[anon_tor_12345]

>Why do you think domestic investment is so economically useless that it must be a charitable act?

that's not what op (the person you're responding to) is saying at all. they're simply saying that apple disguises its infrastructure spending as charity and that that's off-putting. in fact it's not charity and furthers their own goals.

it'd be like me claiming to be a philanthropist because i had to a build a road connecting my factory to my mine that incidentally connects towns along the way. note this is example is right on the nose because this is exactly what corporations do.

[JumpCrisscross]

> apple disguises its infrastructure spending as charity

Except it doesn't. It uses the word "investment" 17 times in the announcement. If someone reads this as a charity pitch they're doing mental gymnastics.

Apple is not even doing the whole "Made in the USA" schtick, where companies imply they're taking patriotic pain for the good of the country. This is fully pitched as a competitive play. An investment to yield returns.

[plater]

To continue as a company they have to invest just like any other company. As Apple is so big, of course the investments they make are big. But not necessarily bigger than what any other company invests in percent of revenue or profit.

This announcement makes it sound like it's something amazingly special they do. But in fact, any company throughout history has invested a certain percentage of their revenue, just like Apple is now doing.

[gumby]

It's a press release. What else would you expect?

They aren't claiming to be investing more or less than anyone else. They are simply advertising their plans.

I think Apple's "amazing" infomercials are over the top, but this press release seems anodyne.

[ojbyrne]

And pretty well any company throughout history has made sure the public knows about its investment.

[jdmoreira]

It could never be charitable because Apple is a publicly traded company and investors want returns.

People talk about companies the same way a hunter-gatherer applies animism to trees for example. Companies are not people, they can’t be cynic nor greedy they just are what they were created to be. Profit machines.

Apple is extremely good at being. High returns on invested capital, huge moat, etc...