Cost of Labor in an iPhone

An aside in a brief BoingBoing post by Xeni Jardin on Foxconn and Apple made me curious about labor costs and Apple products:

"And while Pogue doesn't explicitly address this point, I'll throw it out there: cheap overseas labor in rotten conditions with poor labor law standards are part of what keeps gadget prices where they are."

According to the New York Times article, "How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work", manufacturing an iPhone in the U.S. would add $65 to the expense of each phone. According to Bernstein Research's Toni Sacconaghi (via Philip Elmer-DeWitt, @philliped), the average profit on an iPhone is about $364. So, manufacturing an iPhone in the U.S. would reduce Apple's profit on each one by 17%.

This suggests to me that cheap labor in China is not what drives the price of an iPhone. The large profits Apple makes on their products ($26 billion in 2011, roughly half of which is from iPhones) is driven by the premium their customers place on Apple's products, and Apple's ability to set their price point. Manufacturing iPhones in the U.S., or making them with better-compensated labor elsewhere, would cut into Apple's profit. Unless Apple was able to raise prices to maintain their profits --- which seems unlikely, or else the prices would be higher already --- it would probably not affect the prices of their phones.

My Half-Serious Mission: to Share Possibilianism

Today, this Tweet helped my crystallize why I consider myself agnostic, and motivated me to write a blog post:

I used to be an agnostic too. Then I read the Bible again and it solidified my #atheism - @WiseGuyEddie, via Twitter

The first reason I am agnostic is that I believe that there are many meaningful choices besides Atheism and the Judeo-Christian tradition, and I know almost nothing about most of them. I only have any knowledge of religions that formed out of the Western tradition -- Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Norse, and Celtic mythologies; Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Baha'i; and mystery religions, such as gnosticism, that branched off of the Judeo-Christian religion. I am aware of the religions of the Eastern tradition, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, although I know little about them. I am also aware that the many tribes of the world hewed to pagan religions, but of them I know almost nothing save the odd story. Finally, new religions are constantly being invented, such as Scientology and Raelism. I can say confidently that I do not believe any of the religions that I've examined in any detail. I also have made a decision that it's not worth my time giving each belief system a fair hearing. However, I have to admit that I am ignorant of most of them. So, calling myself agnostic seems like an honest thing to do.

The second reason for being agnostic is positive --- by refusing to take any position, I leave myself the freedom to imagine different possible reasons for the Universe, and test whether I might eliminate some based on the nature of reality. Here are a few of the possibilities I entertain to explain the Universe (none of which I claim are original to me, but I don't remember where I heard them all):

• There might be more than one deity vying to have influence on the Universe.
  
• God might be evil, and any good that emerges in the world is an accident that violates his design.
  
• God might have interests and concerns so different from anything we can image that it seems as if God doesn't care.
  
• God might have created the Universe as a means of seeking a better understanding of what it means to be moral.
  
• The Universe might be little more than a science fair project by a deity, who might only care about first place.
  
• The Universe might be the ridiculously detailed hallucination of a madman.
  
• The Universe might have been created for cats.
  
• Life on Earth might have been seeded by alien scientists who were attempting to prove to alien clergy that intelligent life could happen by accident.
  
  • As a corollary, alien clergy might have planted the seed of religion with humanity, to prove the point that religion is Universally true.
    
• The Universe might just be something that exists for no good reason, and we just happen to be here wondering why.
  

Why would I surrender the option of embracing all these possibilities? Indeed, this is the basis of a proposed new religion of sorts, Possibilianism.

Thirdly, I embrace agnosticism, and more specifically Possibilianism, because I see it as high ground from which I can tweak those who believe they have the ultimate truth.

To summarize, being Possibilian is the most efficient and entertaining choice of belief systems.