The World of Economics as it Relates to the Computer Industry.
The "Pirates of Silicon Valley" presents many economic ideas and arguments expressed in Thorstein Veblen's "Pecuniary Emulation" and Robert Reich's "The Community as Commodity." The competition in the computer industry has forced its own economic evolution through leadership, innovation, desire of wealth, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to be number one at the end of the day.
Business leadership before the era of the personal computer can be compared to the views on leadership as expressed by Robert Reich in "The Community as Commodity" when he describes that "The old job of leadership was to make decisions."(207) This worked for a long time throughout history, but by no means would it generate the dividends provided by the new leadership. Unfortunately for the old leadership, new and more competitive leaders were seemingly turning them into dinosaurs, bound to either evolve to the new ways or become practically extinct in the business arena. According to Reich, "The new job of leadership is to attract (and keep) money and talent."(207) For example, businesses go to great lengths to attract the best and brightest employees for a particular field. In doing so, this would give an edge to whichever company hired the best professional in their respective fields. At the same time, it would give that company a much greater opportunity to create a better product or service than their competitors. This is most surely how the "Pirates of Silicon Valley" were running business. With personal computers as a fledgling new industry, there were much fewer people to choose from with the talent required for the creation of computer software and hardware. However, the industry had a great potential for growth. Apple and IBM sought all kinds of ways to attract the best and brightest people to work for or with their companies.