You don't understand my point. Must be a language barrier issue.

May be just too stupid to dig into such deep though :-)

Precious few seem to appreciate it.

Yep, very few guys seems to be using results of this work since discovery, just around 2 billion people.

I have trouble isolating government from Capitalism these days.

Well, you just discovered that smart people did in 19th and early 20th century.

I have trouble isolating government from Capitalism these days. Banks get federal bailouts and write legislation, USA invades Iraq and Haliburton makes billions, wall mart tells states where to put freeway off ramps. Government and private sector are locked in a giant 69. Lots of pleasure and happiness if you're part of it. If not, just buy drugs.

I think Apple has done a share of good and bad.

We do not talk here about good or bad, we talk about example of imperialist monster that is not shown to average public as such, but only as pretty little tip of the iceberg.

Landfills will continue to grow, earth will continue to be strip-mined, resources will continue to be frivolously consumed for semi-disposable products, etc.

It can not be otherwise, it is capitalism. :-)

@Mistas

It is all cool and such, but blaming Apple for IPads..... Any good engineer will tell you how much energy and resources are used to make everyday things, many of them have very limited life due to design or manufacturing issues. Even simple iron elements corrode all across the world and go into recycling or just to the dump, and it requires big amount of resources and energy to make it working again.

“In the case of the iPad, most of the expropriated dark value is realized, not as corporate profit, but as consumer surplus in the form of cheaper goods. Consequently, the core citizen becomes an unwitting [?—authors] beneficiary of this exploitative system when (s)he uses one waged hour to purchase a product that embodies many more lower-waged and unpaid hours and many under-valued material and ecological inputs.”

Yep, this is it baby.. capitalism. We see here advanced solution for very complex problem.

Second part of the puzzle is - http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/6770/the-servant-economy-where-americas-elite-is-sending-the-middle-class-/p1

Final part of the puzzle (on how elites with lots of workers and poor population behave) - http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/13661/unmanageable-complexity-globalisation-and-fear#Item_1

Thanks for link.

The change in the international division of labor is a product of capitals’ perennial quest for higher profits and is based, first, on enormous growth in the number of proletarians integrated into the capitalist world system and, second, on the substantive industrialization of the South over the past three decades. This was made possible by the dissolution of the Soviet and Eastern European “actually existing socialist” economies, the opening of China to global capitalism, and the outsourcing of production to India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico, and other newly industrializing countries. The result was an increase of at least one billion low-wage proletarians within global capitalism.

My point of view is that production places shifted due to complex mix of energy, resources, available human resources and also transport costs. If, as many US/EU patriots want, production stayed - stability could be much higher, but overall efficiency will be much lower resulting to worse overall life level, especially in metropolies.

From all this mix energy play major role, as it is extremely cheap and efficient comparing to human labor. And China as main production factory of the world had been chosen due to coal reserves - coal is very good due to price and simple fact that it does not induce big competition for oil.

If those specs are true , then "Dude, I'm getting a Dell!"

They are, XPS line of Dell is very good.

@jleo

I think it is for slightly other topic. :-)

As for tablets

Upcoming XPS 12 features a 12 inch, 3840 x 2160 pixel display and that it’s an “Infinity” display much like the screen on the Dell XPS 13 ultrabook. That means the bezels around the edges of the display will be super slim.

Other features are expected to include a Thunderbolt 3 port with a USB Type-C connector, an 8MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera, and a detachable keyboard dock with backlit keys and a touchpad.

In the U.S. we usually turn on Corporations that get megalithic but in Apple's case people generally like what they do across generations, which is really hard to accomplish. If someone has a better way of doing things they have nothing standing in their way in accomplishing that goal.

I am sure many people and teams know how to do better, and not only in Apple case.

Whole point for this topic was for you to understand that Apple is small tip of an iceberg and huge structures below water allow it not to sink (and absence of this structures leads to simple fact that many other teams sink, or their ideas/best people/patents are bough or stole by... Apple).

@jaggillan

You mean that you are rare on PV? :-)

enjoy their fantastic customer service, reliable products and happy to pay a bit more for it. ;-)

Apple reports show that you are paying mostly not for this :-)

Interesting thread. One thing I can't figure out yet though, are we talking like this simply due to our age and bitterness that comes along with it, disappointment in the world aka realization that it isn't like the fairly tales we grew up on...or is it actually something prophetic this time.

I think people were always fascinated by the impending doom that creeps around the corner, but lately, maybe because of the internet and everybody chiming in with their beliefs, it seems like there's a pretty extensive end of times sentiment.

Well, topic is not about rants, doom or such.

It is polite discussion about how system works and that can be done and that can't with it.

Why corporations or capitalists can't make really sustainable system? Well, Marxism already have answer for this - capitalism can not bear complex systems made in the interests of society, can not reach proper socialization level. It is not about bad people, system is designed such.

I was just reading an interesting article by Dmitry Orlov regarding the former Soviet Union's response to collapse and of course we are having a similar kind of economic / energy collapse on the horizon in the west.

I'll tell you a secret, talk (and articles) by Dmitry Orlov is almost complete bullshit, and everyone inside know it, so they are intended for outsiders.

Also agreed - but this is not just Apple or Samsung or anybody in specific. The market structure these days is, almost across the board, conspiring as heavily as possible to prevent smaller, local, and niche products which fill real needs from being able to be competitive against the giants with their one-size-fits-all solution.

By definition - monopolies and corporations are main property of imperialism. Sometimes during tech advances or in very fast moving sectors it can seem that many competitors can exist for prolonged periods. But laws of capitalism work and it quickly becomes from one to few giants and all else go into niches.

While I do think that quality has a place and that there are variations of market-based capitalism that, in certain circumstances, do a very good job, we're gone so far off the rails in our society that capitalism is at risk of becoming equally as bad of a word/term/concept as socialism did under the oppressive "communist" regimes.

Read less media and learn more real history :-) It'll help not to write such things. Nothing went off the rails, it is same beast, just due to objective reasons part of curtain moved and mask on the face started to peel off.