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Comment by Osmium | Hacker News Reader

> They had basically nothing at stake.

Except the human cost and resulting PR nightmare if a terrorist attack happened that they could have in principle prevented (e.g. if the terrorist had collaborators, and information on the phone helped find them).

> I don't think this was a particularly difficult thing to do.

Very easy to say when you're not the one responsible for that $800bn company ... if you're a decent human being, you're probably not worried about your own wealth in that situation, but the livelihoods of all your employees and other entities that rely on you. Every decision carries weight. The value of your company is not always empowering; the higher its value, the larger the consequences if you're wrong.

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Sorry if I bust your little bubble of joy here but:

Apple is not made of decent human beings and do not care for employees that much. Just look at how their devices are manufactured.

Apple cares about profits and money, just look at their tax evasion schemes and how they store their cash overseas waiting for a tax break to bring it back to the US.

> Apple is not made of decent human beings

This just isn’t true. Most people are decent human beings. Employees of Apple are no different. Don’t box them in as “the other.” They’re just people.

> Just look at how their devices are manufactured.

This is a valid criticism. Also an industry wide problem. Apple is very transparent with problems in their supply chain, even when it reflects badly on them. This is a problem we have to confront, but it’s far larger than Apple alone.

> tax evasion

There’s a difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. It’s not good practice for a company to pay more tax than they need to. The appropriate remedy to this is legislation.

> Sorry if I bust your little bubble of joy

You didn’t, so it’s okay :)

how is it difficult to have a stance on privacy while its ok to basically have people manufacturing your devices in conditions you would not accept in your own country? As a leader they have to show the way, its not like they are not drowning in profits and unable to make any change.

Well, the reality is that people buying the product care about privacy, and it is easy for those same people to ignore Foxconn's existence, because it is far away. Businesses, doing what they do, follow that reality.

This doesn't reflect well on anyone involved, but it is pretty much the way things are.

Apple does, in fact, do better than most of the rest on (for want of a better term) progressive issues like this. They were leaders on environmental issues and is willing to fight with shareholders over them[1] (ditto accessibility, presumably as an example of other efforts not directly-ROI impacting).

Manufacturing is tough to change. Even with Apple-style money, creating the sort of hub of interlocking businesses that are needed to fuel large-scale manufacturing businesses takes decades and some secret-sauce we don't understand - Shenzhen wasn't built overnight. And if Apple did somehow build a shiny new manufacturing hub somewhere in Kansas, the products it built would be likely be substantially more expensive.

That said, Apple is building a US factory. See what happens. It might not change anything. Perhaps you believe they should put more money in to the effort. But assuming they aren't doing anything is incorrect.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-versus-a-conservativ...

Here comes the nirvana fallacy

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