Before people start flagging this because it has the scary bearded man's name attached, it's actually a really accessible introduction to fundamental economic ideas without much political musing, if any. It does this with common, everyday items (iPhone) and common every day ideas, coupled with nice graphics.
I think it fits the bill HN has for intellectual curiosity fairly well.
Then just present the ideas as ideas about society, economics, and technology and forego the damaged title branding associated with the deaths of tens of millions and suffering of hundreds of millions more.
Why are you choosing to dilute your message by attaching it to (what a substantial chunk of the audience would see as) a repulsive logo? What would you have to gain by doing that? Puzzling...
> We believe that the initial research and design labour costs can be ignored since these costs have been spread out over different models of the iPhone and the contribution of the research and development cost is increasingly negligible for the newer iPhones.
Is it? I believe that there are hundreds (or thousands?) of engineers working for Apple full time. And I can see that just keeping linux at my home computer updated needs combined efforts of hundreds of people at very least. So it seems very unlikely to me that R&D costs for newer iPhones are negligible. Am I right?
The article says Apple’s surplus is 60%. Looking at Apple’s 2020 annual report, their pretax income was 25% of sales. If you subtract out services, it is 11%.
Another way to look at it is Apple’s company-wide R&D and SG&A were 25% of the costs to create products (not services).
So the R&D costs are not negligible and the article probably overestimates the amount of exploitation. On the other hand, Apple made $67 billion before tax, so they could afford to pay their workers more.
Did i misread the article? It seems it only counts assembly workers.
Shouldnt the costs for sales and marketing, management layers, store janitors, etc. also be included in variable capitol and the stores and buildings housing them in constant capitol (pro rata)
Yes, it’s incredibly silly and ridiculous. It’s no coincidence that most of the people I know in real life who support socialism also agree with the statement “We’ve already invented everything”.
Meanwhile we are still in the dark ages technology-wise.
Let me know when a worker cooperative assembles the next iPhone from scratch.
Why don’t supporters of socialism assemble worker cooperatives and prove to us they can innovate?
The piece starts out saying the iPhone is a commodity.
My chair is a commodity. The physical iPhone manufactured at a Foxconn factory has aspects of a commodity.
But is that physical iPhone device worth hundreds of dollars solely for its physical manufacture form? I know that teams of dozens/hundreds are working on software updates to push out over the network to fix problems and enhance the device. This helps make the high price worth it. But here the idea of the device as a traditional commodity breaks down. My chair does not get fixes and improvements pushed to it, at a very low cost, from a relatively small team.
I should note, this does not negate the idea that Foxconn workers are exploited, rather that the math is off. Because the iPhone price is from a mix of traditional manufacture, plus those programmers in Cupertino pushing out updates, and an analysis must take this difference into account.
whymauri|5 years ago
I think it fits the bill HN has for intellectual curiosity fairly well.
onecommentman|5 years ago
Why are you choosing to dilute your message by attaching it to (what a substantial chunk of the audience would see as) a repulsive logo? What would you have to gain by doing that? Puzzling...
bioinformatics|5 years ago
ordu|5 years ago
Is it? I believe that there are hundreds (or thousands?) of engineers working for Apple full time. And I can see that just keeping linux at my home computer updated needs combined efforts of hundreds of people at very least. So it seems very unlikely to me that R&D costs for newer iPhones are negligible. Am I right?
MarkSweep|5 years ago
Another way to look at it is Apple’s company-wide R&D and SG&A were 25% of the costs to create products (not services).
So the R&D costs are not negligible and the article probably overestimates the amount of exploitation. On the other hand, Apple made $67 billion before tax, so they could afford to pay their workers more.
readthenotes1|5 years ago
Shouldnt the costs for sales and marketing, management layers, store janitors, etc. also be included in variable capitol and the stores and buildings housing them in constant capitol (pro rata)
gotem|5 years ago
Meanwhile we are still in the dark ages technology-wise.
Let me know when a worker cooperative assembles the next iPhone from scratch.
Why don’t supporters of socialism assemble worker cooperatives and prove to us they can innovate?
Bresenham|5 years ago
My chair is a commodity. The physical iPhone manufactured at a Foxconn factory has aspects of a commodity.
But is that physical iPhone device worth hundreds of dollars solely for its physical manufacture form? I know that teams of dozens/hundreds are working on software updates to push out over the network to fix problems and enhance the device. This helps make the high price worth it. But here the idea of the device as a traditional commodity breaks down. My chair does not get fixes and improvements pushed to it, at a very low cost, from a relatively small team.
I should note, this does not negate the idea that Foxconn workers are exploited, rather that the math is off. Because the iPhone price is from a mix of traditional manufacture, plus those programmers in Cupertino pushing out updates, and an analysis must take this difference into account.
unknown|5 years ago
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