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Steve Jobs Defied Convention, and Perhaps the Law
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that recent revelations that Steve Jobs was the driving force in a conspiracy to prevent competitors from poaching employees raises the question: If Steve Jobs were alive today, should he be in jail? Jobs 'was a walking antitrust violation. I'm simply astounded by the risks he seemed willing to take,' says Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and an expert in antitrust law. 'Didn't he have lawyers advising him? You see this kind of behavior sometimes in small, private or family-run companies, but almost never in large public companies like Apple.' In 2007, Jobs threatened Palm with patent litigation unless Palm agreed not to recruit Apple employees, even though Palm's then-chief executive, Edward Colligan, told him that such a plan was 'likely illegal.' That same year, Jobs wrote Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google at the time, 'I would be extremely pleased if Google would stop doing this,' referring to its efforts to recruit an Apple engineer. When Jobs learned that the Google recruiter who contacted the Apple employee would be 'fired within the hour,' he responded with a smiley face. 'How could anyone have approved that?' says Hovenkamp. 'Any competent antitrust counsel would know that's illegal. And they had to know they'd get caught eventually.'" (Read more, below.)
Pickens continues: "But the anti-poaching pact was hardly Jobs's only brush with the law. Jobs behavior was at the center of an e-book price-fixing conspiracy with major publishers where a federal judge ruled that "Apple played a central role in facilitating and executing that conspiracy." (Apple has appealed the decision. The publishers all settled the case.) Jobs also figured prominently in the options backdating scandal that rocked Silicon Valley eight years ago. An investigation by Apple's lawyers cleared Jobs of wrongdoing, saying he didn't understand the accounting implications but five executives of other companies went to prison for backdating options, while Jobs was never charged.
There's no way of knowing whether Jobs, had he lived and been healthy, would have faced charges, especially since he was a recidivist. Given Jobs's immense popularity, prosecutors might not have wanted to risk a trial, says Hovenkamp. Jobs probably came closest to being prosecuted in the backdating scandal, but by then he was already known to have pancreatic cancer. Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson notes that 'over and over, people referred to his reality distortion field.' Isaacson added, 'The rules just didn't apply to him, whether he was getting a license plate that let him use handicapped parking or building products that people said weren't possible. Most of the time he was right, and he got away with it.'"
There's no way of knowing whether Jobs, had he lived and been healthy, would have faced charges, especially since he was a recidivist. Given Jobs's immense popularity, prosecutors might not have wanted to risk a trial, says Hovenkamp. Jobs probably came closest to being prosecuted in the backdating scandal, but by then he was already known to have pancreatic cancer. Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson notes that 'over and over, people referred to his reality distortion field.' Isaacson added, 'The rules just didn't apply to him, whether he was getting a license plate that let him use handicapped parking or building products that people said weren't possible. Most of the time he was right, and he got away with it.'"
Not only did Jobs engage in dirty deals as a businessman, but back in the 1970s he was a very active phone phreaker as well.
I think there's a worm in this apple.
He was going to die. And he knew it. So he was able to take risks that no one else was going to take.
Because he knew: whatever he did (short of doing an OJ-Simpson style stupidity), he would only be judged by his achievements, the products he created.
Nobody remembers Charlie Chaplin for his three teenager-wifes and pre-marriage pregnancies - even though it was a major scandal even back then.
What lives on are his works.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
It seems pretty silly to ask whether Jobs would have gone to jail. Of course he wouldn't.
Between his celebrity status and bankroll, there's a snowball's chance in hell that he could get convicted of anything, barring committing the crime right there in the courtroom.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I can't seems to stop a suspicion from forming in the back of my mind that somewhere someone is trying to shift blame on the recent news of anti-trust behavior onto the one guy who is no longer here. Doesn't it take 2 to tango? In this very news story, I read that Google was complicate in the scheme of preventing a competitive job market. So let's report on the story that should be reported, please -- Who in Google is going to jail over this?
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
Why do people who have achieved nothing in life love to find fault with the innovators that are the engine of modern economic growth.
