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jsprogrammer

Yeah, I think this is really showing how much Apple the organization is extracting from the individual Apple employees.

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Would gas travel faster if it didn't have to drag the car along?

Undoubtedly[1].

[1] http://www.space.com/21983-black-hole-rips-and-whips-galacti...

Not sure if replacing the car with a black hole is beneficial to the gas - or in this case, the workers - though.

Gas probably doesn't give a shit, used to be mixed with a bunch of stuff in the earth before someone distilled it out and it eventually ended up in a tank, ready to be exploded.

Was just an example of a positive "yes" answer to your question.

I'd argue that Apple isn't extracting value from employees, but rather creating value using employees.

It's not a zero-sum game. Apple creates value, it doesn't just move it from one place to another.

Apple employees create value. Apple itself hoards cash and leaks it out to shareholders.

Surely, the Apple employees use Apple's property when creating value. The employees -- presumably -- don't own the desk they sit at, the computer they use at work, the building in which they work. And they don't pay the bill from TSMC when wafers need to be produced -- Apple pays for all these things. It is able to do this, in part, because it has hoarded cash.

I'm sure you wouldn't claim that it's possible for the employees to create the value without the assets owned by Apple. Does the Apple employees have the savings to pay the $100M bill from TSMC, when a new generation of SOCs need to be produced? They would certainly all have to work from home, because they wouldn't have a building they could all sit in, without using the property of Apple.

Seems to me like Apple and its employees are in a symbiotic relationship, that benefits both parties.

Does not mean it is optimal, only (potentially) marginally useful.

No thing is ever optimal. We can always improve things. But I don't see why we should let perfection be the enemy of good.

But what about the customers? If a customer buys a $1k laptop and gets $2k out of value from it, the customers are effectively exploiting the workers more than Apple the organization could ever dream of. Where would you draw the line?

What does it mean to get $2k out of value from a laptop? I'm sure Apple could devise a licensing scheme to get a kickback on whatever you collect.

If you create $2k of value with a laptop, it's you who created that value. You just exploited yourself, using the laptop as your tool. Did I misunderstand your question?

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