Learning Paths » 5B Interacting
APez - How Steve Job Changed Capitalism. Textual analysis.
by - (2011-10-16)
Up to 5 B - How Steve Job Changed Capitalism
The text is an article published in "The Guardian" on the 6th October 2011 by Julian Baggini about Steve Jobs' influence in capitalism, how he changed it. This is also the thesis of the article.
To begin with, he understood the most important market rule, that is giving the consumer what he'll desire and he doesn't know to desire. So "this challenges the idea that consumer culture inevitably means pandering to the conventional, to the lowest common denominator", only great inventions can became popular.
Moreover, Jobs provided the clearest evidence that excellence comes at a cost A product has an high price if it has an high quality, not only for technological firms, but also for other business.He used this principle, and his company Apple actually is the biggest company in the world.
Howether, Jobs for the way in which he tightly controlled Apple's copyrights was unpopular, this was seen as undemocratic, but his success shows that the idea that true excellence often requires tight control isn't so wrong and undemocratic.
Maybe he hasn't changed totally capitalism. Free markets manages to do everything to increase its efficiency. If Jobs hadn’t achieve I-Pad, someone made them for him with the same result.
Jobs doesn't show that capitalism is a flawed system, only that it is not perfectly self-regulating.
To conclude, Steve Jobs changed capitalism and market laws, showing that capitalism system could not exist without buyer contribution.