise wrong term for him.

Well, not to other people, no. "Benevolent" would be the last word I'd choose to describe him.

But I believe Jobs was "benevolent" to the product itself.

Yup. Benevolent in this case has nothing to do with the person's personal treatment of others, and everything to do with the person being willing to serve the company/state rather than herself. The conventional dictators in failed states simply extract as much value as they can, at the expense of everyone else. A benevolent dictator uses her power to advance the cause. The way she does it might be suspect, even unethical or wrong, but there's no denying that it's to further the cause rather than selfishly extract-and-dump.

> Yup. Benevolent in this case has nothing to do with the person's personal treatment of others, and everything to do with the person being willing to serve the company/state rather than herself

Jobs made billions. Your sentence is subsequently nonsense.

Allow me to clarify. The difference between a failed-state dictator and a benevolent one isn't how much money they have in their banks at the end of it, but how much they grew their nation/state/company/organization/brand in the process. I think it's fine for a CEO to be compensated in the billions if he does it by making his company billions more. It's a question of the relationship the CEO has with wealth- does she help to create it, or is she just siphoning it into her pockets?

It's not always clear, but I think it's an important thing to consider. The size of a CEO's bank account alone is insufficient information for a meaningful answer.

> The difference between a failed-state dictator and a benevolent one isn't how much money they have in their banks at the end of it, but how much they grew their nation/state/company/organization/brand in the process

Are you joking? Is this your serious view of reality? That dictators are fine as long as they make the country as a whole richer?

I'm not making any normative statements about what is fine and what is not fine. I don't claim to have such moral authority.

All I'm saying is that different dictators achieve different things. Some 'dictators' enrich their countries, and some 'dictators' impoverish it. Similarly, some 'democracies' enrich their countries, and some 'democracies' impoverish them.

That's all I'm saying.

I know that it is trendy on HN to hate on Jobs now (ok, that was spiteful, sorry) but I think no-one around here has the insight to judge what Steve Jobs what in the success of Apple.

Apple grew from zero to great; Jobs lead it. This is all the correlation I feel entitled to dare, did reading the biography grant you more? (Again spiteful. Sorry. So this is how aggressive comments are written...)

I didn't downvote you, but I have to wonder why you didn't just edit out your self-described spiteful bits, instead of leaving them in and pointing out that they are spiteful.

Also a good explanation of Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew

ahahah, visakanv, you smart guy! that's a nice comparison.

Capitalism without democracy is what we want!!! /s

Not sure what you're getting at. =\ If you have anything thoughtful to bring up, I'd love to hear it and we could have a constructive discussion.

Ok now I'm not sure anymore you were ironic. Do you really believe that Singapore is a positive example?

Yeah, I wasn't trying to be ironic. I think the comparison is reasonably apt. I think LKY's stewardship of Singapore mirrors Steve Jobs' of Apple and Elon Musk's of Tesla. I think all of them had a clear idea about what needed to be done, and they did it, in a way that could be described as obsessive or pathalogical. I'm trying to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.

I think "positive example" is too vague a term. What do you mean by positive example?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com