http://www.straitstimes.com/STForum/Story/STIStory_722231.html
Steve Jobs an example of capitalism's excesses?
TO ALL the laudatory comments about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, I want to add a discordant note: Isn't it tragic that for the past few years, Apple, already a very successful company, had to rely on a dying man as its chief salesman and spokesman?
Instead of less stress and more rest, he was continuously selling iPhones and iPads.
To be sure, Mr Jobs was renowned as a driven man. Considering how hard he drove himself, he must have driven his subordinates really hard too. It would have been very tough working for him, whether as Apple employees or employees of Apple contractors.
The same driven personalities pervade Wall Street too, where already very rich investment bankers and hedge fund managers concoct ways to entice money out of investors to enrich themselves further; some schemes, like mortgage-backed securities, are merely dubious; others are downright fraudulent like those of investor Bernie Madoff.
While many hail people like Mr Jobs as role models, I see only a serious illness of American society: the relentless pursuit of greater success even as the average income of the working class has hardly risen for the past 30 years.
One consequence of this is stagnant consumer expenditure, thus making rapid economic recovery impossible. Apple's competitors, such as South Korea's Samsung, had to maintain the same relentless drive for efficiency and wage containment, thus spreading the same American contagion everywhere.
Karl Marx predicted that capitalism tended to over-invest and over-produce, while competition would suppress wages and impoverish the working class, and this would be a worldwide phenomenon.
It is interesting but sad to see this confirmed by the unbridled excesses of capitalistic icons like Steve Jobs.
Yuen Chung Kwong
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For my Ortho SIP I wake up at 430 am regularly, my mind understandably blank and stiff. Today however, the papers managed to arrive before I left the house and I must say this letter woke me up.
It takes courage to move against the current social trend of running the seemingly meaningless rat race. However, I'd like to offer an alternative viewpoint: The constant striving on our part is not simply to get more material goods, but also to learn and discover, and ultimately to live.
Take for example my previous SIP with NUH's Endocrinology team. Work started at 7am and rarely ended before 6pm, between which there was a lot of running around. After work ended I often went for a swim, or to the library to read a little, or both. There were overnight calls which involved me working from 7am to 12nn the next day without a wink of sleep. Understandably I was deeply fatigued by this heavy schedule, and was often walking around with tension headaches.
But it was one of the best times of my life. Why? Did it provide any remote chance that it'll grant me more material wealth? No, I was officially paid S$1 a day and ultimately even if I get my career choice, being an internist probably wouldn't afford me a mansion.
My sense of satisfaction came from my learning of the different working styles of various people, namely my fantastic colleagues, and more importantly the discovery of how far I could push my limits.
So perhaps the author has a low opinion of the workaholic "capitalist" lifestyle, but for others it is a way to interact with some of the sharper minds in human civilisation. You could choose to be laid back and content, though there exists the risk of unfulfilled potential.
On a wider social scale, I must admit that maybe the relentless push on the parts of companies to produce more have oppressed many a laborer. I am no economist to suggest a viable solution but I think it important for a human being to discover meaning in his work.
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