Steve Jobs’ Conservative Legacy
Steve Jobs, Apple Computer’s late founder and CEO, gave the vast majority of his hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions to liberal Democrats, such as Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy and California Governor Jerry Brown.
Yet it is hard to think of a 21st Century entrepreneur who has done more to empower individuals and free them from the demands of the liberal collective than Steve Jobs did through the invention of the iPod, and iPad and the popularization of personal computing.
Through the innovative products Apple brought to market, Jobs proved the collectivist premise of John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society to be both absolutely true and utterly wrong.
Galbraith asserted that through the power of advertising, vast corporations could manufacture demand; consumers could be duped into buying anything and therefore an equally vast government regulatory structure was needed to protect consumers and regulate economic activity in the collective interest.
And Galbraith was right; no one NEEDED a music player the size of a matchbox, demand for one was a creation of Apple’s marketing savvy.
However, once the iPod came to market, individuals discovered that it freed them from getting their music from corporate radio networks and music production companies – in a few short years, empowered individuals remade the music entertainment industry.
Similarly, Jobs’ contribution to the popularization of the personal computer did much to destroy the Twentieth Century “man in the grey flannel suit” model of business organization.
Suddenly, work was no longer someplace you went – it was something you did – without the hierarchy and regimentation of a corporate office and time clock. And in the process, the popularization of the personal computer and the internet freed conservatives from the establishment media filter and made organizing cheaper and more immediate.
Jobs proved Galbraith right – corporations can manufacture demand for new products no one needs. But far from nullifying consumer sovereignty and making consumers slaves to corporate greed, in a legacy only conservatives will appreciate, when Steve Jobs sold us a product we didn’t need he empowered us as individuals to choose our own workplace, choose our own music, receive our information unfiltered and to be less subject to the demands of the collective.
