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5 points

Is the “help or reference” coming from other workers?

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3 points

… It’s coming from the culmination of, like 5 decades of absurdly educated engineering. If you want to call them workers, then sure.

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6 points

They weren’t workers? is this “absurdly educated engineering” like a magic ghost inhabiting the halls of Apple HQ? Is this “engineering” in the room with us right now?

Seriously, I fail to grasp the point you’re trying to make here…

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-4 points
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…you do know what engineering is, right? It’s… Definitely not a magic ghost inhabiting halls. It’s learning physics, electronics, programming, and, well, engineering to create novel solutions to problems people have.

My point is that capitalism, for all of its failures, does indeed sometimes produce better things. You unequivocally hating on it, for no discernable reason; I I can’t find a reason for that.

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3 points

It’s coming from someone who dedicated their entire life to being smarter than you or me about electronics.

Go on. Give your opinion.

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1 point

Is/was that person not a worker?

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0 points
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At what point do they stop benefiting from their labor? They obviously can’t keep working in the next things and the next thing. They might be a one trick pony. You would need robust social programs like ubi.

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0 points

Eventually the money to start the process comes from somewhere like a bank or private loans. Sure, the workers could fund the venture by themselves, but nobody wants to take that kind of risk. Taking a job at a company is basically paying money to avoid risk.

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8 points
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Workers take plenty of risk to change jobs, homes, and even countries for a new job. The risks they take are comparatively much more significant than a venture of a millionaire or billionaire capitalist. That risk is somehow not rewarded under capitalism. Not to mention that the capitalist “risk” is nothing more than a scare tactic

That aside, someone “putting in money” doesn’t mean they were useful and deserve any credit. It just means that you have an unjust system where the actual innovators have to agree to be exploited to survive.

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2 points

once the Return of Investment has been made

It’s extremely difficult to get started. I suppose I could live in a van down by the river and dumpster dive until I can make money from a product or service. However, many products and services require multiple workers to accomplish. If course businesses exploit workers and prevent competition. Those things should be addressed. However, it becomes extremely difficult to add a layer of fairness because some people will say that they deserve more than another person. Some people will get jobs based on who they know and who likes them. Does everyone get paid equally? Do you measure performance on some way? That creates competing interests and competition among workers. I worked in a shop under a “flat rate” system. It was constant bullshit with some guys doing anything they could to steal work from other guys. People would lie to get more work or bill customers for extra labor. It was a shit show.

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3 points

Entry to the market is a bigger obstacle than risk. You can’t just make a phone at home from scraps. You need an army of workers and machines and supply chains and business relationships and licenses.

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0 points

You don’t actually have to have any of those things because you can have other companies make those parts for you and then even hire a company to assemble it for you. Apple doesn’t make screens or tiny screws or batteries. At least they don’t have to I’m not sure how their supply chain works. You could do presales on a site like Kickstarter and make the phone. The issue is getting enough people to buy it in order to make it viable as all of those companies are going to charge you a set up fee, so the more parts you buy, the lower the cost per part. You’d also have to design a phone that gives people a compelling reason to buy it. Selling stuff is hard probably harder than making the product itself. You’d also need the usual business overhead like an accountant and an attorney.

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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the “ML” influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

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