No, no - usually they counter with "but those workers just did stupid manual work, HE did all the SMART brainwork/innovation". Not that that is a good counter, even if it as true.
I actually invented Diet Coke with Lime after having the lemon one and thinking "what if, but lime?". I am now a millionaire, because simply having an idea is what capitalism is.
Elon Musk has some hazy day dream about going to Mars or "what if cars no gas" then buys a company working on it then claims he "did all the brainwork/innovation".
As we say in the Games business: an idea is worth nothing. Everyone has those.
As they say in the architecture business: No, of course the initial render isn't going to look like the actual blueprint and the actual blueprint and the as-built documentation will at best overlap 50% of the time.
The process of enacting an idea changes it. The raw idea becomes tested against actual reality, and inevitably does not look right when exposed. The person doing the implementation then has to figure out how to make the idea work. Perhaps this goes through a back-and-forth afterwards, but all the work of actually making the product or service work in reality is still the work of labor.
And sometimes you just end up with more i-beams than the blueprints specify and go, "Well, it isn't gonna fall down because of this..."
That's the main reason why so many people put such outsized credit to the "visionaries", "innovators", and idea guys instead of the people who do the actual work. They believe that innovation, progress, and change are unattainable secrets of the universe that only available the gifted few, that history is only driven forward by the grace of these great men.
For example that's why nerds are so weird about Musk, like we laugh at Musk and points out how he bought out all of his company with his apartheid money. But to the worshipers of Great Men, Musk is the prophet of space colonization and only he can lead humanity to science victory. That's why despite of their rhetoric of humanist futurism these people have no faith to any other alternative platform of space exploration. NASA, China, Bezos, etc are false prophets who are doomed to fail, unlike Musk who knows the secret of space exploration that coincides with just having a lot of capital, they think SpaceX and Tesla even if he just bought them only flourished because of Musk.
That's why to them merely being the one who started and coined something is worthy of having the lion's share of the profit. They're confused by the insistence of us leftists that labor is the source of all wealth and so it's the workers who are entitled to their own work, when to them it's the capitalist visionaries who opened the gate to the garden of divine success and let us mere mortal taste greatness.
I think Musk's actual value is proved right there: he has an army of cultists. That's all he really contributes. Except for when he is getting in the way of the people doing the real work, because he's convinced that he is the messiah his weirdos assert he is.
No, no - usually they counter with "but those workers just did stupid manual work, HE did all the SMART brainwork/innovation". Not that that is a good counter, even if it as true.
I actually invented Diet Coke with Lime after having the lemon one and thinking "what if, but lime?". I am now a millionaire, because simply having an idea is what capitalism is.
The smart brainwork of sitting in meetings and agreeing every time with the guy in the room with the most power/money.
Elon Musk has some hazy day dream about going to Mars or "what if cars no gas" then buys a company working on it then claims he "did all the brainwork/innovation".
As we say in the Games business: an idea is worth nothing. Everyone has those.
As they say in the architecture business: No, of course the initial render isn't going to look like the actual blueprint and the actual blueprint and the as-built documentation will at best overlap 50% of the time.
The process of enacting an idea changes it. The raw idea becomes tested against actual reality, and inevitably does not look right when exposed. The person doing the implementation then has to figure out how to make the idea work. Perhaps this goes through a back-and-forth afterwards, but all the work of actually making the product or service work in reality is still the work of labor.
And sometimes you just end up with more i-beams than the blueprints specify and go, "Well, it isn't gonna fall down because of this..."
What great man theory does to motherfuckers.
That's the main reason why so many people put such outsized credit to the "visionaries", "innovators", and idea guys instead of the people who do the actual work. They believe that innovation, progress, and change are unattainable secrets of the universe that only available the gifted few, that history is only driven forward by the grace of these great men.
For example that's why nerds are so weird about Musk, like we laugh at Musk and points out how he bought out all of his company with his apartheid money. But to the worshipers of Great Men, Musk is the prophet of space colonization and only he can lead humanity to science victory. That's why despite of their rhetoric of humanist futurism these people have no faith to any other alternative platform of space exploration. NASA, China, Bezos, etc are false prophets who are doomed to fail, unlike Musk who knows the secret of space exploration that coincides with just having a lot of capital, they think SpaceX and Tesla even if he just bought them only flourished because of Musk.
That's why to them merely being the one who started and coined something is worthy of having the lion's share of the profit. They're confused by the insistence of us leftists that labor is the source of all wealth and so it's the workers who are entitled to their own work, when to them it's the capitalist visionaries who opened the gate to the garden of divine success and let us mere mortal taste greatness.
Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ? In the books you will read the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?
And Babylon, many times demolished, Who raised it up so many times ?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ? Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them ?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph ? Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it, The drowning still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India. Was he alone ?
Caesar defeated the Gauls. Did he not even have a cook with him ?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down. Was he the only one to weep ?
Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War. Who else won it ?
Every page a victory. Who cooked the feast for the victors ?
Every 10 years a great man. Who paid the bill ?
So many reports.
So many questions.
I think Musk's actual value is proved right there: he has an army of cultists. That's all he really contributes. Except for when he is getting in the way of the people doing the real work, because he's convinced that he is the messiah his weirdos assert he is.