Bad Behavior Of Visionary Leaders

Here is an interesting admission about some tech giants:

As I was reading Ashlee Vance’s “Elon Musk: Tesla, Space X and the Quest for a Fantastic Future,” I was alternately awed and disheartened, almost exactly the same ambivalence I felt after reading Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” and Brad Stone’s “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.”

The three leaders are arguably the most extraordinary business visionaries of our times. Each of them has introduced unique products that changed – or in Mr. Musk’s case, have huge potential to change – the way we live.

I was awed by the innovative, courageous, persistent and creative ways all three built their businesses. I also love their products. I own a Mac Pro and an iPhone, and I have been a loyal customer of Apple for 20 years. I buy many books and other products on Amazon, lured by a blend of low prices, ease of purchase and reliably quick delivery. The Tesla X is hands down the best car I have ever driven, and it’s all electric, rechargeable in your garage.

Plainly, I have bought in to what these guys are selling.

What disheartens me is how little care and appreciation any of them give (or in Mr. Jobs’s case, gave) to hard-working and loyal employees, and how unnecessarily cruel and demeaning they could be to the people who helped make their dreams come true.

In fairness, the leaders all have loyal defenders. At Apple, for example, Mr. Jobs’s successors – including Tim Cook, the chief executive, and Jonathan Ive, the chief design officer – have argued that Mr. Jobs matured significantly as a leader in his final years. Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos have senior leaders who have worked with them for many years. But even an admirer like Mr. Ive remained bewildered by the way Mr. Jobs treated people.

“He’s a very sensitive guy,” Mr. Ive told Mr. Isaacson shortly before Mr. Jobs died in 2011. “That’s one of the things that makes his antisocial behavior, his rudeness, so unconscionable. I can understand why people who are thick-skinned and unfeeling can be rude, but not sensitive people.”

You can read the rest @
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/business/dealbook/the-bad-behavior-of-visionary-leaders.html

Sensitive, my ass. The facts suggest otherwise.

In my view, these three have been deified by the worshippers of Mammon chiefly because these worshippers are immersed in a material world value system which puts goods, services, and profits ahead of human values. And that immersion is why such people cannot recognize the truth.

Americans worship Thomas Jefferson (at least for now) because he gave us a philosophy which justifies our rape of the rest of the world. We ignore the fact he was a pedophile and lifelong slave owner.

And many Americans worship Obama ad-Dajjal because he has given us same sex marriage and "affordable (sic) health care". We ignore the fact that he is torturing and killing unarmed men, women, and children all over the world in pursuit of some maniacal CIA agenda and threatening to take us to war with Russia and China.

That makes us little better than the Germans who worshipped Hitler because he gave them what they wanted. They ignored his crimes until their nation was destroyed. That may be our fate, too.

But hey, enjoy your iPhones, Teslas, and Amazon Prime while you can.

By the way, Elon's SpaceX hasn't been doing so well lately. I wonder why?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/science/space/spacex-rocket-explodes-during-launch.html