Apple has not made any significant donations to charity since 1997
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
What it actually says is:
"Jobs has not reinstated a philanthropic division at Apple."
So, he hasn't hired a bunch of people to sit in an office, giving someone else's money away and feeling pretty good about themselves. I'd say that is A GOOD THING - you don't need full-time staff in order to give money to good causes, that's just more overhead that stops money getting to the people who really need it. Jobs also got rid of the Apple Museum when he returned to Apple in 1997 .... because it was irrelevant ego bullshit and completely unnecessary.
Wikipedia says absolutely nothing about how much money Apple has donated and I know for a fact that it has aided progressive causes that other corporations would be too nervous to assist for fear of conservative backlash.
I hope that the submitter of this, ck2, realizes that, with one rotten headline, he is now part of what is wrong with media reporting - distorting the truth in order to sensationalize.
For instance, Apple does tie-in promotions such as the Product(RED) iPods that support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS: http://www.apple.com/ipod/red/
They also provide grants and recognition to teachers and schools: http://www.apple.com/education/apple-distinguished-educator/
If you want to help someone, or even a lot of people through charity, that's fine, but it should not earn you any moral credit.
Moral credit should only come from what you've truly achieved, and that means creating value somehow (invention, scientific discovery, beautiful art, and honest work of any kind). Anyone can give away fifty million dollars, but not many can actually earn the same sum in their lifetimes.
No one can give away fifty million dollars that they don't have.
There is no inherent moral good in earning fifty million dollars (Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs, AIG, your local arms dealer, etc. etc.) There is often significant moral good in earning far less than fifty million dollars (teachers, nurses, etc).
You cannot justly equate a destroyer of value (Madoff) with a creator of value (Jobs).
I did not equate Jobs to Madoff (or AIG or arms dealers), I simply stated that being in possession of fifty million dollars does not provide any indication of moral value of the possessor.
This is a contradiction in terms. To earn something means to trade for it honestly, exchanging one value for another. To steal something means something altogether different (taking something by force or fraud). These two words do not mean the same thing; they are, in fact, opposites.
Honesty has absolutely nothing to do with the definition of the word.
And in any case, selling heroin to high schoolers fits your new definition of "earning". I surely see no moral good that comes from that. As such, earning fifty million, or five dollars has zero correlation to morality.
Earning is inherently a profoundly moral action, because values are things that advance human interests (not to be confused with desires) long-term. People don't generally pursue lower values over higher ones (unless they are mistaken about what is actually valuable to them).
Values (such as food, clothing, or abstract ideas) are earned, honestly by free minds through great conscious effort. There is no other way.
You appear to want to redefine "earning" once again so that the definition now means: a moral trade of goods/services. As such, your argument boils down to this: a moral trade of goods/services is moral. Yes, yes it is.
But that also roughly translates into meaninglessness. Good things are good and bad things are bad. Yes. Ipso facto. That's the way it works. There is indeed no other way. But that has absolutely nothing to do with whether money is itself moral (it isn't) or whether helping other people is moral (it is).
Here's a zen story I'm going to mangle that will surely blow your mind:
A father in a small village gave a boy a horse of his own for his fifteenth birthday. All the village were happy for the boy, "how lucky he is" they said. One villager asked the old monk, "isn't it good that the boy got a horse?", to which the old monk replied "maybe it is, maybe it is not". They ignored the old monk and congratulated the boy on having a horse. A few days passed and then one day the boy fell from his horse and broke his leg. All the village were worried for the boy. One villager said to the old monk "you were right, isn't it a shame the boy broke his leg", to which the old monk replied "maybe it is, maybe it is not". Again the villagers shook their heads and walked away from the old monk. Two weeks passed and soldiers from the nearby town rode into the village. All the villagers gathered around and the soldiers said "every abled bodied man must come with us to fight for the Emperor so that the Emperor can conquer more land". All the women cried and all the abled bodied men rode off with the soldiers to fight a war they had no stake in. One of the women turned to the old monk and said "isn't it fortunate the boy broke his leg so he does not need to go die to conquer more land for the Emperor" ... maybe it is, maybe it is not.
I have already provided at least 2 other examples of people immorally earning (per your new definition) money, you have ignored both to focus on semantics involving Madoff.
