I think we can agree that all people make valuable contributions. What is fair to criticize though is that the leverage people have with respect to getting a piece of the pie often isn't related to their importance in running the business. People close to the money always get much higher financial reward than those closer to the development of the product. Lots of great scientists have made awesome scientific breakthroughs that we all benefit enormously from every day without ever getting much of any financial reward for it. I think it is worth nothing, at least in America where there seems to be this dominant idea that people's success is almost exclusively a result of their talent and how hard they worked. There is no need for a more fair distribution of the wealth because according to these people, the market has already divided the wealth in the fairest way. When this is patently wrong.

Steve Jobs was not merely a sales guy though. He didn't just sit there and wait for people to make cool stuff and then he'd go out an sell it. Woz was technically brilliant but he did not have anything like the intuition Steve Jobs had for what people wanted or where technology was going. It was Steve Jobs who saw that Graphical user interfaces, controlled by a mouse was the future, not Woz. Steve also saw the value in simplicity and vertical integration. If Woz had run the show Mac's would have been a lot more like PCs. Very open architecture you could plug in anything. It would be a much more geek friendly system, but not very user friendly to the public at large.

It is a difficult subject to deal with. Because on the one hand you got those people who worship CEOs and think they deserve their fat bonuses and salaries. They tell anybody who complains, that CEOs deserve it because they work harder than you etc. Yet people like Steve Jobs would be nowhere without people like Woz. On the other hand there is another equally cynical group of people who claim Steve Jobs made no contributions and was just leeching of the work of others. That is an equally wrong perspective. You can even read Woz's own accounts that Steve was influential even for the early Apple computers. He was the one who pushed them to start a business. He was the one who pushed for professional looking chassis. He pushed for silent power supply etc. With the Mac it is even more clear how he influenced its development. While he didn't sit there and do the nitty bitty details. He provided lots of feedback all through development steering it in the direction of his vision. His feedback was usually far more detailed than what a regular CEO would give. The other strength of Steve Jobs which should not be belittled was that he had a talent for spotting talent and trusting it. Lots of great people like Jonathan Ive were never really allowed to make great things until they worked under Steve Jobs. They would get their smart ideas shot down by narrow minded leadership. Steve Jobs would get out of the way and let them do their Job. Even though I think Steve Jobs contributions should be acknowledge as well as the contributions of those who worked for him, that doesn't necessarily mean I think he was a good person. He was an asshole. I would never aspire to treat people the way he did. Of course he wasn't an asshole all the time to everybody. He was quite selective about it.

I was not talking about size. The US has far higher population than Germany and Japan combined. A lot of US manufacturing sells to the home market. But how successful has US manufacturing been exporting their products? What is the quality of american products? I agree that the US is doing well in certain types of manufacturing like aircraft. But look around the world. If people are going to buy a vacuum cleaner, a car, a dishwasher, train sets, flatscreen TVs, ships etc they are generally not going to get American made stuff. Even in the space industry which the US pioneered they have pretty much lost the whole commercial market to Europe and Russia. Despite much larger budgets and funding. Of course now we are seeing a strong resurgence with SpaceX.

That is a complicated issue. Many European countries have had severe problems for various reasons. Germany due to unification. Finland due to the collapse of the Soviet Union etc. Secondly the more extensive welfare state encourage registering yourself as unemployed in Europe. If you look at actual employment numbers. That is percentage of population actually working it is usually no worse in Europe and frequently better than in the US. In the US people often just give up and stop searching for a job and they don't list as unemployed because there is no benefit to be had for that.

Because for auto industry the very things that is holding Europe back in IT is an advantage. Worker loyalty, long term planning, extensive welfare state etc helps in manufacturing. It allows e.g. German and Swedish companies to invest a lot in training without fearing that employees will run away to a company paying more. Close cooperation between government and business allows a well functioning apprenticeship system. The welfare state makes sure auto companies don't risk succumbing to large payments of health care insurance and retirements benefits like the big four in Detroit. IT business moves a lot faster, but in manufacturing long term planning has more benefits. Look at the German mittlestand companies. Family owned for generations, not making any crazy changes. They just keep gradually refining the machines they make. There are not crazy revolutions going on. It is all very predictable. That is what manufacturing needs.

