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> Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn with the sole goal of minimizing production costs by using underpaid overworked labor

I'm going to upvote you for this.

Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa. He seems quite happy in promoting brutal Victorian style work-houses because it's "over there". Out of sight, out of mind. He's quite the hypocrite.

He's also no better or worse then the operations guy at Dell, Samsung, Lenovo, etc. who are all churning out products from the same manufacturers and assembly lines in China and South-East Asia. I don't know why people keep promoting the myth that he is some amazing operations guy when everything is outsourced anyway, and recent products have suffered from manufacturing delays and raw material supply issues.

> Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa. He seems quite happy in promoting brutal Victorian style work-houses because it's "over there". Out of sight, out of mind.

Yes, yes, and yes.

Many of my more naive, young gay friends and acquaintances actually DO seem to think that 'being a powerful gay person', onto itself, makes him worthy of worship.

> He's quite the hypocrite.

Did he actually say that its wrong to promote brutal Victorian style work-houses?

I am also bothered with the way workers are treated. I sickened by the way these companies are polluting the world. I've never been O.K. with this bottom line crap. It seems like people really don't care though? As long as they can have their comfortable life, exciting life, powerful life, and their electronic gadgets, etc., the're not loosing any sleep? Maybe it's just human nature to turn a blind eye to the real problems. Yes--Tim Cook coming out is a deal. Personally, I felt he should have came out a long time ago.(He was financially able to years ago?) If you have a deep felt issue and you are poor, or have no power in society; I understand why you hide, and don't try to make the world a better/fairer place. Tim Cook should have came out years ago. Why--because he was an American, and was wealthy. Being American and having the protection of wealth gives you a platform to really make a difference. O.K. Tim you are gay. The people around you(Bay Area demographics) never cared. Bring the manufacture of your products back to the United States, or to countries that don't exploit workers, and decimate environments. I'll get hammered for having an opinion on Hacker News, or any opinion other than a carefully scripted, beyond polite waste of words.

> Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa.

It's depressing to see this myth perpetuated that Mother Teresa was a good person.

She was a horrible human being who denied poor and sick people the help and medicated relief they needed just because of her religious beliefs. Of course, she also denied abortion, contraception and all other kinds of medical help that were not in line with her religious beliefs.

She was convinced that suffering brings you closer to god, so she made sure everyone under her care suffered as much as possible.

She was a sick and twisted person and the faster she gets forgotten, the better.

There was a time in India when people with leprosy were left out to die along the streets and no one would come near them. If you had it, your family and the society would ask you to leave the area. I have heard stories from people of my grand fathers generation of how Mother Teresa and her followers (Sisters of charity), would physically carry the lepers and care for them. They really believed in the cause and had a lot of courage. Many of the sisters contracted leprosy doing this. For this they gained enormous respect from people of all religions in Calcutta.

If you have ever seen a leper in India and their condition, you would not have called her sick and twisted.

Obligatory Godwin: Hitler probably thought he was doing The Right Thing, too.

Mother Theresa believed that suffering brings you closer to god. Sure, she were courageous and tried their best to help people, but that was probably more inspired by actively seeking suffering (and helping other people suffer) than altruism.

But it's absolutely on par for Catholicism (or guilt-based Christianity in general). Declaring her a saint was perfectly reasonable.

Wow, what book of lies have you been reading, or writing.. I cannot even begin to tell you how far off you are. And you call her a myth. They say Jobs had a reality distortion field but you take the cake! Good luck with your fantasy world.

Here, educate yourself:

http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/582913-mother-teresa-...

Ok, I'm going to 'educate' myself with some random link that you found from some random guy's blog who also has a personal vendetta against all Theists(Military Association of Atheists). I can find a thousand links to show the opposite. Have you done ANY research on her or read or talked to a member of the order she started? Thought not. When casting an opinion, always look at both sides before you talk, not just the one you want to believe. That's how you get to the truth. The real truth. Oh, by the way, thanks for the down vote. Really mature of you.

How many millions of Chinese are still scratching out a living from the dirt -- literally? People living in abject poverty would love to have Western industry set up a factory, or provide the contracts to give work to a factory in the first place, so that they could leave their 14th century villages and way of life.

Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa.

It's also completely irrelevant to the subject of Brendan Eich's support of bigoted TV ads. Which is why I found the arguments made by the poster above you to be not really interesting, or worth responding to.

Actually, exploiting the poor is one thing that Tim Cook and Mother Teresa could find common ground on.