My point remains. Your original post and overall point is invalid. In fact, it is 100% backwards. Money is morally neutral. It's how you get money and what you do with it that determines morality.
Need is not a valid claim on anyone else's life. I didn't make them poor. My moral responsibility lies with making my own life the best. In doing so, I'm not harming anyone, because it's not in my interest to sacrifice others to myself (just as it is not in my interest to sacrifice myself to others.) Instead of begging or stealing, I advocate trading.
Or do you help them out of their current situation so that they can better help themselves in the future?
If I have to choose between something I value more (say my wife is in anaphylactic shock and needs to be driven to the hospital), and someone I see in a car wreck on the way to the hospital, I'm going to choose my wife, because she's a higher value to me than anyone else.
However, if I don't have something that pressing to worry about, and I physically come across someone is injured in this way (so this is an emergency context, which is by definition something that doesn't happen frequently), I'll help. The sight of someone suffering from an unforeseeable emergency is an awful thing, and if I happen to come across it, I'd do what I could to help, so long as it wasn't a sacrifice for me (didn't leave me significantly poorer, less able, etc.)
None of this means that I should drive around town looking for people that are stranded or injured, or that I need to give my money to people that I'll never meet.
I hope this clarifies things.
Perhaps we should force children to do the same job as their parents when they grow up to maintain the correct distribution of workers to jobs?
There is no right of stagnation. No one should be forced by law to pay anyone against their will, or to pay more than they agree to privately.
You've already taken for granted something you owe back.
You aren't going to be able to develop your skills if there is no society or infrastructure to support that development, if transit is difficult and dangerous, if all money and energy is being siphoned to a few corrupt people at the top. Of course charity isn't the only solution to breaking this cycle, but it certainly helps more than a $1500 laptop.
Steve Jobs pays a hell of a lot more in taxes than I do.
In any case, taxes are (in theory at least) paid in return for services provided to you and your country, whereas charity is paid in return only for the feeling you've contributed to a greater good. It's best to not confuse the two.
No they can't. Giving away money is incredibly difficult for most people regardless of how much they have. So yes, it is is an act of good will and speaks of one's character.
That being said, I don't believe you have to contribute to random charities to be moral, as long as the cash is helping (or will help) in some other way at some point, and not being used purely for selfish motives.
So much of our lives are guided by chance. One who has a lot hasn't earned everything they have, and a person who has nothing hasn't necessarily earned that nothingness. We live in an unfair world and assisting those with worse luck in certain parts of their life is good will.
What doesn't make sense is for someone to judge someone else for either giving or not giving in any particular moment (or even 14 years).
I'm surprised Apple doesn't have a similar policy - sure, it didn't make or break my decision to join MS, but it was an awfully nice compensation bonus.
If he is - then you can't really blame him can you? He could hardly justify charity as moral.
One might say they owe something back.
With the extreme loyalty of it's userbase, they could set some very nice examples.
Why Steve Jobs isn't personally charitable with $5B in the bank is a rather depressing mystery.
One could say that they are giving something back, by using those profits to develop ways to make computing more accessible and useful, something they're better at and more willing to invest in than anyone else.
What you are saying is Apple (and their work) is $deity's gift to the world so they don't owe anything else regardless how many billions of dollars they make from it.
People in parts of the world that need help to survive or thrive more than a meager existence, aren't helped by Apple's pretty software UI and hardware design.
If you truly believed that argument, you wouldn't be wasting your own disposable income on broadband and a cell phone.
What, the wonderful computers they make for us are not enough?
Note that some large corporations pay next to nothing.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-w...
Apple owe's you nothing, they are entitled to do exactly as they please with their profits.
There are plenty of popular "knee-jerk" charities like the Red Cross that squander their donations. However there are also plenty of smaller, more focused charities that give a huge percentage of their donations directly to their causes and are extremely efficient. The catch is you have to research a charity before donating and most people cannot be bothered.
These days with the internet, there is no excuse for not researching:
As a case-in-point, my girlfriend and I recently gave her old MacBook to my grandmother. Ever since - she's been more engaged with facebook than anyone my age - and it shows in her mood and general well being. I can't help but glow every time I get off a FaceTime call with her!