So because Hitler was the driving force behind the autobahn, VW, and the foundations of modern space exploration we should just give him a pass on that little Holocaust thing? I mean, he was even partly responsible for bringing the US out of the Great Depression!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Plah-ease!
For the billionaire class, they don't go to jail for minor things like this. At best their company get fined - at the stockholder's expense: the you and me with our 401Ks and IRA with the obscene fees.
The CEOs can commit crimes as a result of their decisions and the company gets fined, they get their bonuses and at worst, they get fire with their golden parachutes.
Bernie Madoff only went to jail because he screwed over the billionaires. If he just went after us peons, he would just paid some fines and made off to a nice cushy estate somewhere.
Seriously, where do they get off saying it's rare for big companies to do illegal shit? Name me one that *doesn't* at least walk really close to that line.
1) break the law
2) profit
3) maybe get caught
4) if caught, pay a fine of 1% of the excess profits
Why *wouldn't* a company break the law in such circumstances? There is absolutely no reason for it to stop until it becomes routine to either fine corporations an amount much greater than the excess profits (to compensate for all the times they presumably didn't get caught), or it becomes normal to hold the executives personally liable for the corporate actions they endorsed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
that the best programmers/software engineers are astoundingly more productive; something like 10 to 25 times faster then average ones. He obviously wanted to do what it took to retain them, since he was knew that his new product developments relied on impossibly fast deadlines.
I worked as a contractor at Apple for some years in the early 1980s. I was offered a permanent position there which I turned down. In those days Apple was small and I interacted with Jobs on a semi-regular basis.
Inside Apple, Jobs was a capricious tyrant who inspired fear or loyalty depending on whether he liked you or not. The stories about him are legion. He liked people to challenge him, to a point, but if you went over that point he would never listen to you again. He felt that he understood what users wanted much better than the user experience people (maybe correctly). He was the ultimate micro-manager. He gave a few secretaries a $50k spending limit when their boss might have a $5k limit (or less in one case). He ignored convention - but only when that helped him. He hated colored screen output - Woz had to sneak in the 6 colors the Apple II had. In the early days he swindled Woz out of profits from a joint venture. He considered most people as objects to be used to achieve his objectives. He considered laws as something to be worked around. I'm reasonably convinced he had very little or no conscience.
But he knew what he wanted from people. Customer experience was everything. He could charm people when he felt he needed to. He was loyal to people in his inner circle (mostly). He would not compromise if he felt this would result in an inferior product. He had very high expectations of people's work output (and he let them know in no uncertain terms when they didn't meet those expectations).
He had his good side and his bad side. He was not a suitable person to run a company. Firing him was the best thing that could have happened because it changed him fundamentally. He actually started to be concerned about what others thought, and realized that and sometimes you have to listen to them, and on occasion someone else could be right. But be in no doubt, at the bottom of his heart he still considered other people as stepping stones to help him go where he wanted to go - to provide money as investors or customers, to create products for him to sell, or to help him sell those products.
The article is about how jobs subverted the law, consistently. There is hard evidence proving he did just this. This has nothing to do with discrediting, and nothing to do with government access. Stop trying to distract people from the original topic.
I'm a small government kind of guy and I'm not sure what Jobs did should have been illegal. I still believe that Jobs was a jerk and an imitator, not an "innovator" in any sense of the word. He pretty much said himself that his skill was in identifying the best things to "steal" (his word) from his competitors.
In addition, Apple probably wouldn't exist without "big government", since much of their success and much of their power is based on using artificial monopolies and the threat of lawsuits based on dubious and non-innovative intellectual property.
I think Apple/Jobs is just the poster boy. This isn't a new investigation, but as far as I know, it's only now that things are happening that make the news. And, of course, when it comes to anti-social behavior, about the only one person more self-centered than Jobs runs a database company.
Based on the context I'm guessing they've taken "recidivist" to mean "a rich and famous person". Funny, I'm not familiar with that definition.
Yes, evidently he did, and pretty good ones too. Nobody went to jail, and Apple is doing great. Risky business? Maybe, but it paid off.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I think Steve Jobs was a psychopathic individual.
It wouldn't surprise me if Larry Ellison is, too.