You can't compare this at all. It is hard to even begin to explain the multitude of problems you get from dealing with multiple countries if you haven't actually lived in different parts of Europe and know what it is like speaking english as a second language. I'd say I am fluent in english, when I am in the US Americans normally don't notice I am foreign. But that doesn't mean there aren't lots of obstacles. My english is full of holes. I know lots of computer science terminology. But if say I wanted to buy stuff and home depot or the grocery store or whatever I would be lacking a lot in vocabulary because in my world I don't use english for those kinds of settings. This will apply to any European. If any of us were to say create a web service for house sales, mortgages etc we wouldn't know what the terminology would be. And practices and terminology would vary widely from country to country anyway. My parents generation can move around Europe fine using their english as tourists, but if they had to actually use government services, buy a house, a car etc in english they would have a lot of trouble. If I start a company in say Norway, then there are no registers in Germany listing my company. My bank accounts would not be directly accessible for transfer for a Germany business. You typically have to setup offices, bank accounts, marketing etc in each country you operate in. Culture is a big deal. Typically here in Nordic countries we sell a lot to each other. Norwegians and Swedes speak a different language, but we usually trade a lot with each other and companies are usually quick to start utilizing each others market. But that is because culture is much closer. As a Norwegian you understand to a lot degree how Sweden operates. We get Swedish news, movies and know roughly what is going on there. If we were to sell in Italy instead e.g. it would be a completely different ball game. We know little about what is going on in Italy. We don't follow Italian news or watch Italian movies. We don't know Italian culture, language and business practices at all. Italians have completely different tastes from Scandinavians. E.g. I noticed when visiting Italy a few years that they type of clothes and the way Italians buy clothes is completely different from Scandinavians. Italians wear fashionable clothes, high heels, elegant coats etc. Norwegian girls are usually walking around in training gear, even when they are not training. Compare this to the US. I've been to states as far apart as New York, Hawaii, North Dakota, Utah, Texas and Washington. And clothing and consumer habits are actually not that different. Perhaps an American would disagree but from what is immediate obvious to the human eye the differences are lot smaller than say between Norway and Italy. It is the homogenous preferences of the consumers across 320 million people which creates huge market opportunities for American companies which does not exist to the same degree in Europe. Of course this is changing in Europe as well. Habits are getting more homogenous but we are still far behind the US in terms of appearing as one coherent market.

And an even more used chip the AVR was designed in Trondheim, Norway. It is at the heart of Arduino made in Italy. Linus from Finland made the linux kernel. Qt used in trolltech was from Norway. KDE is German. Video conferencing was pioneered in Norway by Tandberg. There is lots of tech going on in Europe but it seldom manage to turn into the behemoths found in the US. Often because European tech companies let themselves be bought by big multinationals before they get really big.

That is just a lot of rubbish. Nordic countries have the biggest welfare states and weathered this financial crisis better than most. If I sound grumpy it is because this myth of gets perpetuated indefinitely despite zero evidence. It is something the rich and powerful who don't want to giver workers any rights want to push. And unfortunately because they have a lot of money and influence they have manage to make it sound like it is some sort of well established fact, when it isn't. The size of the welfare state is not what matter here but the difference between income and expenses. In this regard the US is worse. Although the US has a smaller welfare state, they still have too low taxes and keep running too much deficit. Most nordics have well balanced budgets despite having a more generous welfare state. And this isn't really exclusive to the nordics. Germany is also a well functioning welfare state that manage this crisis quite well. You can't make sweeping generalization about Europe based on fcking Greece. That country has never function very well. When it joined the EU it was almost a developing country. It is sort of like making generalization about North America based on how things are run in Mexico. Utterly nonsensical.