I'm proud of HN for mostly seeing through the steaming crap in this piece. This article is the latest entry in a many decades-long campaign of capitalist propa

I'm proud of HN for mostly seeing through the steaming crap in this piece. This article is the latest entry in a many decades-long campaign of capitalist propaganda dedicated to promoting the concept of "markets" as choiceless forces of nature -- as weather fronts that determine outcomes. The forbidden truth is that markets are the result of decisions made by ownership, and you can't read this terrible article without leaving the truth very far behind. This deterministic concept of markets is employed constantly to present howlingly absurd statements that serve as cover for the costly-to-the-US-middle-class commercial decisions that Apple made and still makes. You can tell this article is propaganda because of what it delivers: Deliverable #1: The headline alone tells you exactly what to think about a historic, complex outcome -- that is to say, this trillion-dollar company's hands were and remain tied by the market. Won't somebody please think of the trillion-dollar company? Deliverable #2: Personal experience is very sketchily generalized to a historic conclusion. A French exec struggles with his (two whole days' worth!) of work on an assembly line, therefore the entire US factory-building effort could never have worked. Irrevocable factors that define Fordist manufacturing -- division of labor, training, choreography -- these all vanish, dissolved by the power of a irrelevant anecdote. Deliverable #3: Orwellian ahistoricism deftly applied: Standing in North America, decades after success in WWII left it the only undevastated manufacturer on Planet Earth, someone actually states that the place "[Doesn't] have a manufacturing culture". No, really, that's something someone thought up and uttered, quoted in the NYT. See: "we've always been at war with Eastasia". Deliverable #4: Eliding troublesome counter-facts: As persons here have pointed out, Apple is on its sixth year of manufacturing its heavy hardware in Texas. There is no "mess" there, and this fact will be lost on millions of laypersons who have taken in at minimum the headline in Deliverable #1 and now think exactly what Apple prefers they think. There are more of these deceptions in even this short piece, but the point is made. Apple manufacturing is not centrally in the US because Apple leadership made that decision. The "market" did not, "culture" did not. Maximizing shareholder value -- at any social cost -- did.