I love when these assholes try to convince you that the capitalists created the company and therefore deserve all the capital.
Like, ok, give all your money to your parents and grandparents.
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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Wouldn't capitalism be the whole system and capitalists menaing here the top owning class?
It's really not that complicated. Someone or something. Had to finance the research that lead to the technology. So, yes. Capitalism did indeed make your iPhone. It's the driving factor of financing technological advancements outside of perhaps the military
That doesn't mean those working the lines, writing the software, cleaning the office, maintaining the buildings, etc, deserve a fiftyeleven:th rate payoff.
It's the same with all of your paraphrasing posts. It's just unnecessary. You could just let the content speak for itself without looking like a clown.
It can be true that capitalism did indeed make your iPhone, and that it's growing out of control in terms of exploitation and evolving into an oligarchy.(US)
Capitalists told workers to make the iphone.
What the capitalists did was pay all the workers right after they did the work, even though the phones wouldn’t actually be sold for some time after that. Capitalists bring capital. Money. It takes money to get things started.
I completely agree that the rewards are all disproportionate. The people who put up the capital shouldn’t get all the rewards. But it’s just dumb to claim that they play no role at all. If that’s true, walk out of your house and make a phone you designed yourself out of sticks you find on the ground.
It only "takes money to get things started" because our economy is organized that way.
How else are you going to get 200 people together to assemble phones for a week?
A much higher financial incentive because they'd actually be the ones profiting from the sale of the phones. There are organizational structures other than corporations.
I was once asked to join a startup, and after a few chats I was ready to talk turkey. Then they sprung it on me that since there was no revenue yet, no one was making a wage. But my equity in the company would be correspondingly high.
I couldn’t do it. I had bills to pay. I was stunned that they thought I could do this, and I slowly realized that everyone else there was an ex-Googler and basically rich already.
So you see, I’ve been in the exact position you suggest your workers will jump at, and it does. not. work. People need to pay rent this month and can’t wait through a months long production chain and months long sales cycle all of which is full of risk. They need to get paid, for sure, not maybe, and now.
I’m not in here touting the glory of capitalism as if it’s a wonderful system. But I’m also not spouting pure fantasy bullshit about alternatives we can just switch to easy-peasy, because that’s a bunch of half-baked idealistic crap.
Yeah I mean I know it doesn't work under this economic system, but that's kind of the point I was making
I have heard this several times throughout this thread that sure, capital is necessary in this system, but that’s just an artifact imposed by this system. Under another system you wouldn’t need it.
I’m still waiting to hear any system where startup costs are not a factor and people can work on a thing that does nothing to meet their short term needs.
Are we talking about a utopia where all human needs have already been eliminated by magical technology so we can simply wander where we will and work on enriching projects that strike our fancy?
To keep it focused: show me a system where you can get 200 people together to assemble phones with no capital at the outset.
Capitalist funded the creation of the iPhone and withdrawal rent on their funding.
There are many ways to fund the process.
Capitalists like capitalism because they get to extract more than they funded with no upper bound.
They leech off of the value of the workers who created the product because they think funding the arrangment entitles them to infinite returns on their investment.
It's rent seeking with more steps and no overhead. There is zero upkeep because the input is the output, capital.
If capital was additive then adding twice as much capital would result in twice as much output and that is clearly not the case.
It's a valve and it is like a damn operator taking credit for the river.
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Always fun to see a nuanced Marxist concept escape lemmy.ml and be argued against by people who have zero idea what they’re talking about.
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