I'm underwhelmed.
The media is fawning this morning, and I suppose it's not entirely without cause. After all, the stock of Apple computer is up nearly 100-fold since its nadir, when many wrote the company off for dead.
But let's take a bit of a retrospective look with less unquestioning undulation and a bit more thought, shall we?
Remember, Jobs got a liver transplant about 2-1/2 years ago. This, after he knew he had pancreatic cancer.
Now many of you may not know what this disease is, and for those of you who don't, do some reading. That disease is a death sentence. You do not "recover" from pancreatic cancer, despite the "hopeful" tone some people try to put forward due to the "rare" form he has. It doesn't matter in the end, and Steve's death yesterday proves those who said that he had a known short fuse on the day of that diagnosis, myself included, correct.
I cannot defend that liver transplant. At the same time, were I diagnosed with this disease and had a bazillion dollars, I also cannot say I wouldn't try the same thing. I'd like to claim that I'd man up and make my peace with God, and it's easy to do in my position now. Sure, I could bribe my way to the front of the line by means legal (and perhaps not), but for me to do so would dissipate a large percentage of my wealth - wealth that I could instead leave to my daughter. So for me it would be a matter of being a pig at her expense, or dealing with my mortality and leaving what I have for her. I can confidently state that in my position today, I'd man up, if only because there's someone else who would be impacted by that choice in a direct and life-changing way.
For Jobs, it's different. That money doesn't matter; it's an immaterial part of the whole. Does this change the perspective of the person involved?
You bet it does.
I hope that Steve's passing leads us to have this discussion in the context of the larger whole -- Medicare, Medicaid, what we can and cannot do as a nation when it comes to the checks we can cash, not the checks we can write.
Steve makes clear that we can write all sorts of checks, but we don't change outcomes by much. The marginal utility of writing such checks is small in the larger world, but big for our egos. Nonetheless, we all die.
When a wealthy man decides to spend his wealth extending his life, that's a choice. But we all have this argument in one form or another with the medical system as we age. It is at the core of what's happened to Medicare and private insurance, and will continue to be. It has driven medical cost advances at ridiculous rates compared to economic growth, and will continue to until and unless we stop it. And we, the common man and woman, do not have the ability to cash the checks that Steve did.
Will we have that discussion and debate in this nation? I doubt it. I've seen no evidence of it this morning, for example, nor have I during the last few years. We have politicians claiming that everyone over 50 will have what they were promised in Medicare, but we can't pay for that. It's impossible. Those promises can't be kept and thus won't be kept. And today all I hear and read, no matter where I look, is the lauding of what Steve did for someone's stock price or in the creation of products, instead of a bit of introspection as to what he did after he was told that God was calling him home - like it or not.
This Ticker will probably draw many flames, and I suspect I'll be wielding a few hammers later today. That's ok. This has to be said. We have a serious and adult debate to hold in this nation on exactly this subject. We must recognize that this is not about compassion, it is about reality. It is about the fact that we're all mortals, like it or not, and we all go meet God some day. It is about writing checks with technology we cannot cash with our labor, and acceptance of both this fact and the willingness to stop doing it.
This discussion will not come easily, but it will come. Not because we want it to, but because it has to. We'd be wise to have this debate today, but I suspect we will not, and instead we will lurch forward until catastrophe strikes on the liability side of the nation's balance sheet.
Go ahead and have your eulogy today for the man if you wish, but tomorrow, when today has come and gone, let's begin the public debate on the underlying issues that surround the sustainability of the corner we've painted ourselves into by financializing the medical system. It must end, and end now. What we have done threatens our very way of life, our society and our republican form of government.
Perhaps -- just perhaps -- Steve's passing, if people reflect on it in a serious manner, can serve as a catalyst for true positive change.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=195525
