As Jordan told you earlier, I am standing in the line for the iPhone 5. Unexpected buyers showed up as well. Occupy Wall Street demonstrators planned a strategy to hijack the event. They are currently standing in line and plan to sell their spots tomorrow morning to rich business people.
Isn’t it Machiavellian and very capitalistic of them? Actually, no. They have a justification. “We are going to donate the money to charity,” said Ryan Lash, who has been doing Occupy demonstrations for a year. “If we tell them it’s for a donation, they will not buy our spots,” he continued.
Another person started interviewing me and live streaming it with — erm — his iPhone. Others looked bored more than anything else, drawing and reading to pass time. On the cardboard signs, one could read “Apple puts profits in offshore accounts so they can dodge paying taxes,” or “Its OK, keep buying things you dont need. #OccupyApple”
“Technology should be free and incorporated into public services,” Lash said. If this reasoning can easily be defended for services, such as Internet access or mobile phone plans, companies design hardware products in order to sell them at a margin.
When asked what is the charity they selected, he told me that they haven’t figured it out yet. I will keep this short, it looks like it is going to rain. Be sure to catch our live stream of the doors opening starting tomorrow at 7am Eastern Time.
One last anecdote, I overheard an elderly woman saying from the sidewalk “God bless you for just waiting in line for that.”
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