by Aris
Chatzistefanou
The picture
of a hipster taking a selfie during G20 protests in Hamburg has gone
viral despite the fact that many have questioned its authenticity.
But
authenticity is not the issue here.
For free
market bigots having an iPhone and protesting capitalism is
contradiction in terms. According to them every achievement of modern
science and technology must be a product of free market capitalism.
But is it?
Let’s
first have a look at a very short excerpt of the documentary THIS IS
NOT A COUP where the British Economist Ann Pettifor explains that
very few companies owe as much to the public sector as Steve job’s
creation does:
“Mr.
Apple” Ann Pettifor told us, “needed the American
government to invest in the basic elements of the iPhone in order
for him to develop it as a private product. He himself was not
entrepreneurial enough to invent the internet and all of those major
elements of the iPhone which could then be privatized and used in the
private sector”.
A few years
earlier economist Mariana Mazzucato took up the task of analyzing the
components of every single Apple device one by one. And inside the
company’s bitten apple she would always spot what neoliberals would
call the “worm of the state”.
In her book
“The Entrepreneurial State” she conducted a thorough study on how
almost every gadget we use today, owes its existence to public
research programs that took place at universities or army research
centers.
Apple
phone’s screen for example, owes its existence to past studies of
the University of Delaware (which is publicly founded) and even to
some projects of the CIA.
That same
device wouldn’t even have a GPS if British Navy and US Defense
Department scientists hadn’t been working overtime nightshifts.
As for the
phone’s battery, it is based on a technology that has been
developed by the American Department of Energy and the US National
Research Foundation.
In the end,
all of the components that the innovative Steve Jobs gathered in
order to make the device, were paid by tax payers around the world
many years ago, but instead of becoming common property, they got
privatized and fallen to the hands of the big companies.
But even
investment programs, into which companies like Apple base their
activities (ie “seizing” other people’s inventions), would not
exist without the intervention of the American Federal Government.
Ann Pettifor
explained that in times of crisis, private sector is like a rat and
the state is like a lion; willing to take action despite the risk. In
essence, states become much more entrepreneurial. On the other hand,
it is hard to believe how nervous and anti-business the private
sector becomes when the conditions are not ideal.
Whether as a
mouse against the lion of the state, or as a worm inside a fruit,
Apple might be one of the most subsidized creations of the last
century.
A legacy
that’s not so pleasant for Steve Jobs – the Messiah of the new
American economy.
Source,
links:
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