The person who got fired was an HR person -- not the employee who was contacted. Imagine if Apple HR started blindly calling up Google employees trying to lure them away and Google HR trying to lure Apple employees away. It's one thing when employees start looking around and reach out on their own or do so through recruiters. It's quite another for internal company recruiters trying to lure away employees from other companies. They had a deal to not destabilize each others' business. If that deal went so far as to not hire employees who wanted to leave on their own, then it went too far. But this particular email is not an example of such a case.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
For all of the books and documentaries that worship Steve Jobs as our technological lord and savior, I would like to see one dedicated to pointing out just how much of an unscrupulous, narcissistic bastard he was. It's amazing how much people are willing to sweep under the rug when you give them shiny things. It would have been interesting to see how things turned out for Brendan Eich, had he been the same kind of media darling.
I still believe that Jobs was a jerk and an imitator, not an "innovator" in any sense of the word. He pretty much said himself that his skill was in identifying the best things to "steal" (his word) from his competitors.
That's what innovation is all about. Nobody can make all the puzzle pieces themselves from scratch. But if you can get the pieces from others, you can then put them together into something new.
"How could anyone have approved that?"
Because Steve Jobs was an ASSHOLE.
I take no delight in his death, it's very sad that he was struck down in such a manner but it doesn't change the fact that he had a thirty year history of being a raging asshole to people.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I think it goes something like:
Manufacturers: 1$ --> Distributors/resellers: 2$ --> Retail outlets: 4$
Or, via eBay:
Chinese manufacturer: 0.10$ --> You: 1$
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Why do people who have achieved nothing in life love to find fault with the innovators that are the engine of modern economic growth.
So because Hitler was the driving force behind the autobahn, VW, and the foundations of modern space exploration we should just give him a pass on that little Holocaust thing? I mean, he was even partly responsible for bringing the US out of the Great Depression!
Ugh... its worse than that, because the idea that Jobs was a true innovator is a myth I'm getting disgusted by. Maybe a shrewd and ruthless businessman, who was good at marketing, but not an inventor or innovator.
Even while people mythologize Jobs, we forget the engineers, innovators and inventors who actually underlie all the growth and progress we've seen. John McCarthy, the inventor of LISP and a giant in computer science, died at almost the same time as Jobs, and arguably had a much greater influence on computing than him. He's a giant in the history of computer science and engineering. But where's the discussion of McCarthy? Where were all the television shows and books? Why aren't we discussing him?
The first Apple-Samsung trial was about what? Patenting a rectangle? With an outcome determined by a lying, aggressive juror? Where are our priorities?
I have no problem with honoring those who contribute to the progress of society, but the idolization of Jobs is not that. For me, it represents everything wrong with society. It's not only misplaced, but harmful in that it neglects those who actually move society forward and perpetuates the myth of the lone creator. You can call me a hater if you want, but sometimes it's necessary to point out problems before we can move on.
In any corporate social hierarchy, there are the existing network of the "Old Boys" that used to gather in smokey back rooms, and private clubs in big wing-backed chairs, talking about what they were doing, and to whom...
Today, there's a digital social network that exists, but the social connections that have no traces still exist.
Such unwritten agreements shaped the development of many a huge cash-based community. Las Vegas is but a single example.
If you were among the Elite, you knew the rules, and could get away with a lot more. Steve Jobs was not exactly part of the actual Old Boys Network, and made his own. The thing is this: he was doing what they were doing, just in a lot less discrete manner. Same stuff. Different pile. If he had been "classically trained" by the Old Boys, he'd likely have never been even suspected directly of anything. That, and he'd have been stifled into obscurity, and the Personal Computer would have been quite different than it is today.
Bottom Line: Power and Influence has its own rules. Rarely do they comply to the actual Laws that govern the Rest of Us. Only when they get found out does anything happen. That's usually when new laws and precedents get set to deal with the "new problem" that has actually been around for decades, but only just made the headlines recently.
Old Boys nod and smile(ey) a lot, and they still do what they want. It will be a long time before (if ever) changes make the headlines in that field.
So because Hitler was behind the Holocaust, we should just give him a pass on that little WORLD WAR 2 thing?
