[stonethrowaway]

NeXT and Apple are stories of a founder bulldozing ahead with a vision, his coming and going coinciding with the respective companies’ high and low tides. The discussions around a “thing” are framed in the context of the of the thing, the founder, and one or more people who happen to be involved (the storyteller, scribe). No thing is ever discussed in isolation without the founder, and it’s always the scribe who tells that story. You will hardly ever come across a pivotal story about NeXT or Apple without the founder being mentioned as a key figure in that story, to the point that it’s their decision as to how that story ends.

The point? The thing is meaningless. It’s the story of the founder’s reaction and the cause and effect of the founder’s choices. The thing has no gravity in and of itself. It’s meaning entirely created and destroyed by the founder.

In the case of NeXT, it is literally the company rising and falling with the presence of the founder. The weight of any thing immediately diminished with founder’s departure. Nothing remained.

We shall see what happens with Apple. It may attain a new founder, or it may not.

[mmooss]

This seems to reflect the trendy philosophy of the strongman, the business equivalent of the authoritarian dictator in government (and it merges into an oligarch - a strongman businessperson with political power).

Another possibly word for it seems to be the philosophy of megalomania: Their problem-solving and deep philosophical thinking yields the most basic, self-serving, egocentric outcome: More power, money, and credit for me. That's a pretty big dealbreaker for any rational examination, especially with any understanding of human nature and history.

What I don't understand is how followers of this philosophy overlook the obvious, basic, overwhelming flaw. How do you overlook that?

In a way it seems like the philosophy eats its own tail: Part of the modus operendi is the infinite con - endless agression, unlimited by any constraint, with the expectation that your opponents will be overwhelmed or exhausted, or at least perpetually surrender the initiative. SBF is a leading example, but we can name many more. Is the philosophy itself another infinite con?

[stonethrowaway]

> What I don't understand is how followers of this philosophy overlook the obvious, basic, overwhelming flaw. How do you overlook that?

Followers of sama? Simple: in it for the money. The only tangible philosophy that sticks ends up being greed combined with lying through the teeth.

[mmooss]

I don't know that it's sama, fwiw.