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To those saying that Apple has a fiduciary obligation to maximize profits, shouldn't by that logic Apple respect the environment at the minimum required level b

by 21 9y ago

To those saying that Apple has a fiduciary obligation to maximize profits, shouldn't by that logic Apple respect the environment at the minimum required level by law? But on the contrary, Apple highlights in a lot of their presentation how green and environmentally conscious they are, going above and beyond what the laws require: https://www.apple.com/environment/ https://www.apple.com/environment/ Maybe because today being seen environmentally conscious makes you more money than you lose by paying for greener technologies? If people can make avoiding paying taxes seen in the same light, things will change. I wait for the day this page exists: https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/

iiiggglll 9y ago
> I wait for the day this page exists: > https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ Not quite what you mean, but there's this, just posted within the last month: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple-tax-payments/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple...
jedmeyers 9y ago
> shouldn't by that logic Apple respect the environment at the minimum required level by law? No, because they believe that showing that they care about the environment more than the laws require will result in increased profits, otherwise they wouldn't do it.
toyg 9y ago
> Maybe because today being seen environmentally conscious makes you more money There is a generational issue as well. Cook (and before him Jobs) grew up in the '70s, when the political upheavals of the '60s had started to rot. The main ideals that survived that age were environmentalism and racial/sexual equality - likely because they could be coupled with aggressive capitalism relatively painlessly. What "big values" do companies like Apple push, today? Environmentalism and racial/sexual equality. Fair taxation is an issue that started to be considered only since the late '90s, and really went mainstream only with Occupy. In the '60s and '70s high taxes were normal (the legacy of New Deal and war effort in US, and socialist movements in Europe); in the '80s and '90s cutting taxes became a mantra, a shortcut to political victory. By the early 2000s the cracks started to show. As the generations that grew up with Occupy start to get in positions of command, hopefully they will try to find ways to conciliate the search for private profit with the fairness of higher taxation.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > As the generations that grew up with Occupy start to get in positions of command, hopefully they will try to find ways to conciliate the search for private profit with the fairness of higher taxation. You say that like "the generations" uniformly "grew up with Occupy". Lots grew up with other kinds of populism. Many grew up with online FPSs. I'll bet on a lot of diversity of perspective in lizardpeople^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Millennials over any sweeping prediction about Millenial culture and politics.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
fastball 9y ago
The issue with taxes is that they are proportional to how much you make (and for Apple, how much they sell), where as a lot of things that make you more "green" are one-offs. If Apple's sales go up, but they're having to pay higher taxes to attract those sales, there won't necessarily be a net gain in after-tax profits. As a contrasting example, installing solar panels is primarily a one-off cost, will probably end up saving you money in the long run, and if it drives sales, the costs of operating those panels don't increase proportionally with your sales. -- Or, alternatively, maybe Apple wants to be green because that is something the upper management actually care about on a personal level. I don't think it's likely that Tim Cook feels the same way about increasing the French government's tax revenue. Why should he? He's not French. Which, coincidentally, might be the real problem with multi-nationals - at the end of the day, corporations actually are run by people, but most people won't care about more than one or two nations in their lifetimes. Hell, many studies indicate that the average person can't be emotionally engaged with more than a hundred people, much less a hundred countries full of people. I personally have lived in four different countries, but would say I only care about the success of two of them.

by 21 9y ago

iiiggglll 9y ago

> I wait for the day this page exists: > https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ https://www.apple.com/paying_taxes/ Not quite what you mean, but there's this, just posted within the last month: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple-tax-payments/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/11/the-facts-about-apple...

jedmeyers 9y ago

> shouldn't by that logic Apple respect the environment at the minimum required level by law? No, because they believe that showing that they care about the environment more than the laws require will result in increased profits, otherwise they wouldn't do it.

toyg 9y ago

> Maybe because today being seen environmentally conscious makes you more money There is a generational issue as well. Cook (and before him Jobs) grew up in the '70s, when the political upheavals of the '60s had started to rot. The main ideals that survived that age were environmentalism and racial/sexual equality - likely because they could be coupled with aggressive capitalism relatively painlessly. What "big values" do companies like Apple push, today? Environmentalism and racial/sexual equality. Fair taxation is an issue that started to be considered only since the late '90s, and really went mainstream only with Occupy. In the '60s and '70s high taxes were normal (the legacy of New Deal and war effort in US, and socialist movements in Europe); in the '80s and '90s cutting taxes became a mantra, a shortcut to political victory. By the early 2000s the cracks started to show. As the generations that grew up with Occupy start to get in positions of command, hopefully they will try to find ways to conciliate the search for private profit with the fairness of higher taxation.

humanrebar 9y ago
> As the generations that grew up with Occupy start to get in positions of command, hopefully they will try to find ways to conciliate the search for private profit with the fairness of higher taxation. You say that like "the generations" uniformly "grew up with Occupy". Lots grew up with other kinds of populism. Many grew up with online FPSs. I'll bet on a lot of diversity of perspective in lizardpeople^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Millennials over any sweeping prediction about Millenial culture and politics.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

fastball 9y ago

The issue with taxes is that they are proportional to how much you make (and for Apple, how much they sell), where as a lot of things that make you more "green" are one-offs. If Apple's sales go up, but they're having to pay higher taxes to attract those sales, there won't necessarily be a net gain in after-tax profits. As a contrasting example, installing solar panels is primarily a one-off cost, will probably end up saving you money in the long run, and if it drives sales, the costs of operating those panels don't increase proportionally with your sales. -- Or, alternatively, maybe Apple wants to be green because that is something the upper management actually care about on a personal level. I don't think it's likely that Tim Cook feels the same way about increasing the French government's tax revenue. Why should he? He's not French. Which, coincidentally, might be the real problem with multi-nationals - at the end of the day, corporations actually are run by people, but most people won't care about more than one or two nations in their lifetimes. Hell, many studies indicate that the average person can't be emotionally engaged with more than a hundred people, much less a hundred countries full of people. I personally have lived in four different countries, but would say I only care about the success of two of them.