Why is it we only ever talk about the Holocaust when WW2 was 10x worse (and is required for the war crimes to exist.) Is it because WAR is good that a 100 million people more can die and we still just cite the relatively tiny war crime?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Hard to find anyone with a butt load of money AND ethics.
Not sure it's possible.....
Rick B.
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> Given Jobs's immense popularity, prosecutors might not have wanted to risk a trial,
This is why I'm an Anarchist.
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.... haha that's adorable.
If he didn't have lawyers advising him, do you think he'd have gotten away with this?
Lay all the blame on is the dead guy who can't be punished.
Normal retail outlets have much higher distribution costs. Shelving and shipping alone are a huge portion of the price you finally pay. Same goes for restaurants, the actual cost of the food is usually the smallest portion of the bill.
This is why companies like Amazon were able to come in and slaughter most of the local retailers, because they weren't having to pay for the cost of a physical show room. The sales tax holiday was a bit of sweetener, but ultimately, being able to use a couple of warehouses to cover the entire country is a lot cheaper than having to have hundreds of locations that customers have to physically visit.
For that 30% Apple does very, very little for it. Basically no support, a bit of bandwidth and that's about it. I'd be shocked if they wouldn't still be making an obscene amount of money on 10% of the profits.
When was the last time you heard of a CEO of a big company doing jail time when his/her company was wrongdoing? It's the privilege of wealth not to be questioned about your nasty business.
Currently hooked on AMP
one more example of how, despite all the hype and distortion field, jobs was a sociopath with little regard for others (and a talent for stealing technology, not inventing it).
So because Hitler was the driving force behind the autobahn, VW, and the foundations of modern space exploration we should just give him a pass on that little Holocaust thing? I mean, he was even partly responsible for bringing the US out of the Great Depression!
I'd also point out that Nazis vowed to end animal cruelty. Additionally, the Law of Godwin would never have been discovered without Hitler.
All the big tech companies could afford it, but it'd cut out a sliver of their profit margins. Coding savants should be paid their due worth I think - if they're adding 15x the value of average coders they deserve a representatively larger paycheck.
The higher pay would also attract more talent. Note however the cybernetics of business theory: There is a law of diminishing returns as you employ more chiefs than braves.
That was partly in jest, but the fact remains that Whipple cuts into a lot of different neighboring tissues at once, as opposed to a surgery on a single organ. And it's hardly just pancreas and duodenum.
Ezekiel 23:20
Jobs didn't put pieces together into something new, he copied both the pieces and the entire product idea.
Die Different
Table-ized A.I.
Ok.... I'll bite.
Steve Jobs, IMO, was not at all a "terrible person". He was, however, a person with some personality issues (which by many counts, he did correct somewhat with time and age).
That whole story about Jobs switching vehicles and driving without a license plate neglects to consider it was most likely something he did as a way to protest the concept of assigning government-issued identifying plates on every vehicle. I have several libertarian friends who feel very much like Jobs apparently did about that issue; that you shouldn't be required by law to purchase a license plate and keep paying for "renewals" to keep it current. I don't think Jobs *wanted* someone to give him a designated parking space. That probably wasn't his point. Rather, he'd like to see no such thing as designated spaces enforced by the legal system. (The very idea of a handicapped parking space is tied up in all sorts of government legislation. It's not as simple as a business saying, "Hey... We'd like to make sure our handicapped customers have an easy way to get in and out of our building!" There are laws about how it must be labeled, how many spaces must be reserved as handicapped based on the total size of your company, etc. etc.)
I don't consider myself a Jobs fanboy. (I don't really elevate ANY of the corporate CEO's to that level, personally.) But the man succeeded in building a pretty incredible technology company and managed to gather up and motivate an awful lot of talented individuals to focus on making his ideas and dreams become reality - with products enjoyed by tens of millions of users every day.
Is there evidence he did some really dumb things in his personal life? Absolutely ... but they were typical things young guys all over the country have done throughout history (like getting a woman pregnant and then not wanting to take responsibility for the kid). It's also pretty well documented that Steve Jobs grew into a man who actually did care a lot about his family, and made a big effort to let them live normal lives, out of the media spotlight always shining on Apple, Pixar, and whatever he was doing.
