this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Eventually the money to start the process comes from somewhere like a bank or private loans. Sure, the workers could fund the venture by themselves, but nobody wants to take that kind of risk. Taking a job at a company is basically paying money to avoid risk.
Workers take plenty of risk to change jobs, homes, and even countries for a new job. The risks they take are comparatively much more significant than a venture of a millionaire or billionaire capitalist. That risk is somehow not rewarded under capitalism. Not to mention that the capitalist "risk" is nothing more than a scare tactic
That aside, someone "putting in money" doesn't mean they were useful and deserve any credit. It just means that you have an unjust system where the actual innovators have to agree to be exploited to survive.
It's extremely difficult to get started. I suppose I could live in a van down by the river and dumpster dive until I can make money from a product or service. However, many products and services require multiple workers to accomplish. If course businesses exploit workers and prevent competition. Those things should be addressed. However, it becomes extremely difficult to add a layer of fairness because some people will say that they deserve more than another person. Some people will get jobs based on who they know and who likes them. Does everyone get paid equally? Do you measure performance on some way? That creates competing interests and competition among workers. I worked in a shop under a "flat rate" system. It was constant bullshit with some guys doing anything they could to steal work from other guys. People would lie to get more work or bill customers for extra labor. It was a shit show.
Anarchist chad: Yes.
So, you've chosen violence
Nonsense
It's extremely difficult to get started.
But it would be easier to start if you got a fair amount for your labor and everyone you're going to work with pooled in.
The current system isn't fair either. Ultimately your boss decides what you get paid. They could be a benevolent dictator but they could also try to stiff you, you will never know. Now, we might not make it fair but we can definitely make it fairer. One way is democratization of the work place. Essentially everyone gets a say, say in how the revenue is split, say in who gets hired, say in whether there should be preformance metrics and if there should then also what those metrics should be.
And that's not some only theoretical idea, cooperatives are real life examples of this working. They aren't point by point as the examples I gave, but they do follow the concept of implementing democracy in the work place.
Entry to the market is a bigger obstacle than risk. You can't just make a phone at home from scraps. You need an army of workers and machines and supply chains and business relationships and licenses.
You don't actually have to have any of those things because you can have other companies make those parts for you and then even hire a company to assemble it for you. Apple doesn't make screens or tiny screws or batteries. At least they don't have to I'm not sure how their supply chain works. You could do presales on a site like Kickstarter and make the phone. The issue is getting enough people to buy it in order to make it viable as all of those companies are going to charge you a set up fee, so the more parts you buy, the lower the cost per part. You'd also have to design a phone that gives people a compelling reason to buy it. Selling stuff is hard probably harder than making the product itself. You'd also need the usual business overhead like an accountant and an attorney.
That's still market entry as the biggest obstacle, rather than risk. Getting enough people to buy it in order to make it viable is, itself, a factor of how much can be invested in marketing the phone. Designing a phone still requires at least a team of workers, if not an army, because that requires designing both the phone and software in addition to making it all work together in a usable product.
You also can't just start up a phone company from a lemonade stand. You need starting capital. Hence, market entry.
I would start by making a dev board in an SBC form factor like the raspberry pi and use an os like graphene and make it compatible with Linux. You could sell that and have your backers do testing for you while you build the rest of the phone. Then once the phone was built you could try to build an os of your own.
I'm pretty sure your cobbled together hackathon project wouldn't be functional as a phone, cell towers wouldn't communicate with it and it wouldn't make calls. Also, where did you even get backers? How did you attract them and scam them out of their money? And now you're using them to outsource your labor team??
Market barriers are real.
It's called a modem and a SIM card sweetie
That's not a cell phone? Pretty sure you're stuck to an internet connection.
Pick one of the many chipsets that are used in Mobile devices. Slap that baby on the circuit board next to the processor and ram. I'm pretty sure your can get these packaged on a small surface mount board with shielding and everything on it already.
https://www.electronicproducts.com/top-10-5g-chipsets/
I guess you don't realize that there is easy to use pcb design software that lets you lay out your components and it will automatically run the traces between the board layers. You can them send those files off to a board manufacturer who will also solder the components on for you for an additional cost. It's not prohibitively expensive. People do it all the time
https://youtu.be/zc3sPoqOFG8
People do not make functional DIY cell phones all the time.
I don't care if you can hack together something in your garage, it's not a phone unless it can make calls using cellular infrastructure. That requires licensing, contracts, and business connections to the providers.
A project like that is good for making shortwave radios to avoid Israel installing bombs on your battery, but not useful for this specific purpose outside of making a prototype model to maybe be able to beg for money from investors.
You can buy this thingy
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1963
You could place similar circuitry on the same board as the soc and other stuff.
Here is a cellphone with off the shelf parts.
https://learn.adafruit.com/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-cellphone/overview