Maggie's Farm

Kling undermines his own argument when he says, "That is like saying that all Dwight Eisenhower had to do to make D-Day a success was pick Normandy as the landing spot." While Eisenhower was a great military leader, it was almost inevitable that the U.S. and its allies would have been able to overpower Nazi Germany. The political will and material advantages would inevitably seek its high tide. Remove Eisenhower, then another general, perhaps Bradley, would have successfully navigated the allied effort.


They lost because Gates had an early start, then scale won the day by squeezing or buying out competitors, even if those competitors had a better idea. You see it repeatedly, especially in information technology. QWERTY rules.


That can be true, even though his original point is wrong. Someone would have dominated online marketing. Bezos was early, but lots of people were early. Bezos came to dominate because he was early and smart, and because he found a successful niche (books) with which to jumpstart Amazon. But the move to online markets would have occurred regardless, and that would have been followed by increasing consolidation.

Christopher B: Talk about somebody undermining their own argument.

No. That's fallacious reasoning. While intelligence was necessary, it was neither sufficient nor unique to Bezos.

Whoever would come to dominate would have had intelligence, but Bezos was not the only intelligent player. The development of an online hegemon did not depend upon the existence of Bezos. Another hegemon, someone intelligent leveraging an early lead, would have emerged.

OFF-TOPIC

SK: Serious question here--do you truly think this sort of {discussion} furthers the conversation?

The claim raised in the original post was that only Bezos could build Amazon. Our comment offered strong reasons to discount the claim. So, yes. We do think that our comment does further the conversation.

Maypo: The "I am an expert and everyone else is a fool" is such a tired Liberal trope that it causes even an old grizzled guy like me to laugh.

We find few fools on Maggie's Farm. Most of the posts and comments are well-thought and thought-provoking.

ON-TOPIC

The tension between whether great persons or social forces determine history is an old one. Tolstoy, for instance, discounted great men almost entirely, even though one of his greatest literary achievements, War and Peace, largely concerned Napoléon Bonaparte. While not agreeing with his thesis entirely, Tolstoy makes a good argument that Napoléon was as much at the whims of fate as he was its master.

In this case, not only is Bezos and Amazon a poor example of the great person theory, but the author undermines his own argument.

QWERTY rules!

Christopher B: You have to be early and be smart enough to exploit the opportunity.

True enough, but that wasn't Kling's claim, which was that "I give zero credence to the suggestion that if Bezos had never existed, someone else would have built Amazon." Our position is that social and technological conditions meant that something like Amazon would have emerged regardless of the existence of Bezos; just as the U.S. and its allies would have prevailed over Nazi Germany regardless of the existence of Eisenhower.

Christopher B: It didn't have to specifically be Bezos if he'd been struck by lighting but it would have been somebody with a similar IQ.

So, you reject Kling's claim.

Jerryskids: Unless you live in a major city, in which case you deserve to be bombed.

Says the true-blue American.