Saturday, May 19, 2007

Steve Ballmer: Market Capitalism Doesn't Work

I found this quote on Donna Bogatin's Digital Markets blog. Regarding Google:
“I don’t really know that anyone has proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing actually creates value,” [said] Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO.

Um... free markets? Invisible hand? Hello, Steve.

I don't want to beat on Mr. Ballmer too hard, because it's always been a peculiar tension of capitalism and a thorn for its most fervent (market fundamentalist) adherents that the macrofauna and apex predators of capitalism, public companies, work nothing like free markets internally, and in fact strongly resemble the command-and-control economies that capitalism is supposed to supersede.

Nonetheless, a very funny quote.

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