Question Two
Is Bill Gates the Hank Rearden of today? He's got, arguably, the industry stranglehold (definitely minus the sexiness).
posted by Summer at 6:32 AM
Summer and Andy read Atlas Shrugged parallelly. They post their opinions/thoughts and discuss them here.
posted by Summer at 6:32 AM
2 Comments:
Honestly, I don't think so. The crucial difference is that Rearden has THE BIG SECRET, making his product universally better than anything anybody else can make. Gates, though, just has a product with gigantic market saturation and consumer recognition; people buy Windows because they know it (which is less important with structural metal). Windows has functional competitors that are superior to it for many purposes, which makes a comparison of it and Rearden Metal inaccurate, I think. This, though, isn't quite a comparison of the products; it's a comparison of the businessmen. I think Gates and Rearden are different there, too; Gates seems much more politics-savvy than Rearden; Hank knows how to make a good product, but that's about it. The power-gaming escapes him, whereas it's well within Bill's understanding of business.
Hm, I never thought about the BIG SECRET-ness of it all. There's a difference between HR's monopoly and BG's, and it has as much to do with distribution of ability as distribution of wealth. Hank pretty much seems to run his corporation singlehandedly; I have no illusion that Billy G does the same.
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