Buzz Out Loud Lounge forum: President Jobs or President Gates

I hear Gates does a lot of charity and has a fancy house somewhere in Seattle?

But... I'm gonna go w/ Jobs. For a man who started with nothing, help co-create an empire then somehow getting fired (persay) and returns back to the company he help create to make it better. I'm gonna say Jobs is the man.

Plus, his name is "Job" and who doesn't need one! ?

... so if he were president he could knock down all of these crazy bills from the RIAA and MPAA, and net neutrality.

Then I'd vote for 3rd party candidate Larry Ellison

Linus Torvalds would make a good president 'cause he'd make everything free.

Though I've never understood quite why people think Jobs isn't more brilliant with business than Gates. People just look at the sheer number of PCs and somehow think that's a mark of brilliance.

Jobs came back to Apple and pulled it from near collapse and obscurity into a company with one of the largest tech mindshares in the industry. It is highly profitable, has billions in cash reserves, stock that continues to climb and when Jobs talks to the Movie and Record industry he says "who's your daddy?"

-Kevin S.

Leading a corporation is very different from leading a country. The conditions of leadership and the conditions of the enterprise are totally different.

I'm not saying a corporate leader is disqualified for any reason, but just as being a successful military leader does not assure you will be a successful President, so does being a successful corporate leader not assure you of the same thing. In fact there are some conditions of being incorporated that lead me to think a corporate leader has an uphill battle to prove they are capable.

A corporation is a legal entity chartered by the state. The actions of the corporation do not fall on the responsibility of any single member. In fact, the corporation is treated legally as a fictitious 'preson' thereby absolving the individuals of responsibility for the actions of the corporation as a whole. The leader of the corporation is beholden legally to the interests of the stockholders, a small group of people with a lot of money. Stockholders almost universally demand a profit and usually in a short-term timeframe.

The government is supposed to be beholden to every citizen, not just the rich. Additionally the aim of government is the opposite of a corporation, it is the welfare of the people. The government is not supposed to turn a profit, but in fact, shouldn't be in the business of making money at all, except in so much as it must pay for its role in protecting the welfare of its citizens.

So in my opinion, the profit-motive works very well for business but is not the way to govern. The government should protect the right of its people to make money, and therefore not be in the business of profit itself. Also, the immunity from individual responsibility that the corporate charter represents, may be a good thing for business, but would be utterly abhorrent in government. Our government should be of the people, by the people, but not a fictious 'person' of our oen.

No doubt, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are smart men, with altruistic sides, and excellent ideas. But they have both been in a world that does not consider people first, and pursues profit for a small group at the primary. That is not how I want my government run. They would have to do a lot of proving that they can work outside that framework before either of them would get my vote.

-Tom

I was making a similar point in one of my posts above where I mention (in so many words) that I always find it absurd that people pick CEOs of mega corps and think they will be a good president (like Perot, Iacocca and Eisner - my examples). And it's dumb.

I don't put Jobs in that same category. He has been a successful business man but Number 1: we know he is a very charismatic individual, hence the term "Jobs' Reality Distortion Field." Number 2: we also know that he has stuck to his guns regarding his vision for a better way of (computing) life when it has probably kept the Macintosh market share to a fraction of the PCs (thank god). He refused to open the platform and make it become the chaotic jumbled mess of infinite configuration that is the PC world. And... that cost him market share.

He also went to bat for the people by not budging on the delivery of music for 99 cents. He ultimately seems to get what's good for most consumers. And don't blame the DRM issue on him. As you've all seen, that comes from the movie/recording industry.

So sure, Tom. The easy way out on this is to glop Steve Jobs in the same category as Bill Gates and make everybody happy by saying they are equally bad choices because they are flip sides of the same coin, right? Not even close. But your argument about what the government should really be doing is sound and I believe in it. I just personally think Jobs has proven he governs (leads, rules, whatever) in a way that he feels will give people a better way of life, even at the expense of market share. He's not even close to being a saint but he does what leaders do; he makes people around him get the job done. Consumers everywhere have benefited from it, whether they buy into his vision or the ripoff that tries to copy it every 5 years.

-Kevin S.

and stop supporting the old versions. Plus taxpayers cant afford to pay $2000 for a MacBook while a Dell would do the same for half that.