Facebook Wasn’t Founded on the Promise of a Pension

The euphoria of Facebook’s forthcoming IPO drives me once again to make some politically incorrect statements. Has anyone noticed that capitalism and inequality in America continue to breed innovation, and to create wealth and jobs? Where is the French Mark Zuckerberg?

It is still possible and even recommended in the United States to get rich by working hard and taking risks. The 27-year-old founder of Facebook holds 56.9 percent of his company’s voting rights, even after the IPO. Can you imagine someone so young – he still seems very young – in Europe controlling an empire of $100 billion?

Yes, Mark Zuckerberg has succeeded in changing the world. As did the late Steve Jobs, Google founder Sergey Brin, Dell Computers founder Michael Dell, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos… the list goes on.

More than 800 million people subscribe to Facebook. The 8-year-old company, up 88 percent, already earns more than $1 billion per year. Zuckerberg achieved this without public subsidy, without protection against foreign competition and without instruction from elite businessmen. He didn’t read Alain Minc or Jacques Attali and he didn’t follow a five-year plan or participate in the rat race for access to a career, a job and a lifelong pension.

When Facebook goes public, probably in the spring, some 1000 people in Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., campus will become millionaires. None of these employees is protected by a French contract. They are not unionized. They work like crazy. They work countless hours. They don’t know about France’s 35-hour workweek program, the February holidays, family leave, aid for their return to work or restaurant vouchers.

They know, however, that nothing is guaranteed. They know that right now somewhere, in a garage or college dorm, in India or China or the United States, another small fry is inventing something that could, in a few months, annihilate Facebook’s supremacy.

They know that no one can control this threat. They aren’t fighting for the law to come in and protect them. No parliament, no expert, no minister, no guru, no Barack Obama can tell them when or how technological innovation will change the status quo on the Internet or elsewhere.

It’s the market that will decide. This market is imperfect, subject to trends and fears. It consists of other providers of private capital, like Goldman Sachs. The bank that you must absolutely court if you want to appear respectable is but one of the many capitalist institutions that enabled Facebook to get where it is today. Yes, finance is necessary to create jobs. Not all bankers are thieves and parasites.

This market is also made up of millions of Internet users looking for ways to communicate, to distract or overthrow governments that oppress them. This market is capitalism working.

It’s a chaotic system that doesn’t claim to reduce all inequalities. It’s a system that doesn’t guarantee that good will triumph over evil, and doesn’t save baby seals. It’s a system that cannot answer all problems. And it’s a system that places too much emphasis on money as a sole indicator of success.

But it’s also a system that outperforms the other in creating the wealth needed to serve the general welfare. It’s a system that nourishes the freedom to create, to take risks and to succeed. It’s a system that rewards work and discourages laziness. It’s a system that doesn’t discriminate based on religion, gender, ethnic origin or one’s accent. And it’s a system that, if well regulated, remains open, changes the world, and defies immobility, the status quo, corporatism and the centralization of powers.