"Capitalism made your iPhone"

I'm getting tired of this shit. Is there any quick and concise way of tearing it down without getting into pointless tl;dr arguments with brainlets?

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writetorebel.com/2016/05/22/debunking-the-iphone-argument/
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Capitalism doesn't make iPhones, workers make iPhones.

Communist theory doesn't criticize technology or luxury items, it criticizes the commodity form. In other words, we don't oppose smart phones per se, we oppose how smart phones are produced - for exchange and profit. Everything we need to live is a commodity - food, medicine, housing, etc. are all produced and exchanged for money. Buying commodities is just how everyone survives in capitalism, including socialists.

Anti-communists would like to think that this is hypocrisy, but the movement to abolish capitalism exists within capitalist society itself and can't transcend its social relations except through successful revolution. Anti-communists are trying to apply some kind of ideological or moral purity test to communists which communists don't advocate for ourselves, and then call us hypocrites for not meeting their made-up standards.

It's a big ol' strawman.

So I should add, even if is it hypocrisy, that would be a tu quoque fallacy, and so by definition is not a valid argument at best.

But the market for a luxury product, that is being produced to the detriment of worker's rights and being sold an an insane markup just to make Apple richer IS a capitalist schema.

They're literally using slave labor in one country, to build a cheap product that is marketed as a luxury good, and sold for 3x the value of it's components, based on branding alone.

Not a single part of this is acceptable, and it must be torn down. Iphones embody everything wrong with capitalism and commodities.

I bet you can't even say why, dumb redditor

A luxury good that only derives value from marketing wank, produced by a profit maximizing company with breathtaking markups, assembled by literal slave labor that is housed in dorms and has active guards to prevent suicide, from cheap and inferior goods, using metals refined via child labor in the most ecologically disastrous way possible, is not excellent?

They're the technological form of blood diamonds.

I love these word filters. Now go read marx, newfaggot.

iPhones are made with slave labor in the third world using technology developed by the government within a company that gets government subsidies despite also making huge profits by deliberately making the phones shoddy and releasing updates constantly.

Anybody who uses iPhones as a positive example of capitalism is so divorced from reality that they might as well be living in a virtual reality simulation.

Brilliant rebuttal, faggot.

Now, this is where you actually respond with an argument, without just telling me to do something I've already done.

Why should I waste my arguments on someone telling that "stuff which makes my feels hurt is bad"?

Nice mischaracterization of my multiple points, so you've got no answer then.


Uh, it's the capitalistic system that drives them to produce the cheapest product possible, produced by the cheapest labor possible, and then sold at the maximum price with the least amount of profit removed via taxes.

Why do you think that beats headphones are made of $20 worth of components, by slave labor, then sold for $300? Why do you think apple purposefully avoids paying taxes.

And this disagrees with my point how? Apple products are one of the clearest examples of this.

tried this but got spammed with thonk emotes on discord

Except you just made several statements about our current regime which are objectively not good or bad, and then expect me to agree with you/refute your points based on your morals. That's simply stupid.

It's based on the assumption that one cannot critique anything if one receives something from it , "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" mindset. The thing is capitalism also bombards you with ads, gives you unclean drinking water and air, highly processed food, shitty medicine, dictates legislation that affects your life, ships your job overseas, pays you nothing for any job you do find, and sells you overpriced shit that will break in a few months. But you cannot say any of this because you bought a smartphone that has a fruit on it.

tl;dr It's a terrible argument that states you cannot be critical of anything harmful to you because you receive something from it, even if that thing does more harm than good.

Talk about what a piece of shit iphones are because they're the product of a capitalist system.

I remember there being a good short video on this but I can't find it. I think it was made by Rebel Absurdity.

I found this it seems to be a good article on the issue:
writetorebel.com/2016/05/22/debunking-the-iphone-argument/

pure idealism

No you retarded faggot, society was improved by better agriculture technology spurred by farmers' drive to get more profits.

Technology isn't capitalism and neither is production of goods.

Invented in the state sector, made by workers. CEOs are just leeches at this point.

What word gets turned into "excellent"?

I long for the day to finally meet this Capitalism guy. He seems to be such a hard working and helpful fellow.

classic word used by "ideological tourists", liberals not being able to see past their ideology, thus not comprehending materialism of the left - pr0blematic.


fun fact: iPhones were invented, and most of them are still manufactured by Jára Cimrman

I kinda agree that it's obviously not an "ethically correct" product. However, when you argue with normies who aren't leftie-pilled, the sexiness and usefulness of the product will nearly ALWAYS win out over the issue of it being "pr0blematic". Moral critiques won't do shit, all they point to is some lame ass asceticism (not using nice phones) or becoming a luddite. This isn't attractive and it will only win over some liberal hippies are lifestylists.
The only possible way of critique is to show that the iphone that we get is a joke compared to all the nice stuff we could cheaply produce with the technology that's already available, if only we switched to a different mode of production. We have to divorce "capitalism" from the idea of technological progress by consistently showing how it fails to deliver actual technological progress, how it submits any progress to the dictates of the market.
The iphone is a wonderful case in point. All it's core technologies were publicly developed and funded. It's core technologies are socially produced. Why? Because investment in cool technologies is way to risky for a profit-oriented firm. Basic investment is consistently done by the public / the state, and then privately owned once it's clear that bucks can be made from it. Now combine this with the fact that public investment is shrinking due to neoliberalism and stuff. As a result you get a slowing rate of innovation, since the public can't do basic research and private businesses are way to risk averse. This is why the iphone is a sham, not just because it's sold way above its value.
And NOW you have a valuable critique of the iphone that is actually attractive and doesn't fallback into some caveman communism.

newsflash, faggot
everything in a capitalist society is a capitalist scheme
now off yourself in shame, libshit

There's no other system to buy smartphones from when global capitalism exists.

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if this doesnt convince them an argument is pointless because that won't either.

Uh oh

But the iPhone is fucking shit.

How is this capitalism?

A capitalist page posted it so it must be true. Take that, socialists!

I love it when they bring up the iPhone as an example of capitalism because then I get to ask them if they think China has communism.

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Tell them that iphone sucks. Becouse it does suck. Even Chinese Huawey or Russian Yotaphones are better

Let's not quote that cocksucker shall we?

broken clocks etc

Absolutely not. I refuse to acknowledge or believe anything the man has said.

take your meds

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somebody should mail him the dildo throne from the porn spoof

A religious man who really believes in his faith would not fuck prostitutes, do drugs, and other degenerate shit just because it is his culture and society. He lives for something higher.

A communist in capitalist society is rarely ever a worker. He is a socialite who lives a rich urban life parasiting on the labor of the worker and taking in the benefits of capitalism with delight. Gorging himself on it's food, entertainment and technology. It is this person who is telling the worker (such as myself) how terrible capitalism is. Fuck you faggots. If there is ever a just revolution it would be us workers killing you city socialites. Just killing all of you.

fuck off back to Holla Forums

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This is a perfect debunking and would make a great caption pic, except for the "commodity form" bit which no norm will understand, let alone rightist dunce.

Nevermind that China isn't actually communist. The classcucks don't know that, and it sends them into a stuttering rage.

Don't use an iPhone, faggot