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371 points greggyb | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.24s | source
1. bjornnn ◴[] No.41989667[source]
I think the fact that Steve Ballmer could be considered a good CEO by anyone today is just another reminder of the fact that our society has lost all understanding of what a sustainable business model is and our modern conception of capitalism is really just feudalism, i.e. private owners with significant political influence eliminating all competition with the help of the state and wielding monopolistic control over essential resources and earning their profits by charging rent rather than actually producing anything of real value.

We've been locked in this cycle for centuries now - technological progress opens up some new uncharted territory that is up for grabs and there is the brief period of booming growth and diverse competition in this new thriving industry, then the boom is over and the system no longer encourages competition or innovation or intelligent decisionmaking, instead it encourages overreach and incompetence and cancerous uninhibited growth and parasitic behavior - stealing ideas and flooding the market with cheap inferior imitations, aggressive anti-competitive practices, increased lobbying and increased dependence on state funding. The industry becomes dominated by these bloated behemoths that add nothing of value to the world and are an enormous burden on society and eventually they become so unsustainably huge that even the combined wealth of every sovereign nation cannot keep them afloat and then they collapse.

I mean, seriously, everyone knows Windows has always been shit and people have never had anything but negative things to say about it, everyone knows that every product Microsoft has ever produced has been absolute trash and that they have never had any interest in doing anything innovative or original or contributing anything useful to the world. Microsoft isn't a company and people like Steve Ballmer are not CEOs or businessmen of any kind, they're just landlords.