Is Steve Jobs Just an American Product?

Shortly after Steve Jobs’ death, Jordi Sevilla, a Spanish politician, wrote on Twitter that a success such as the one had by Steve Jobs would be impossible in Spain, since in Spain it is forbidden to make computers in a garage, and no one would have lent the money that he needed for his company to him. This message was re-tweeted by Hermann Terscht, making me think that this is a shared feeling among different ideological circles. I myself made a re-tweet, and some of those who follow me in Latin America replied that a phenomenon such as Steve Jobs would not have been possible in their countries. Among other reasons, they said, is that in Mexico he would have been kidnapped; in Argentina he would have been bribed and in Chile his project would have been exported abroad. Nowhere would he have found the support of colleagues or the backing of investors.

Why? Why is Steve Jobs only possible in the United States? Even in [the United States] a genius of such magnitude is unusual. However, it is true that there are some fellows like him, and some of them who are less renowned have succeeded in this country thanks to an environment that fosters creativity and favors the risk. “This is still a country in which you can make history even if you do not have money or a good education — just by having a good idea,”* journalist Chris Matthews stated in a tribute to Jobs’ work.

Groucho Marx used to say that in the United States one could buy an apple for $.01, polish it and sell it for $.02, buy two other apples, polish them and so on until a great-aunt of yours died and you inherited a big fortune. Joking apart, [the United States] has always been the land of opportunities, and if every day thousands of people are still crossing the border illegally, it is because one keeps believing that it is. Things have gotten worse not only because the current financial crisis has deprived us all of resources, but also because this entire society has adopted middle-class ways due to a perhaps logical crisis of growth. Columnist David Brooks warns us of the difficulty of finding a new Steve Jobs in the long run, and he complains about the slowness of progress in some important fields for human happiness, such as medicine, transit or energy.

Certainly, as Brooks says, there are not colonies on Mars, neither flying cars nor artificial organs. However, there has been progress in these fields, and the dream of someday achieving them has not yet disappeared. Maybe nowadays, Americans do not have the level of ambition that their ancestors had; nor do they have their spirit of shared sacrifice. Both innovation and imagination are, to a great extent, the result of need. Many of the United States’ conquests are the result of the efforts of people who were forced to survive in this country in harsh conditions. Nevertheless, success is also the result of optimism and conviction. Steve Jobs, just like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page or Sergey Brin, persisted in the idea they believed in and they defended it against countless setbacks. Google took time to get off the ground, and Jobs suffered his ups and downs at Apple before consolidating his position.

That perseverance and optimism are the main distinctive factors of this country. There are other reasons that explain why Jobs would not be possible in Spain or Latin America. Frequently in our societies, good contacts have priority over good ideas, and very often bright ideas, even if superfluous, are rewarded to the detriment of the complex and ambitious work achieved by effort. However, worse than that is the fatalism that sentences some countries to a timeless secondary role.

*Editor’s note: The quote, although accurately translated, could not be independently verified.