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Comment by christo16 | Hacker News Reader

SJ believes that his job is to make shareholders rich and by doing so, gives them the means to be charitable. I would tend to agree with him.

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As a corporation Apple profits massively from society.

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.

Apple benefits from individuals. Why are strangers entitled to their profits?

"One might say they owe something back"

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.

I totally agree with this post. Charity does not only come in the form of monetary donations...

Let me repeat that back to you as I understood it.

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.

So?

You can use the argument that people in third-world countries are starving to bash just about anything that anybody on this site does for a living.

If you truly believed that argument, you wouldn't be wasting your own disposable income on broadband and a cell phone.

Only to those who can afford it.

> One might say they owe something back.

What, the wonderful computers they make for us are not enough?

No. Apparently, you are not allowed to make a profit without feeling guilty.

Yes, all those fashionable computers they sell for what would be years of income in many countries are really helping the non-rich world.

US society has already decided what Apple owes back each year, via the IRS. I don't see why it's fair to expect them to dispose of more of their shareholders' money than some other companies in the same position. It's not as if their shareholders would reach a consensus about an unrelated social problem to solve, much less make an empty gesture towards solving (charities can't fix the free rider issue, which is why they almost never get enough resources to actually succeed and shut down).

As a massive corporation, I am sure Apple doesn't pay very much taxes, mostly because all their manufacturing is outside the US.

Note that some large corporations pay next to nothing.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-w...

Personally charitable & publicly charitable are two different things. Unless you know something the rest of us don't, I would be careful passing judgement on someone you only see in keynote speaking environments.

Seems like a trickle-down economics type of excuse to me. If they really wanted to do that they really could do it like Buffet used to http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/1997ar/shcontri.html

What a silly excuse to give nothing back - both Apple and Jobs individually are sitting on ridiculous amounts of money regardless of what their shareholders do with their own money.

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