So I'm a Marxist.

Well, let's not go quite that far, because surely here in the United States of Barack's Muslim Socialist Caliphate there is no quicker way to lose all credibility than to admit to being Marxist. How about this instead: I agree, spending 60% of your waking hours at a job you hate simply to supply yourself with the barest living essentials and the material goods to distract yourself from the banality of your existence is probably not good. The viability of the state as a source of existential meaning, the evil of private property, the abolition of a free market; these are all things I might argue against. But I think you'd have to be pretty goddamned but stupid to think that you can actually have a viable society where most people spend most of their time hating their lives. I mean, come on.

Anyway, as a sort-of-but-very-cautious-Marxist I have become hyper-attuned to any even vaguely socialist tendencies in any of my friends. It's all the more poignant when that friend also happens to be independently wealthy and an unapologetic vanguard of the techno-bourgeois. But then in happened: something came unhinged in Rafik's mind and suddenly we're not sitting on a bench in Soma but behind a podium in Red Square. "The disparate ails of the modern world," he begins, "these problems we like to pore over and ponder and decorate in so much legislative ribbon, I can't help but think that these are all simply symptoms of an underlying malady." Oh?, I think, perking up. "Our antiquated rail system, overpriced and over-marketed food, unemployment, inefficient and expensive health care: these may all seem like isolated problems but I see a common root." That's right, preach it brother. "I see one single, dangerous assumption that pollutes the entire system." Come on, Lenin, take us home. "And that one problem is--" Yes, I'm ready, let's start the revolution, "--bad design."

"Ah," I say. So much for Marx.

"You don't think so?"

Traitor. "Well, that's just not what I thought you were going to say."

"But surely these are all areas where intelligent, thoughtful design would be panacea. Imagine we could get the same minds behind the iPad to re-invent our health care system. Imagine we could make the interaction between doctors and patients fast and transparent. Imagine it was an opportunity--a joy even--to see medical bureaucracy at work. It might sound impossible but there are millions of dollars waiting for be made, huge contracts out there waiting to be won, for the right design team with the right motivation."

"Sure, but you'd need to completely change the tenor of public perception if that's going to happen. Remember, you're talking about recruiting the most brilliant and creative minds in the country," here I gesture half-sarcastically to the pair of us, "and asking them to work a government job. No one wants that. They all want to work for Apple."

"Right, but there was a time when Apple was significantly less than it is now. There was a time when it was basically a mom and pop computer store, an electronic atelier. But the people at the helm were firm about making it about more than just electronics. In fact, you could almost argue that Apple has, from the very beginning, been much more of a design and experience company that a computer company. From the very start they've been seeking out and hiring talented designers and artists. You're right: these are creative types, people with egos. We just need to seek these people out, make them feel valued and wanted, make them feel like redesigning health care could be their chef d'oeuvre, their Seventh Symphony."

I take a moment to reflect on the fact that surely drinking a coffee and discussing Apple in San Francisco must be the modern equivalent of musing over the Senate in an Ancient Roman bath. "I don't think that's enough. You know it's not for nothing that Apple has and always will be a personal computer company. I can't help but think that they don't tackle enterprise problems because exactly that area--good design--is simple not something corporations care about. Individuals buy things they like. They buy fancy, fun, expensive gadgets because it makes them feel fancy, fun and expensive themselves. Startups do the same thing too, I guess, but large companies really don't. The bigger you get, and as a consequence the more distance you put between the people who build the product and the people who enjoy it, the less good design seems to matter. People don't see the Caltrain as a way to enrich people's lives through design. Politicians see it as a necessity but nothing more, something that must be maintained but at the absolute lowest cost possible. People are unemployed and hungry and pissed and this close to voting for the other guy; how can you possibly justify spending some huge amount of money to hire a German design studio to re-imagine rail transport. And there is no way any independent designer is going to be able to build and operate their own, competing train. It's not going to happen."

"But I think people are starting to wake up to how important good design really is. They're starting to demand it in everything they see. Again we've probably got Apple to thank. Say what you will about the cost of their products, about their corporate policies, about their fetishization of material goods. Whether the people who buy Apple products realize it or not, with every iPad they buy they are becoming more and more convinced that good design is something worth paying for. The more products Apple sells the more people demand design. The more people demand design, the less tolerant they become of garbage."

"I agree with that, but there's a limit. People are never going to be so infatuated with design that they reject things they need on principle. The thirst for good design is really something you can only feel from the absolute apex of the pyramid of needs. So long as there's a market for cheap goods people will continue to crank out that garbage. People aren't making shitty iPad look-alikes because they don't understand design; they're making them because people buy them."

"But you're forgetting something: even making those shitty look-alikes isn't easy. You still need designers and engineers, even if they're working a job they don't feel passionately about. But there's a limit to what people will do. There are brilliant and creative people out there," here he gestures not-at-all-sarcastically to the pair of us, "who would never work for Android or Windows."

"On principle."

"On whatever. And that's just the power of Apple. Not only does it create a consumer class that values design, it also stands as a role model for talented designers. It says 'There are people out there who understand your passion. Don't work for some soulless corporation who wants nothing more than a steady stream of just barely marketable junk. Aspire to greatness and you will achieve it.' Somewhere between customers who refuse to put up with crummy products and engineers who refuse to build those products is the future I'm hoping for."

I'm about to say something about unemployment and choice when a light goes off in my head and I realize that we're right back on nice, firm, Marxist soil. We're just talking about the proletariat. We're talking about the pride of the worker, about the difference between people who hate their jobs and people who wake up in the middle of the night excited by the work they get to do the next day. And I think we're talking about a free market that is slowly, ever-so-ponderously starting to value and incentivize just that kind of labor. It's the first time I've heard the problem phrased in quite this way, and I have to take a second to reflect on what looks on the face of it to be a fairly elegant formulation: Apple is the first tech company to succeed in the free market precisely because it values its workers as artisans, as laborers in the Marxist sense. It bears repeating: Apple has succeeded in the free market precisely by embracing a notion of labor that seems to run counter to the market itself. And there's something warm and fuzzy about the idea that Apple might represent a tiny, baby step towards an economy driven by smart people with good ideas, rather than droning efficiency. 

But there's a lot left to hash out. Apple has had to make a lot of sacrifices to get to where they are. While they are fiercely proud of their own engineers they are brutally uncompromising with those from other companies. Where other industry giants push for openness in software Apple calls for gated communities and curated content. They've build a Forbidden City around their product to build their image. And we can't ignore the fact that Apple is certainly the exception, not the rule. To work at Apple is still a very rare privilege that very few people can enjoy. How do we move towards a country and an economy where workers actually have the freedom to work only on the projects that inspire them? How do we make well-designed goods commonplace rather than coveted? In other words, how do we make high-speed rail like Apple?

I sip my coffee and check the time on my iPhone. "That's a good point. Say, what do you know about labor alienation?"