[Eelongate]

> Apple has an actual fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.

That fiduciary responsibility meme needs to die already. The flimsiest business justification is enough to cover company leadership's ass. Instead of "We refuse to do business with China because it's immoral" they need merely say "because we believe it's in the long term strategic interests of the company."

[seanmcdirmid]

> That fiduciary responsibility meme needs to die already.

Again, stop it. The companies you want exist, they just go insolvent before you ever notice them. If you want to change the way the companies operate, you have to change the system, you can't just expect companies to "do the right thing" in an environment that penalizes them for that.

You can't have the free market cake and eat the ideological high ground at the same time.

[Eelongate]

You take me for what, a libertarian? Do you think you know me? I never said anything about wanting a "free market cake."

Regardless, nothing you said refutes me. "Fiduciary responsibility" does not legally compel Apple to do business in China. If anything, such misconceptions about fiduciary duty are espoused by libertarians online, not rebuked by them.

[seanmcdirmid]

My point was that if Apple didn't adhere to maximizing profits, they simply wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be talking about their behavior in China. Regardless of whether you are a libertarian or not, you are wagging your finger at the wrong party (or to say, the party isn't really in a position to fix things). If you want change, it has to be via whoever is setting/enforcing the rules (in our case, government). The USA, ironically unlike China, doesn't really have the framework to force companies to adhere to some kind of moral code (outside of national security, etc...).

And even if we go down that rabbit hole, we just become more like China with some kind of state mandated moral code that can be easily perverted...maybe we can't really win on this.

[stale2002]

Yeah they would exist.

Lots of companies are able to exist without giving in to completely silly demands like "increase the size of these islands".

> If you want change

Actually, customers are able to cause lots of economic damages to companies, or their employees.

There is more that one way to Target Apple employees than what you suggested.

[seanmcdirmid]

For example?

[stale2002]

Well, for example, people and companies could target any of the employees directly, who work on those kinds of deals.

Target them personally, make them personally responsible for the actions that they did while thinking that they were some faceless entity in the machine, and make them toxic entities to hire or work with.

Sure, the company itself might be able to insulate itself from consequences, but not the individuals themselves. It would make people think twice about the actual negative effects of their actions, if they knew it would put them on blacklists.

Companies are run by people. It is not some faceless AI. Instead, decisions are made by individuals. And individuals are vulnerable.

[Eelongate]

All of that is completely irrelevant to my point, which is that fiduciary duty does not compel Apple to do business with China. You were peddling a falsehood.

[ShroudedNight]

Furthermore, this has already come up in the past for Apple:

When pressed about the financial prudence of prioritizing environmental outcomes Tim Cook snapped: "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI." It was also not limited to accessibility, but applicable to many areas Apple desires to lead.

The conclusion is that Apple is explicitly not interested in prioritizing individual liberty.