This. I used to live in Kolkata (then Calcutta), where she had setup her place, and it was sick to see people being asked to pray to the Christ when they needed food and medicine instead.

Why didnt you/other communities/societies people provide food and medicine without asking to pray first?

Other communities/societies -> they were doing it already. Just no media hype, because they weren't funded by agencies wanting to convert people.

> by using underpaid overworked labor

Underpaid in what way? Are there many other jobs those people could be doing which pay them better? They're not paid much by US standards but the alternative is subsistence level farming. Is anyone who puts their production into China (and let's remember that's basically everyone in hardware before we single out Apple) being nasty by offering people a better income than they can get anywhere else?

It's the market rate, something incidentally most people in tech in the West are pretty happy about when it's driving massively above average salaries for programmers and the like.

In terms of overworked - Foxcon workers recently went on strike because the amount of overtime they were being offered had been reduced. If they're overworked it would be very odd behaviour to strike to demand more.

Essentially Foxcon workers get to choose between two things - a shitty life working at Foxcon and a really shitty life not working there. That's unfortunate, but it's not Tim Cook's fault, it's in part the fault of the Chinese government, in part the result of them having been dealt a shitty hand and a consequence of global capitalism which most of us are in some way complicit in.

To place this at the door of Cook is pretty naive.

The reason this is placed at the door of Cook is because he's very likely one of, if not the most responsible person for those choices at Apple. He played a very large role in operations at Apple. He also sits on the board of Nike, partly because he is very well regarded in supply chains and operations. Are you going to sing Nike's praises as well for worker treatment?

Whether or not those choices are moral is certainly up for debate. Whether or not Time Cook was largely responsible for them is not.

And as for the "market rate" you are talking about a country that does not allow it's currency to float on the exchanges, heavy subsidizes or outright controls much of the industry and denies workers access to information online about working conditions and pay. Playing into a regime that intentionally abuses workers to ramp up their industrial output wouldn't be something I would be particularly proud of and most definitely would not be something I would consider controlled by market forces.

Sorry, I wasn't clear.

Cook is clearly a prime decision maker in where Apple operate but the poor situation for Chinese workers can't reasonably be laid at his door.

The wages are controlled by market forces, even if the market is being manipulated by the Chinese government.

But Cook isn't responsible for Chinese economic or fiscal policy and pulling Apple out if China would hurt the workers who may have shitty jobs but at least have jobs.

As it is Apple face higher scrutiny than most of their competitor in the same situation and as a result actually behave marginally better when it comes to worker treatment.

It's not something to be particularly proud of but the overall plight of Chinese workers, even those at Foxcon, is not a situation for which Cook can realistically be held significantly responsible or categorised as nasty (nasty being the original characterisation I was refuting).

It's the consequence of a capitalist economy which Cook may be a small part of but is neither the creator nor the controller.

> There's nothing wrong with what [Brendan] did given that he didn't let that view (in the abstract) color his personal interactions.

Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes. After that he continued to serve in the US Senate until 2003.

Yes, his actions were a lawful expression of his power. But I think there is something deeply wrong with using your power, even lawfully, to deny the rights of people who are less powerful than you. Even if you are nice to those same people in personal interactions.

> Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn

As does Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, Nintendo, and more

> it's all speculation on this point as to what or why he did it, because the man himself hasn't said anything on the matter--mostly because of the gay hate brigade rallied against him.

When the controversy broke he was literally asked what his views on SSM were, and he didn't give an answer. That strongly implies he doesn't think SSM should be legal.

>By contrast, Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn with the sole goal of minimizing production costs by using underpaid overworked labor

Do you have any proof of this or citations on it? Everything I've seen about Apple regarding its supply chain is that it goes above and beyond the minimum needed to be in compliance, and they seem to genuinely care about the well being of their employees in China.

> goes above and beyond the minimum needed to be in compliance

Awesome. I need that line added to my CV. Something like: "Conscientious worker, who often goes above and beyond the minimum needed to be in compliance."

That's an incredibly muddle-headed sequence of arguments you've just made, for sure. But no, we're not going to hate you for it.

Your inability to respond to any of the points has been noted.

Oh, I'm "able." I just don't find them particularly interesting, or worth responding to in detail.

Then next time, kindly just don't post.

I'd kindly prefer that people not litter HN with puerile, psychologically baiting lines of argumentation from out in left field (c.f. "the gay hate brigade", up above) in the first place.

Trolls and willful fools are cured by the same medicine: downvote, ignore, and flag if they broke the site rules.