As CEO's go, I think there's a LOT people can learn from Jobs .... both from his advice and from his mistakes. At least he wasn't dull, bland and just treading water throughout his career.
And you don't have to...provided that you don't plan to drive on the public roads. If you want to drive on the state's roads, it's appropriate for the state to set safety standards and charge you a fee.
And the irony of a guy who made billions using a government-created corporation and government-created copyrights and patents getting his underwear in a bunch over government-issued license plates...yeah.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It's all the dead guy's fault.
Not everyone would agree with your statement.
American citizens supposedly have a Constitutional right to free and unimpeded travel around the nation -- yet enforcing all sorts of restrictions and legislation on the operation of a motor vehicle to get around results in the exact opposite effect.
When cars were first invented, nobody had license plates. New York was the first state to require one in 1901, and back then, you were allowed to make your own plate with your initials on it ... It wasn't government issued at all.
I'd agree that public roads require the collection of money for their maintenance -- but there are plenty of means to do that, including taxes on gasoline and the sales tax on the vehicle's initial purchase.
And lastly, no, I fail to see any irony at all in this? A libertarian-leaning individual would very likely be in favor of the government allowing the creation of corporations and supporting patents and copyrights. That amounts to protection for one's ideas, to ensure a profit can be made from them. License plates allow tracking one's whereabouts. Plus they enforce the concept that even though you paid taxes to purchase the car that YOU own, and you constantly pay MORE taxes for fuel to use the vehicle, to go through toll-booths on roads and more ... you still have no right to drive it on one of those roads you paid for. It's only a PRIVILEGE the government will grant you for a limited time, as long as you place their unique identifier on the front and back of your car and jump through their hoops every couple years to keep it current.
Except that when pancreatic cancer manifests itself, it's already too late.
Except Jobs didn't have a standard "pancreatic cancer", that is, usually an exocrine adenocarcinoma . He had a neuroendocrine insulinoma. That's a quite atypical variant, indolent, localised, and eminently resectable with a much lower probability of mets if caught early when compared with an adenocarcinoma.
Da Blog
1. Preventing employees from sharing in the wealth generated by the company is a monumentally criminal undertaking. Only a very few employees are ever the subject of a bidding war amoung competitors. It's the Holy Grail of being an employee. It creates positive ripple effects throughout the entire economic system. Increased wages and pay also creates incentives to avoid geographic concentration (like in Silicon Valley). Stifling those natural market forces is alone enough to justify having a corporate character cancelled.
Huh? I'm not sure what you mean by "share the wealth." Apple employees get profit sharing options. If you're referring to the no-compete, many companies were co-conspirators in that, Google included. If anything, Google deserves the "death penalty" just as much as Apple. Somehow I feel as if you might hypocritically draw a line in the sand there.
2. Apple has effectively, and evilly, cost-shifted the burdens of it's product production pipeline to anyone who has pockets deep enough to pay (other than themselves). From using outsourced labor in China, subsidized by the ruling Community party and the brazenly inhuman economic system in China,to their offshore subsidiary tax-scheming, to their perpetuation of the corporate copyright cartel, Apple has done everything in it's power, legally and extra-legally, to benefit from the investments of others, to exploit loopholes, and to exploit developing nation's labor supplies.
None of which is remotely illegal or uncommon in the industry.
Again, your thesis is Apple is uniquely guilty of crimes that justify their dismemberment, yet your citing something every company in the US that manufactures hardware or software does. Google, again, included.
3. Apple has, and continues to, extract massive wealth from the economy, and put it to use in non-productive ways. The late Mr. Jobs was a huge driver to this end. By using a combination of mythology, lies, and a deeply held anti-freedom ethos, Apple has done all it can to leverage it's cultural and political power, plus it's product line, to the extraction of middle class wealth. In itself, this is fine, but combined with price fixing, labor exploitation, and fascist integration into government, Apple is a classic economic rent-seeker. Between now and when the product is totally saturated and must compete on price, Apple will have extracted trillions of dollars of economic rent, while providing very little genuine economic benefit. The wealth they have shared outside of the top leadership and shareholders, trickled down to app developers or employees, has not gone towards generating additional economic activity, but instead, to pumping up a lavish, ridiculous, obscene real-estate and consumption bubble isolated into a tiny nexus of the country. The benefits that have accrued, as minimal as they are, are far less positive than would be more productive, honest, and transparent economic activity that they have deprived of oxygen.
