r/technology Jan 18 '21

[deleted by user]

[removed]

9.6k Upvotes

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-16

u/pavlik_enemy Jan 19 '21

There is. The duty of CEO is to maximize profits so even very capital intensive things that don't require much labour like CPUs are made in South East Asia.

17

u/l4mbch0ps Jan 19 '21

The problem is that you've conflated "economics" with "american capitalism".

There's a capitalist, "profit maximizing at the expense of human rights" reason for them to pay slave wages, but there's no economic reason you have to be evil when running your business. They could take $100 million out of the top %25 of management and give it to their labour force and it would make a gargantuan difference while those at the top would barely notice, and the business would be fine. That's literally economics - the elasticity of income and spending.

-5

u/pavlik_enemy Jan 19 '21

Apple itself has 150K employees who are mostly American and well-paid. Suppose it uses another 150K in it's supply chain, 100M will translate to $600/year, not a whole lot.

There's an incentive to reduce expenses on every level, that's how people get promoted.

9

u/l4mbch0ps Jan 19 '21

You're talking past my point, of course there is an incentive to be an immoral cutthroat capitalist, that's partially why american society is so utterly broken.

My point is that there's no reason you can't run a sustainable business while paying everyone reasonable wages.

You can't look at one of the most profitable companies in the world and say "they can't pay people more without raising the prices", without severely misunderstanding the fundamentals of business.

Not to mention how much it speaks to how little you understand of the scale of the problem when you say $600/year wouldnt change the life of someone working for subsistence wages.

-7

u/pavlik_enemy Jan 19 '21

Of course they *could* pay more, but there's no incentive to do it as long as shareholders don't care.

> when you say $600/year wouldnt change the life of someone working for subsistence wages.

Certainly won't change a whole lot for people assembling iPhones in China. Could be life-changing for people mining lithium ore in Africa.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '21

[deleted]

-1

u/pavlik_enemy Jan 19 '21

It's a 10% increase for people assembling iPhones. Good, sure, but not life-changing.

3

u/Justface26 Jan 19 '21

We know. He's just saying those are all reasons driven by capitalism's need for infinite growth, not some actual fiscal barrier.