Certain products that enjoy economies of scale enjoy the highest quality at a low cost, which means that the best available item of its sort is available to most people.

John Gruber touches on this while gushing about the iPhone. The example of Coca Cola was interesting for its time, but modern consumer electronics really are the end-point for this idea:

“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”
— Andy Warhol

So too with the iPhone. A billionaire can buy homes, cars, clothes that the rest of us cannot afford. But he cannot buy a better phone, at any price, than the iPhone that you can have in your pocket today.

Related Posts:

• iPhone Accessibility (September, 2009)
• The Futures of Money (February, 2006)
• eco:Drive (October, 2008)
• Iteration of the Prime Intellect (November, 2005)
• Saving the Planet With Plan B 2.0 (March, 2006)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 11:41 am and is filed under society, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.