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Eich participated in a public system in an approved way at a political level, did so without letting his politics get in the way of his personal or professional

Eich participated in a public system in an approved way at a political level, did so without letting his politics get in the way of his personal or professional life, and made functional programming ubiquitous. There's nothing wrong with what he did given that he didn't let that view (in the abstract) color his personal interactions. And, let us note, 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. By contrast, Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn with the sole goal of minimizing production costs by using underpaid overworked labor--and if you look at Apple close enough, yeah, there's some nastiness there. He's a solid operations guy (clearly!), but has directly supported policies that have harmed both our industry and workers abroad. I'm likely going to get downvoted into oblivion (again, and in hilarious underscoring of my point).

dreamweapon 12y ago
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.
- DanBC 12y ago
  Your inability to respond to any of the points has been noted.
  - dreamweapon 12y ago
    Oh, I'm "able." I just don't find them particularly interesting, or worth responding to in detail.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      Then next time, kindly just don't post.
      - dreamweapon 12y ago
        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.
        Karunamon 12y ago
        Trolls and willful fools are cured by the same medicine: downvote, ignore, and flag if they broke the site rules.
notjackma 12y ago
> 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.
- jshevek 12y ago
  > 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?
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  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.
  - Crito 12y ago
    Actually, exploiting the poor is one thing that Tim Cook and Mother Teresa could find common ground on.
    - praneshp 12y ago
      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.
haberman 12y ago
> 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.
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
> 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.
- hiou 12y ago
  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.
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    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.
benihana 12y ago
>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.
- phaemon 12y ago
  > 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."
bdcravens 12y ago
> Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn As does Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, Nintendo, and more
rmc 12y ago
> 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.

dreamweapon 12y ago

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.

DanBC 12y ago
Your inability to respond to any of the points has been noted.
- dreamweapon 12y ago
  Oh, I'm "able." I just don't find them particularly interesting, or worth responding to in detail.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Then next time, kindly just don't post.
    - dreamweapon 12y ago
      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.
      - Karunamon 12y ago
        Trolls and willful fools are cured by the same medicine: downvote, ignore, and flag if they broke the site rules.

notjackma 12y ago

> 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.

jshevek 12y ago
> 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?
dreamweapon 12y ago
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.
- Crito 12y ago
  Actually, exploiting the poor is one thing that Tim Cook and Mother Teresa could find common ground on.
  - praneshp 12y ago
    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.

haberman 12y ago

> 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.

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago

> 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.

hiou 12y ago
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.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  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.

benihana 12y ago

>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.

phaemon 12y ago
> 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."

bdcravens 12y ago

> Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn As does Sony, Microsoft, Amazon, Nintendo, and more

rmc 12y ago

> 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.