Re: Obama on Steve Jobs.. Being brilliant and driven is no guarantee of financial success..

[Fumesucker]

Nikola Tesla was a genuine genius and a driven personality who invented some technology that is basic to our modern civilization, he died basically a pauper.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Tesla never put much focus on his finances and died with little funds at the age of 86, alone in the two room hotel suite in which he lived, in New York City.

You have to be driven to accumulate money, power and control, simply being a world class mind and driven to develop and understand things is not enough to become and remain extremely wealthy.

Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor. This work helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

[Jakes Progress]

1. So Jobs' problem is that he is

brilliant but not obsessed enough or greedy enough?

[Fumesucker]

2. Oh, he's brilliant, obsessed and greedy alright..

He's a brilliant businessman who is obsessed by his greed and need to dominate.

But he's not in the same league as Tesla as a scientific or technological mind.

[NashVegas]

3. Unfortunately, In the Current Day And Age

It is the ability to create wealth which is celebrated, far more than the ability to create any other item.

And the hysterical thing about it that statement is, these Ayn Rand worshippers who think that's just groovy, don't realize (if they're on the bottom end, but you better believe Jimmy Wales knows) how much these modern day supermen owe to collectives.

[Jakes Progress]

4. Gotta disagree.

He may be a pain in the ass, but money isn't his driving force. And a brilliant businessman would have parlayed more money out of this and wouldn't have let himself be driven out of his own company. His obsession is with control. Sometimes that works against him and sometimes it works for him. Sometimes it aggravates users and sometimes it saves our butt.

But who said he was a bright as Tesla?

[Fumesucker]

5. The point is just that, Jobs is not as bright as Tesla..

But Jobs is focused on control where Tesla was focused on knowledge and inventiveness.

In the long run Tesla singlehandedly created more wealth than Jobs will, but Tesla did not have the control freak nature of Jobs so he didn't accumulate money in large amounts, which is how we define "success" or "The American Dream" today at least according to President Obama.

[msongs]

6. Jobs is raking in billions using technology Tesla pioneered and never got paid for. Yet Jobs is the

first one to run to the lawyers if anyone dares do anything even remotely similar to anything Apple does.

[Fumesucker]

7. Which is why Jobs is raking in billions..

Tesla was far more interested in the "what" and the "how", Jobs is interested in control.

Fighting control freaks is a bone wearying process if you aren't a control freak yourself. For most of us the fight is a means to an end, for the control freak the fight *is* the end, they enjoy the battle that most of us would far rather avoid.

[Jakes Progress]

8. Oh. I get it.

This is just another sour grapes Apple bash. Okay. Have fun.

[Fumesucker]

9. Eh, I'm not emotionally invested in what brand of computer I use..

I got over that crap with cars in about 1980 and never picked it up for anything else.

Your reply indicates that you may well be so emotionally invested.. Which NASCAR driver is yours?

ETA: My gripe is not so much with Jobs, he is just doing what control freaks do, my gripe is more with Obama for trying to tell us that being a control freak is the "American Dream" because being Jobs is impossible without being a control freak, even if you are substantially smarter than Jobs, like Tesla was.

There are as many American Dreams as their are Americans, no two are identical and some, indeed many, differ radically.