What the trolls on the #ResistCapitalism hashtag probably don’t realize is that all of the smart technology that goes into iPhones is a creation of socialism. And everything that Apple sells to make obscene profits (which are taxed at ridiculously low rates thanks to Apple’s cunningly evil accounting practices) was made possible by government-funded research. Even Google’s algorithm was created with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Aside from all of that, Apple as a corporation may not even exist as it does today were it not for government loans to startup businesses. The Harvard Business Review pointed out how Apple was a direct beneficiary of socialism in its earliest stages:

(Apple) also received its early stage finance from the U.S. government’s Small Business Investment Company program. Venture capitalists entered only after government funding had gotten the company to the critical proof of concept.

None of the major components in the iPhone would have been possible without scientific breakthroughs garnered from publicly-funded research. Here are a few examples outlined in economist Mariana Mazzucato’s book, The Entreprenurial State:

1. Hard drives: The Department of Energy (DoE), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the Department of Defense (DoD) built upon research already conducted by France and Germany to make hard drives, which silicon valley corporations then used to make profits.

Gloria Jean Watkins (born September 25, 1952), better known by her pen name bell hooks (sic),[1] is an American author, feminist, and social activist. The name "bell hooks" is derived from that of her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks, a woman known for speaking her mind.[2]



Hooks's writing has focused on the intersectionality of race, capitalism, and gender, and what she describes as their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and class domination. She has published over 30 books and numerous scholarly articles, appeared in documentary films, and participated in public lectures. Primarily through a postmodern perspective, she has addressed race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media, and feminism. In 2014 she founded the bell hooks Institute in Berea, Kentucky.