Steve Jobs isn’t the nicest guy in the world. I think we all know that. He snubbed fan “Violet Blue” who only wanted a picture. He is sometimes described as “a risk-taking, short-tempered tyrant“. He banned the sale (in Apple stores) of all books by the publisher of one that critcized him. Once, he described an employee’s work as a “really lovely cake” with dog excrement for frosting. There are plenty more examples if you look for them.
While I respect Steve’s professional accomplishments (turning Apple around, getting Pixar going, etc.), I have very little respect for the man himself – largely because of his treatment of others. Regardless of that, I wish Jobs no ill will. I do NOT want to see him sick, injured, or dead. It was with a bit of mixed emotion, however, that I read yesterday’s CNET post indicating that Jobs received a liver transplant in Tennessee.
On the one hand, I am pleased to see that Steve is getting the treatment he needs. But there was something in that article that really upset me, and it ought to upset you too. CNET notes that “Steve Jobs, who has been on medical leave from Apple for the past six months, received a liver transplant in Tennessee two months ago, according to a report Friday in the Wall Street Journal. Earlier this year, Apple’s CEO was reported to be relocating from California to Tennessee, which has a shorter waiting list for patients seeking organs, the report noted.”
In other words, Jobs packed up some of his belongings, hopped a plane to Tennessee, and moved into a residence there. He stayed there long enough to qualify as a resident, and receive a transplant. He wasn’t retiring there, relocating Apple there, or planning to stay there permanently. He was there to get an organ.
What Jobs did, as far as I know, is not illegal. People move from state to state all the time, for any reason (or none at all). There’s nothing at all wrong with relocating.
Admittedly, what Jobs did wasn’t as unethical as paying off a third-world person to get a liver. And it wasn’t as bad as paying off the doctors in California to be moved up on the transplant list ahead of other worthy and compatible patients. I realize that. But the net effect of what Jobs did was the same as if he HAD paid off the officials in California. Instead of being at the end of the much-longer California transplant list, he paid money to move himself to Tennessee in order to be on a much shorter list. Someone without his billions wouldn’t have been able to do that. They’d have had to wait their turn and take the chance that they might die before the liver was found. That happens all the time. (Just read the comments on that CNET article.)
To be clear, even though I don’t like the guy, it doesn’t matter that it’s Steve Jobs doing this. I’d be upset if it was William Shatner, Bill Gates, Angelina Jolie, Heidi Klum, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, or any other public figure doing it.