On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 04:08:09PM +1000, jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
On 2019-09-19 06:54, Razer wrote:
Exactly. Workers don't need the boss.
Let me tell you a story about NASA.
The Nazis kidnapped Wernher von Braun from the rocket club, and put him in charge of building rockets.
Then the Americans kidnapped Wernher von Braun from the Nazis and gave him to what became NASA, and NASA asked him how to build rockets. And NASA built rockets, but their rockets *still* did not work.
So, they put him in charge, and *then* their rockets worked.
And eventually he retired, and then their rockets gradually stopped working. Rockets stagnated and declined, until Musk started building rockets.
Similarly everything electronic contains transistors. Shockley wrote the book on transistors, and I suppose everyone in the business read the book, but somehow, in practice, every transistor everywhere in the world is built by an engineer who learned how to build transistors working under an engineer who learned how to build transistors working under .... an engineer who learned how to build transistors working in Shockley's company under Shockley.
You cannot even make a pencil, unless the boss provides you with tools and materials and tells you how to use those tools and materials. You can no more make a pencil than you can make a rocket.
Certain individuals demonstrate exceptional characteristics in areas (IQ, creativity, grokking of thermal and fluid dynamics, etc). It is wise for a group (community, nation), to facilitate those individuals to express their creativity/capacity in this world. BUT, this is -no- argument for the institution of coercive government usurping the rights and freedoms of people generally, by force and threats of guns and imprisonment under the guise of the authority of "statute law"! I.e., watch those false dichotomies, don't want 'em to bite us in the arse now...