| Nobody within a particular human organization is a replaceable cog (well, at least that's an ideal that I think it is reasonable to aspire to, even if it's not technically true in a great many instances). But just as you shouldn't be surprised when you visit a forest that there are some really big trees, some not so big, and some dead trees because that's how forests work, you shouldn't be surprised that when you survey the American corporate landscape, there are some huge successes, some moderate ones and lots of failures. Sure, there was something about that much larger tree that made it nearly twice the size of its neighbors. But it was just as likely to be luck of where it germinated, luck of when it germinated, and yes, perhaps some good genes. Still, the idea that it was all the genes and that we've just discovered the uber-tree is mostly absurd. And so it is with companies. The successful ones are most the product of an intersection of different kinds of luck with some necessary-but-insufficient features of their people. We've built a mythology in the USA that mostly all that matters is the nature of a few early founders (or perhaps the occasional turn-it-around later hire). I think this is demonstrably false. That doesn't make success a "meaningless byproduct of a system outside [your] control". It means that idolizing particular instances of success as being based on people distorts our understanding of how success actually happens (and how it doesn't). I believe in intrinsic motivation - especially having worked with Bezos for a little while - and I do not think that we should, as a society, be providing motivation to people through the promise of fame and fortune. This is typically something that distorts and misdirects human effort and imagination. I also don't believe that we need to offer that motivation, at least certainly not to the extent that we currently do. To whatever extent Amazon is amazing, it is also a mixture of good and bad, and I strongly regret that as individuals our society tends to focus so much more on the good and ignores the bad (the media over the last few years have begun to rebalance this, but it needs to go much further). |
No one discovers a scientific breakthrough until they do. That breakthrough may have been an inevitable result of multiple independent teams working on it, the prior research hitting a certain point, technology advancing to provide the tools, and so on. Yet we praise the team that actually discovered it.
Similarly I don’t care if “an” Amazon was inevitable. It was Bezos that founded it and Amazon that did it. I am an individualist and I appreciate that we have superstars in all manner of art, academia, and business as well. These are what move society forwards. The moment I’m forced to start giving my stuff away to the collective is the moment I leave. I’m happy Bezos is rich as I’m happy sports stars and musicians are rich - it’s great they made our lives better.