I think your faux righteous attitude went off the rails here...
It seems to boil down to:
1. Steve Jobs made people like Apple. I think people are stupid because of that. Oh no!
2. Facist integration into government! I don't know what that means or have any examples or proof, but it makes me sound smarter than I actually am! Here's a tip on facism: Real facism looks like the Nazis. Get back to me when Apple is rounding up people who don't buy their products and shoving them into ovens, ok?
3. Apple isn't competing on price! No, they are competing on price. Cheapest product doesn't always win or lose. Take an economics class or two.
4. People outside of Apple or people who don't have Apple shares haven't made money from Apple! Huh? I tell you what, how about you start sending me a few bucks from your paycheck every month. I'm some random guy on the internet to you? Great! You're some random guy on the internet to Apple.
5. They advertise and
I worked at HP in the early 90s and HR used to brag to employees in large meetings that they had got together with HR from many other tech employers to write job descriptions and titles and define pay and benefits. I was blown away by this at that time and wondered how it could be legal.
When is HP going to get theirs???!?
This comes from a VERY old study at RAND or System Development Corp. They took a group of programmers of various backgrounds and put them to doing some varied coding tasks, not all of which aligned with the experience and background of some of the programmers. Sure enough, there was a 10:1 variation in the group, which was really the purpose of the study: to show that there isn't some sort of "generic programmer" that you can put on an assembly line and have them grind out code.
Sackman, H., W.J. Erikson, and E. E. Grant. 1968. "Exploratory Experimental Studies Comparing Online and Offline Programming Performance." Communications of the ACM 11, no. 1 (January): 3-11.
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=362858
It has some methodological flaws and there's a lot of literature on the topic.
Norm Augustine claimed that there is significant difference in productivity in all fields. Running backs score more than 10x as many touchdowns as centers.
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Apple uniquely exploited a fascist relationship with a communist, worker hostile government, and did so with the explicit goal of exterminating companies who had workers in first world and developed nations. It pushed out good, quality jobs and replaced them with near slave labor, that is facilitated by a corporate-government mix that is only possible by disregarding human rights, American values, and decency.
Did they? As far as I understand, China's minimum wage laws were low before Apple showed up. Foxcon's existence predated Apple's involvement in China.
You could possibly make the argument that Apple is reenforcing this behavior, but I'm not sure they are. If Apple pulled out of China entirely today (really, if they pulled out of Foxcon entirely), would China's minimum wage go up? Probably not. Would working conditions become better? Probably not. Would Foxcon go away? Definitely not.
With the amount of money Apple is putting into China you could even make a pretty good argument China would be worse off as a whole without that money.
If you're talking about it from a "those jobs have left the US" perspective, it's even debatable if fair wage would change that behavior. The strengths of China and Taiwan are that you have all the production lines you need within a very small area. Apple has repeatedly claimed that this is their primary block to moving production back to the US, not wages. And it's an entirely believable explanation when you look at production of things like the Mac Pro (which is US based, and has to source components from all over the country) vs the iPhone (which probably has all it's parts sourced from a mile radius down to the screws.) There's been a few exceptions like CPUs and glass, but that at least can be flown over in bulk a little easier than a bunch of screws.
What Apple is doing is using a friendly government - communist China - to do things which it otherwise could not do...
See above. Communism is not a primary driver, nor does Apple necessarily cause the conditions or using the Chinese (rather, it's more arguable the Chinese government created the conditions before Apple's involvement.)
They are not competing on price. They are using an ill-gotten market power to maintain margins. In the end the market always wins, which is why, absent their criminal mastermind boss, the margins are starting recede and their market power is dimming.
