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Comment by jfoutz | Hacker News Reader

The DOJ couldn't shut down apple. Apple has $200,000,000,000 in cash and marketable securities. DOJ's budget is only 27 billion. That's a lot of lawyer time. It's a huge waste of money, but there it is.

Way less likely, but Apple could move HQ to another country. And take their secret source code and keys with them.

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I wonder if there's any advantage for Apple to form their own sovereign nation to operate out of. They are already richer than many existing countries. Can't they just buy out a Singapore-sized island somewhere?

You know, cyberpunk fiction always theorized that corporations would buy their own sovereignty for economic advantage or removing pesky laws against child labor, the first amendment, or slavery. I never expected them to do it in pure, honest self-defense.

I've always thought of Singapore as the "Apple" of countries. Incredibly modern, clean, organised, and well-presented. But run according to very strict rules, like banning chewing gum entirely, and $500 fines for littering.

Funny how a lot of Americans think banning chewing gum is oppressive but don't realize the similarity in the USA entirely banning Kinder Surprise eggs.

Lots of arbitrary stuff is banned in a lot of countries. Singapore just thought the littering cons of gum outweighed the pros.

Note that stuff like nicotine gum and other "therapeutic" chewing gum is still allowed, they just don't allow the candy that leads to littering.

And honestly looking around in a lot of cities where the entirety of downtown is slowly growing into a white blob composed of little individual pieces of squashed chewing gum I don't blame them.

> looking around in a lot of cities where the entirety of downtown is slowly growing into a white blob composed of little individual pieces of squashed chewing gum

Gum wall in Seattle, case in point.

If this becomes a thing, the world is going to run out of islands faster than companies can buy them to evade totalitarian governments.

This is getting really off topic but this is a potential solution: https://www.quora.com/If-someone-were-to-build-an-artificial...

And there's only a handful of companies large enough to do this: http://www.businessinsider.com/25-corporations-bigger-tan-co...

Not if the sovereign state of Applestan starts offering attractive lease options

There's probably no advantage; to do business in the U.S., a company must comport with U.S. laws. If Apple moved their HQ to the Sovereign Island of SteveJobistan, they would still have to follow U.S. court orders if they wanted to sell products to Americans within the borders of the U.S.

But would the U.S. populace put up with not being able to buy Apple devices at all? That starts sounding like restriction on free trade to the average American which is something they are much more likely to stand against as the government couldn't leverage fear to make the populace go against their own interests.

Stopping the sale of Apple devices and temporarily disabling US iPhones would probably be the singular most socially impacting event in recent history. If you want people to revolt, take their favourite toy away and blame the government.

Would Apple's shareholders put up with Apple not being able to sell into the U.S. market?

We're getting into "kill the company to make a point" territory, which is probably not realistic however we might imagine they do it.

Whatever leverage Apple has over the federal government will come from the millions of citizens who are customers, shareholders, developers, fans, employees, etc. They can activate those people just as well from Cupertino as they can from their own island.

They could invade Sealand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

Some have suggested Apple use its massive cash reserves to bail out Greece.

Couldn't the government just ban sales from that country (i.e. Apple). They have done that for Cuba, so why not for a company , country I mean, that "supports terrorism".

ha, ha:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueseed

Perhaps Apple, Inc. could become a subsidiary of Apple's Irish operations.

The US government would respond by banning all iOS devices

And most of the US government's phones suddenly turn into expensive bricks.

I'm not sure whether a company should be 'too big to govern', but it is on occasion hilarious.

It's not that it's too big to govern, it's that they're too big to fail. Publicly traded, employment footprint, market penetration; too big to fail. The impact of any action that would kill Apple here would also destroy the economy. Never happen.

Which is probably a very good way to cause at least minor riots.

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