Ayn Rand inspired high-tech capitalism

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 22, 1997 | by Gayle M.B. Hanson

He champions the idea of the $500 stripped-down networked computer and long has sought to dethrone Microsoft as the king of software. While Oracle's products have yet to achieve the household cachet of Windows 95, they are the backbone of large data-management systems.

"If we can sneak underneath Microsoft with appliances that are much cheaper and easier to use than PCs, rather than Windows everywhere, it could be Windows nowhere," Ellison remarks.

Ellison well may find himself eating his words as a result of the recent Apple Computer restructuring, in which Gates agreed to pour some $150 million into the beleaguered company even as Ellison was appointed to its board of directors. By any stretch of the imagination the alliance between Microsoft's ubermensch Gates, Oracle CEO and kamikaze nudnick Ellison and wand-waving cybermystic Steve Jobs, Apple's once-disgraced founder, is an unlikely and, some would venture, unholy trinity. After all, Larry hates Bill. Bill likes Steve. Steve loves Larry. And Bill loathes him.

So just who is the big capitalist kahuna? And do any of these men qualify as business heroes in the style of John Galt?

"I think in one aspect, yes " says Berliner, "in the sense that they are entrepreneurial and independent in their work. They've started with nothing but a good idea and they've gone with it."

Edwin Locke, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business, teaches a popular course titled "American Business Heroes in Fact and Fiction." During the semesterlong study his students are asked to write about a contemporary hero who fits 12 criteria established by Locke, a philosophical objectivist. "We look for people who have a focus on reality, independence, knowledge and creative ability, active minds, vision, honesty, passion, ambition, action focus, respect for ability in others and justice," he says.

Locke sees some of these traits in Jobs, Ellison and Gates, but while they all have been subjects his students have chosen for heroic models, Locke is concerned that philosophically they don't quite make the grade. "The problem with Jobs is that, while he is a true visionary, the first person to recognize the value of the personal computer, he's kind of a hippie who was a lousy manager, which was why he got kicked out of Apple to begin with."

"While Gates is incredibly driven;, Locke continues, "he is consistently being persecuted by the government because of his competitors whining that they can't compete with him. The reason he's winning is simply because he is better than they are. But he doesn't get credit for that."

Others criticize Gates' role in the Apple deal, citing a belief that one of the reasons for the investment was Gates' fear of being accused of putting Apple out of business. However, Gates may be the only person actually to benefit from the investment. For a relatively cheap price he gets to slap the Microsoft browser onto Apple computers, thus giving his competition at Netscape a serious cause for teeth gnashing. At the same time, he has to be chuckling at the thought that while Ellison had spent months floating the trial balloon that he would buy the company, on the bottom line it was Big Brother Bill's face that loomed down on the Apple faithful for the announcement at Boston's MacWorld trade exposition.