Claim made with no citation. Ok, the hiring practices are one thing. But for the gains to be ill-gotten the benefits have to be available to no one else. Not only is Chinese production available to everyone else, it's actively used by everyone else. In fact, out of all the companies, Apple has the most facilities in the US (as few as they do.)
Criminal allegations have a higher bar. Again, beyond the hiring practices, and an extremely questionable antitrust suit vs. Amazon, there has been no illegal activity. Their activity in China is definitely not illegal, and it's not unique.
Society is supposed to benefit from the privileges we extend corporations. That is the basis and history of the entire idea of corporations. In a proper capitalist society, they have no place or role. You should read up on why corporations exist.
I have done a lot of reading on corporations. Trust me.
Corporations exist to allow business risks to be taken without personal risks being taken. For example, they allow one to set up a pet store without worry that they may go personally bankrupt.
Society gets several benefits from this. As a whole, it allows individuals to drive their own businesses easier (and I myself have an LLC to protect myself for this very reason.) It also allows the government to tax the corporation differently than an individual (take a look at my taxes sometimes, they're higher than my personal taxes. Not that I'm complaining but I'm hardly able to form an LLC
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Apple did not cause China to be how it is, but they are profiting from it. It is not illegal, but it is still bad. It is not beneficial to American society.
Ok. So now we're down from criminal and un-capitalistic to "I don't like it."
That's fair. And that falls in the realm of ethics. Not Apple committing criminal acts or subverting capitalism. If anything, the situation in China is a result of the ugly side of capitalism. Corporations will always seek out the best deal for production.
The competition they forced out business or into the arms of another owner were paying 1st world wages, competing with America in a proper, fair, free market way. Companies like Sony, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung. Apple started the race to the bottom on the supply side.
You're joking, right?
Nokia, Sony, Motorola, and Samsung all had production under Foxconn that predates Apple.
THEY started the race to the bottom. Apple had all their production in the US for quite some time until they followed. I've still got machines made less than 10 years ago from Apple that were entirely US made.
C'mon. Learn your basic history here. How old are you? Since the 90s Foxconn has been making PCs and many Wintel companies were infamous for Chinese built goods. Apple used to run "Made in the USA" ad campaigns for a reason.
Are you like 12? Do you not remember these things? Foxconn has been around since 1974 and Apple only started using them in the last decade.
This not the strength. The strength is that is in inexpensive to do business in these places. The reason it is inexpensive are complex, but come down to: (a) no due process. Business needs that land/water/power? No problem; (b) low wages, caused by a huge peasant population, (c) cost shifting to the future or other payors, namely, those same peasants; (d) currency manipulation; (e) cost shifting on the consumer side (i.e., consumers in the US do not pay the true cost of the goods, the costs are shifted to other payers).
Sorry. It is.
Apple has repeatedly commented this is the primary factor. And it's been proven out by their actual supply chain. The entire iPhone supply chain in reality is in a small geographic area.
You can hand wave around it. The locality of the supply chain is a huge factor for any company.
Wages? Not so much. Most estimates are that moving production back to the US would only raise phone prices by $10-$20. The supply chain being messed up? Much more damaging.
Apple actively fixes prices. They maintain minimum and maximum retail prices, which is usually illegal, but is carved out of exceptions thanks to various telecommunications and other exceptions. They fix prices of digital goods actively and extensively, as seen in music, video, and electronic books. They fix salaries and benefits.
Citation needed. Citation needed. Citation needed.
They maintain dodgy tax avoidance schemes which have routinely come up against scrutiny. They back date options to avoid paying appropriate taxes and duties on benefits ac rued to executives. This is all what we know about in the last 8 years - are suggesting that this is the entire extent of their illegal activity?
And as I recall they paid a penalty on the stock back dating.
They aggressively use patent protections to extract unfair payments from competitors, while at the same time infringing on others patents' rights.
As their competitors use patent protections to extract payments from them...
I'm not sure you know what the word unfair means. Unfair means Apple has an advantage that no one else can use against them. Given the number of active patent lawsuits against Apple I don't think it meets the unfair standard.
