Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

I live in Eindhoven, home town of Philips, one of the members of this cartel. Philips is extremely loved here. They're the reason this city is a city at all, they're the reason we're a prosperous region with of lots of innovation (mostly hardware though, so not very HN-fashionable). We now have apartment buildings named after their founders ("Gerard", "Anton", etc), lunchrooms ("Meneer Frits"), the local football stadium & club are named after them, and so on. Statues. Statues! Not of a Great Leader back in some totalitarian past, but of CEOs! Imagine putting an enormous bronze Elon Musk at the SF Caltrain station square. That's Eindhoven. We love us our Philips.

They were crooks. The amount of cartels Philips has been in is staggering. They've been working to screw over their customers since the very beginning. Look it up, any infamous technology cartel from the 20th century you can find, big chance Philips was on it. When cartels went out of vogue they lobbied for regulation with pretty much the same effect - Philips will do anything, legal or not, to keep their margins up.

I really don't understand how easily people whitewash this shit.

The reason they are loved is the major social impact Philips had on the Eindhoven region, mostly positive. You could walk up to Mr Frits during carnival, ask for a job for your husband and he could start the next week, ask any older Eindhovenaar about it. They were considered to be a great company to work for: they took care of houses (one of the Eindhoven suburbs is called Philips town as it was literally built by them for their employees), and the bylaws made maximum employment a top priority (heck, it’s still mentioned in the latest CAO). The local football club was founded by Philips for their employees, the first player in the field was a 4-year-old Mr. Frits.

From the perspective of Eindhoven, they sure were a net gain. For the rest of the world, they sure are in a lot of cartels. But the tens of thousands of people working for Philips-related companies won’t care (ASML, NXP, Signify, Etos, FEI, TP Vision, are just some examples of the Philips legacy that is still felt all across the Eindhoven region)l

You basically described what's wrong with caputalism in general. And I agree. Everybody shits their pants when there is a statue erected for the big leader but somehow noon really seems to care about the impact of big Corp to the same effect which is EXTREMELY troubling

Oh come on. I'll take Philips-built Eindhoven over a similarly sized city in Turkmenistan any day. Plenty corporations are run by crooks but few people in capitalist democracies are afraid that they (or their loved ones) could suddenly disappear without a trace.

Can't mention someone doing something bad without someone coming out of the woodwork shouting CAPITALISM!!1. Don't you have a breadline to stand in?

They're crooks, but they are our crooks!

And to be fair some Philips products are decent.

That's totally besides the point though :-)

Plus, unless you're referring to medical equipment, it's probably just brand licensing. Philips hardly produces any consumer electronics anymore (incl lights).

I work in the lighting industry. I'm told they have a patent on the concept of attaching a driver to an LED board. We, and many other lighting companies, pay for a license to use that patent.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com