[Mr Jobs] doesn't give any money to charity. And when he became Apple's CEO he stopped all of its philanthropic programs. He said, "wait until we are profitable". Now Apple is profitable, and sitting on $40 billion in cash, and still no corporate philanthropy. I actually think Jobs is probably the most charitable guy on the planet. Rather than focus on which mosquitoes to kill in Africa (Bill Gates is already focusing on that), Jobs has put his energy into massively improving quality of life with all of his inventions.

STEVE JOBS stepped down from his post as CEO of Apple yesterday. The internet instantly erupted in adulation for the man whose combination of business savvy and high aesthetic standards brought consumers beautifully functional devices whose popularity turned Apple into one of the largest corporations in the world. As I was watching my social media streams froth with praise for the man in the black turtleneck, it occurred to me that, as lovely as I find Apple's gizmos, Mr Jobs's wealth, like that of other billionaire barons of the information age, was built in no small part upon an intellectual-property regime that I and many others believe to retard progress while concentrating massive rewards upon a privileged few, generating unfair and unproductive inequality. Now, I remember when Bill Gates used to get plenty of heat from the class warriors, but some time after the world's wealthiest nerd devoted a huge portion of his fortune to his charitable foundation, he ascended to a sort of philanthropic secular sainthood a few notches short of Warrenus Buffetus of Omaha, his partner in spectacular beneficence. Showy altruism has long served as a strategy for justifying huge accumulations of wealth in the envious eyes of the public, but Mr Jobs has eschewed charity. According to James Altucher

I endorse Mr Altucher's point that charity very often does rather less to improve quality of life than selling people ever better products at ever lower prices. But this line of reasoning hasn't convinced very many of us that, say, Charles and David Koch's vast wealth is proof of their successful service to humankind. Mr Jobs's relative immunity from the scorn of those otherwise keen to stick it to billionaires is due, I think, to the admiring pleasure wordsmiths takes in the elegance of the Apple devices they use for work, play, and status-signaling. So it is that I tweeted last evening:

Class-war fact: Ruthlessly competitive, patent-monopolist, multi-billionaire executives are worth fawning over, if they've got design sense.

I admit to trolling the internet, but I'm dead serious serious about the fortune-justifying power of Mr Jobs's design sense. Of course, the sponsorship of great works of enthralling beauty has always conferred glamour and authority upon wealth and power, no matter how well- or ill-gotten. But Mr Jobs has not been like the de Medicis, who grew rich through trade, banking, and politics and then commissioned works from Donatello, Michelangelo, and Leonardo to add lustre and legitimacy to their power. Mr Jobs got really stinking rich, in his second tenure as Apple CEO, by adding a dash of elegance to the lives of consumers by selling them gorgeously refined devices at a premium. The average American's life is not overfull with gracefully sleek design, to say the least, and in many ways our standards of living have not improved upon that of our parents. But Apple under Mr Jobs has offered the mass market dazzling technical progress with the sort of tastefully luxurious sheen usually reserved for the seriously well-to-do. For this many of us are grateful.

Moreover, at a time when so many suffer feelings of economic insecurity and powerlessness, mysterious technologies like the iPad give those who can afford them an escapist sense of versatile efficacy that is no less powerful for being fantasy. Indeed, Apple has marketed the iPad 2 in cultishly reverent advertisements as "magical"; it accomplishes the wondrous by inconceivable means all within a ravishing frame. Steve Jobs is a white wizard in wire rims who offers unto us, in exchange for the fruits of mere days or weeks of labour, mesmerising portals to a better, beautiful, more enchanted world where we can have our whim with the flick of a forefinger. It seems small to begrudge the great man the sum of our eager ritual offerings. So who gives a fig if he doesn't shower his billions upon worthy causes, or write self-flagellating op-eds demanding to pay more in taxes? Never mind the patent thuggery. Never mind the miseries of Foxconn. An iPhone is a small enchanting comfort in a harsh, disenchanting world. We'll make Mr Jobs even richer, if he gives us a chance.

But what about the guys who get rich digging oil out of the ground so we can charge our iPhones? Stick it to 'em, the greedy bastards.

All of which is to say, our intuitions about economic desert and fair distribution are...complicated.

(Photo credit: AFP)