These are all ill-gotten benefits and are all well understood.
Totally legal be
Who mod'ed this terrible post as a 5? For the record, the parent is describing the exact opposite of innovation.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Who mod'ed this terrible post as a 5? For the record, the parent is describing the exact opposite of innovation.
Would you care to enlighten us then what constitutes true innovation?
Yes, he often did that too. But most of the product ideas he copied were already discarded by the company that invented them as useless toys with no market potential. Jobs took the discarded designs, polished them a bit, hyped them to stratosphere and then successfully brought them to the market. That does deserve some credit as innovation.
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
When they become hip again (were they ever? I mean, amongst non-nerds?)
The price difference between manufacturing electronics in China vs in the U.S. is not that great. Friend of a friend is an exec high up in the iPad division, and about 3 years ago he mentioned to my friend (who told me) that the cost to make an iPad in China was $38, but they had figured out that it would only cost $5 more to make the same unit in the U.S. But Apple gladly took the extra $5 profit per unit, and was unconcerned about anything else.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Unfortunately, in all (un) civilized societies there are people who feel they can do whatever they want. Take the licensing of vehicles. Licensing is not merely a way for state governments to extract fees. It's also a means of identifying the vehicle. Why is that necessary? Ask yourself how many vehicle accidents there are everyday. Then ask how many of those accidents involve a hit and run. Which happened to me a couple years ago. Had it not been for an identifying plate on the vehicle the driver may very well got away with it. But a witness to the accident got the plate number. Problem solved. One thing "libertarians" like to ignore are personal protections from those individuals in society who are anti-social, irresponsible and just plain narcissistic. My experience with libertarians gives me a distinct impression that it wouldn't take much for them to become anarchists. Creating a society that is a free-for-all and one based upon "survival of the fittest". That's fine if one wants a society structured like the Klingon. But I'm not too convinced most human beings really want that.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire
Sciath, I agree with your first statement completely. Thanks to human nature and people who refuse to use reason and logic to make smart decisions, we'll always have people who do anything they want, even when doing so negatively impacts those around them.
I consider myself libertarian (at least in the small "l" sense .. as I'm no fan of some of the folks who've run on the official Libertarian party platform). But as some have said, getting a room full of libertarians to agree on anything is like herding cats. There are a pretty wide range of beliefs that fall under the broad libertarian heading. I'd say it ranges from people who are a pretty good fit for what the Constitution Party believes in, minus the religious bias it tends to mix in with it, all the way to those who are just splitting hairs over small details with the anarchists.
Some anarchists, in fact, insist that libertarianism is just a stepping stone on the road to the conclusion that anarchy is the best solution.
Personally, I don't take issue with having a unique identifier on motor vehicles. I agree that in case of "hit and run" accidents and the like, you need something more descriptive than a guess at the make and model of a car, plus a rough idea of its paint color, in order to have any hope of locating the perpetrator. It does disturb me how license plate reader technology allows FAR too much ability to track the whereabouts of drivers though. (Slashdot, I believe, recently covered this -- discussing how car repo folks now drive around with the OCR readers and scan in plates as they travel around areas likely to have cars where owners were behind on payments. Then, they turn around and resell the databases of collected info to other places like insurance companies for extra profit.)
All in all? I think one can be libertarian and still support a govt. operated justice system and police force, which offers protection from those who wish to violate your individual rights and freedoms. I'm not sure a war against license plates is too high on my list of priorities of issues to take up ... but I'm just pointing out why SOME people might think so.
I can't think of any major Apple product where that was true. It certainly wasn't true for Mac, OS X, iPod, iPhone, or iPad.
Jobs clearly was smart and a good businessman. He also had good taste in design. But the question I think we should be asking: do we want others to emulate him, and I think the answer should be a resounding "no".
Steve Jobs, IMO, was not at all a "terrible person". He was, however, a person with some personality issues (which by many counts, he did correct somewhat with time and age).
I guess.. devil's advocate, but is that not what a "terrible person" is?
the products he created.
Which would be nothing. Underlings created the products Jobs got the adulation.
Good, intelligent work, poorly directed, is absolutely useless.