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> That money could have been spent on America This is wishful thinking, and similar to how how video game producers think if they stop N people from pirating a
by fooker 10mo ago
> That money could have been spent on America
This is wishful thinking, and similar to how how video game producers think if they stop N people from pirating a game, there will be N more copies of the game sold.
No, instead of that the game will be played less. And analogously, less iPhones would be produced.
You could argue that less iPhones would be good for the world, but that’s orthogonal to the topic.
- pessimizer 10mo agoYou're overestimating the proportion of the price attributed to labor that goes into an iPhone. The reason that production is offshored is to shave off a few percentage points. The price difference is almost nothing to the buyer, but a lot to the owners of Apple. iPhones have nothing to do with videogames. They are material objects, not zero marginal cost copies. edit: and the point is that, across the economy, it is very good for labor. While the iPhone's cost would rise a little bit nominally, it wouldn't rise as a portion of income, which is the only important number. The retail price would probably rise a bit more than that, but that's because it is a luxury good and its price would rise as incomes rose.
- fooker 10mo ago> price attributed to labor that goes into an iPhone Oh, that was not my point at all. It's that we simply do not have the scale and manpower to do it. Maybe in ten years with more automation sure, but definitely not in the Steve Jobs era.
- fragmede 10mo agoInteresting take. I would happily give up my iPhone if, instead, the US Department of Education got an extra $55 billion/year and US would pay people to go to college.
- fooker 10mo agoUS pays people to go to college, but just the outliers. It's an interesting tradeoff, make the outliers the best in the world at what they do, or make the average person slightly more competent. I think it's difficult to design a system that makes both outcomes true at the same time. The countries that have succeeded in doing it so far have a tiny population compared to the hundred millions of students US/China/India has now. China seems to be slowly moving to a system comparable to the US one where outliers are prioritized. India has avoided it so far, which is why we see so many generic software engineers from India. I wonder if that stance will change with that category of jobs rapidly shrinking.
- tsoukase 10mo agoIPhone production cost in China is between $10 and $30 per item. I believe a factory with US-level wages would not increase its price but it would definitely decrease Apple's profit margin.