06.19.13
What he said
Consider the changing identity of the most valuable company in America. For a long time, it was GM, then Exxon, then IBM. These were companies with huge visible production activities …
But now it’s Apple, which has hardly any employees and does hardly any manufacturing. The company tries, through fairly desperate PR efforts, to claim that it is indirectly responsible for lots of US jobs, but never mind. The reality is that the company is basically built around technology, design, and a brand identity.
There was an old Dilbert in which the pointy-haired boss explained that the company had discovered that despite its slogan, people weren’t its most important asset — money was, and people only came in at #8 or something. Actually, in Apple’s case market position is its most important asset.
There are a couple of obvious implications from this change in the nature of corporate success. One is that profits are no longer anything remotely resembling a “natural??? aspect of the economy; they’re very much an artifact of antitrust policy or the lack thereof, intellectual property policy, etc. Another is that a lot of what we consider output is “produced??? at low or zero marginal cost.
Smartphones and mobile computing haven’t been transformative for the American populace, at least from what I can see at Baja Ranch everyday. Everyone has an iPhone with apps for every social networking site and more processing power than many older PCs. But they still can’t earn enough to get out of the WIC, SNAP and EBT programs.
Every day it becomes easier to detest Apple and the rest of America’s “tech” industry.