[mechanical_fish]

In what sense does a person who has just paid an engineer $599 for something "have no skin in the game"? Seems to me they have just anted up $599 worth of skin. Indeed, unless they return their new phone within a short period or the thing breaks under warranty, they're holding the bag. If they decide three months later that the phone sucks, it's not the engineer that feels sad. The engineer has made a profit.

There's an old saying about paying, pipers, and tunes that seems appropriate here.

[jrockway]

Let's say the average iPhone user makes $100,000 a year. That means the $599 iPhone is about 0.599% of that person's income. If they work 40 hours a week, out of a total of 168 hours in a week, that means they spent 0.143% of their year working to get the phone. But the person who designed the phone spent 100% of their working on the phone.

So the average user spent less time on the phone, and they didn't design the phone, they just gave AT&T a tiny bit of their money once a month.

[dasil003]

Your analysis is silly. The iPhone is a status symbol, just like a BMW or Grey Goose. There are going to always be dumbasses identifying personally with these things in a vain search for self-esteem. In reality these people are a tiny minority with an age distribution skewing well under the age of full frontal-lobe development, but they make enough noise in forums that you'd think the fate of the world hinges on this bullshit.

[Jach]

Where you're wrong is in assuming this affliction is only with dumb people or a minority. We're status-seeking creatures, it affects us all. Of course to degrees, but it's not as if educated techies don't get into pointless flame wars all the time.

jrockway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

[dasil003]

Dumbass doesn't necessarily mean dumb. Lord knows i've participated in my fair share of flame wars, but I've grown more resistant to it as I've aged.

[Turing_Machine]

There are factors other than economics involved, such as aesthetics and appreciation of quality.

Should people not care about (random example) the Grand Canyon because they have no "skin in the game" other than the tiny percentage of their tax money that goes to fund the operation of the park? A less-lofty example would be to argue that people shouldn't have a preference between a first-rate restaurant and Burger King, simply because a meal at the restaurant (though expensive) doesn't represent a significant portion of their annual income.