4 ms·

Isn't "it's in our financial interests right now" about as much "love" as you'll get for anything by a corporation? Saying "Apple has no love for privacy, they'

Isn't "it's in our financial interests right now" about as much "love" as you'll get for anything by a corporation? Saying "Apple has no love for privacy, they're only doing it because it sells" sounds moot to me, every company only does things because they sell.

heinrichhartman 6y ago
By choosing which markets you operate in and which products you develop you have a fair bit of influence which things are in your "financial interest". E.g. creating a company with a business model which benefits from taxing CO2 emissions (Tesla) is morally great. Whereas having a business model which benefits from cheap oil (VW) is less so. Product decisions (electric vs. fuel engines) have a large effect on your long-term financial interests.
- catmanjan 6y ago
  If Apple knew it could make more money in say for example, arms dealing, wouldn't it be obliged to pivot to serve the shareholders? I guess it's somewhat democratic as shareholders could vote against it for moral reasons
  - greedo 6y ago
    No. Not all corporate actions have to be aligned to maximal profit extraction.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    It’s never just about “more money”. It’s about time-discounted, risk-adjusted “more money”. Doing morally repugnant things increases risk substantially. This is not the risk profile the owners signed up for. This change may even depress the stock price directly as disgusted owners sell (this harms the ability of current shareholders to earn a return, as the loss is now but the future revenues are discounted). The market is as moral as its shareholders, which is far less than perfection but a lot better than zero.
  - finnthehuman 6y ago
    No. The case in question is Dodge vs. Ford and rather than believe memes about it just read the darn wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
    - JadeNB 6y ago
      > The case in question is Dodge vs. Ford and rather than believe memes about it just read the darn wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co. I'm all for pointing someone to the sources, but let's not instill the idea that consulting Wikipedia is doing substantially more diligent research than looking at memes.
  - kmeisthax 6y ago
    No. The common refrain of "but publicly-traded corporations have to maximize shareholder value" is a myth, not a law. There are bits in the law about management having a fiduciary duty to shareholders, but that mainly means that they aren't supposed to be stuffing their own pockets at the expense of investors. There's a wide birth for management to decide what kinds of profit are and are not worth it.
tremon 6y ago
In common speech, "love" is expected to last eternal, not just to the end of the quarter. I'm not really a romantic, but using the word "love" in a corporate context defiles it.
aardshark 6y ago
Companies are made up of and run by people and the decisions made by those people are not necessarily solely profit-driven. That doesn't mean that making money is not important to these people; of course it is. But it's not the only factor.
- catmanjan 6y ago
  Corporations are owned by shareholders, aren't they the ones who ultimately make decisions?
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    Only nominally. In practice you will have a board and executives and managers who are subject to the conflicts of interest inherent to the principal-agent relationship. This is a major problem of economics.
chippiewill 6y ago
That's quite an extreme-end of capitalist way of looking at it. Companies build a vision or image for how they behave and a lot of that is going to be driven by marketability. For example Microsoft has taken a very pro-developer stance since Satya Nadella took over. Not just because it's directly profitable to be pro-developer, but because it helps their long term image, culture etc. This goes a long way to explaining a lot of their recent actions like helping Github be available in Iran again and open sourcing large parts of C# / .NET. So the question becomes: are Apple being pro-privacy because it's a long term stance they want to take and make a basis for their company culture because it's something their customers really want. Or are they taking the stance simply because it doesn't impact their own profitability right now, but would drop it if there was an obvious potential income stream.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  > Not just because it's directly profitable to be pro-developer, but because it helps their long term image, culture etc. And thus is indirectly profitable. > That's quite an extreme-end of capitalist way of looking at it. It's only extreme if you can show that companies routinely take the moral stance even when it impacts their short- or long-term profitability. Is Microsoft good now despite its best interests, just because it decided to take a moral stance?

heinrichhartman 6y ago

By choosing which markets you operate in and which products you develop you have a fair bit of influence which things are in your "financial interest". E.g. creating a company with a business model which benefits from taxing CO2 emissions (Tesla) is morally great. Whereas having a business model which benefits from cheap oil (VW) is less so. Product decisions (electric vs. fuel engines) have a large effect on your long-term financial interests.

catmanjan 6y ago
If Apple knew it could make more money in say for example, arms dealing, wouldn't it be obliged to pivot to serve the shareholders? I guess it's somewhat democratic as shareholders could vote against it for moral reasons
- greedo 6y ago
  No. Not all corporate actions have to be aligned to maximal profit extraction.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  It’s never just about “more money”. It’s about time-discounted, risk-adjusted “more money”. Doing morally repugnant things increases risk substantially. This is not the risk profile the owners signed up for. This change may even depress the stock price directly as disgusted owners sell (this harms the ability of current shareholders to earn a return, as the loss is now but the future revenues are discounted). The market is as moral as its shareholders, which is far less than perfection but a lot better than zero.
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  No. The case in question is Dodge vs. Ford and rather than believe memes about it just read the darn wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
  - JadeNB 6y ago
    > The case in question is Dodge vs. Ford and rather than believe memes about it just read the darn wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co. I'm all for pointing someone to the sources, but let's not instill the idea that consulting Wikipedia is doing substantially more diligent research than looking at memes.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  No. The common refrain of "but publicly-traded corporations have to maximize shareholder value" is a myth, not a law. There are bits in the law about management having a fiduciary duty to shareholders, but that mainly means that they aren't supposed to be stuffing their own pockets at the expense of investors. There's a wide birth for management to decide what kinds of profit are and are not worth it.

tremon 6y ago

In common speech, "love" is expected to last eternal, not just to the end of the quarter. I'm not really a romantic, but using the word "love" in a corporate context defiles it.

aardshark 6y ago

Companies are made up of and run by people and the decisions made by those people are not necessarily solely profit-driven. That doesn't mean that making money is not important to these people; of course it is. But it's not the only factor.

catmanjan 6y ago
Corporations are owned by shareholders, aren't they the ones who ultimately make decisions?
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  Only nominally. In practice you will have a board and executives and managers who are subject to the conflicts of interest inherent to the principal-agent relationship. This is a major problem of economics.

chippiewill 6y ago

That's quite an extreme-end of capitalist way of looking at it. Companies build a vision or image for how they behave and a lot of that is going to be driven by marketability. For example Microsoft has taken a very pro-developer stance since Satya Nadella took over. Not just because it's directly profitable to be pro-developer, but because it helps their long term image, culture etc. This goes a long way to explaining a lot of their recent actions like helping Github be available in Iran again and open sourcing large parts of C# / .NET. So the question becomes: are Apple being pro-privacy because it's a long term stance they want to take and make a basis for their company culture because it's something their customers really want. Or are they taking the stance simply because it doesn't impact their own profitability right now, but would drop it if there was an obvious potential income stream.

StavrosK 6y ago
> Not just because it's directly profitable to be pro-developer, but because it helps their long term image, culture etc. And thus is indirectly profitable. > That's quite an extreme-end of capitalist way of looking at it. It's only extreme if you can show that companies routinely take the moral stance even when it impacts their short- or long-term profitability. Is Microsoft good now despite its best interests, just because it decided to take a moral stance?