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Comment by MichaelZuo | Hacker News Reader

This seems like two users talking past each other.

How about reframing it :

Companies can not 'care' about anything because companies are legal vehicles that do not have agency.

The individual people that make up the company obviously care about these things to varying extents. I highly doubt it's literally zero for any company >100 employees.

Although it's theoretically possible for all the 'care' to perfectly cancel each other out (e.g. half the employees for and half against something) it seems unlikely in Apple's case.

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If companies cannot stand for something, they'll fall for anything. That's the problem with Google (remember "don't be evil"?), Facebook (or, Meta) and Apple as well. Companies are not structured to care, even from a regulatory perspective. They are structured to make money and regulated by a set of democratic principles.

While what you're saying may well be true, it doesn't prevent bad influences from compromising values you think are immutable. We worship Bell Labs on this website too, but their company culture and "hacker identity" didn't prevent Room 641A from happening. This "unlikely in Apple's case" business seems so baseless when the entire industry wears indecision on it's sleeve. Even Apple cannot promise human rights to all of their customers, loathe as this site is to hear it.

> Even Apple cannot promise human rights all of their customers

I'm not aware of a single case where Apple on-the-record promised to customers anything so abstract. Can you link to one example?

> I'm not aware of a single case where Apple on-the-record promised to customers anything so abstract.

Then it would seem that my original statement is correct, no?

"cannot" and "has not" have different meanings.

Apple cannot promise human rights to all of their customers. They can believe in certain things (eg. "gay marriage" or "privacy is a human right") but they will forsake these values when enough money is put on the table. This is because (as the parent originally said) Apple's foremost priority is money; we can smile and pretend these things don't butt-up against each other, but then you have to justify things like Apple's Chinese Mainland policy. They do not co-exist peacefully, greed has consistently cannibalized them without a second thought.

Did you intend to reply to a different comment?

This doesn't seem relevant to my last 2 comments.

If you look at other posts by this user, they’re convinced Apple has real values beyond profit. I don’t think it does. Values are a marketing tool.

If it was legal and they could profit $300M by killing thousands of people they would do it.

Go read about the nervous systems of people failing from the solvents they use the clean the phone screens on the assembly lines. You think Tim Cook is up at night worrying about these people? He’s not.

It’s hyperbole to suggest that many people at any company would say “yes, let’s kill thousands of people to increase profits 1%”.

Instead they would say “let’s use this contractor, they’re 1% cheaper” never considering that the difference is made up from decreased safety that kills people.

Society only tends to equate these two kinds of cases when action causes very direct harm.

I believe they would do it with full knowledge, and when they don’t have full knowledge that’s also intentional. They cultivate plausible deniability for these things they “coincidentally” profit from.

Which is precisely my point with this topic and the unions. Finally for once we see the real ethos.

There’s room to have faith in the executives of these megacorporations, I don’t.

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