More nonsense. This causes prices to go up and stockholders increase profits.... resulting in an increase in their dividends. TY in advance
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Apple Hit With Criminal Complaints Over Congo Mineral Trade
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I'll always encourage people to think before commenting or spend some time investigating stories before posting whatever comes to mind. It might be a losing battle, but as an optimist I'll keep encouraging more thoughtful responses.
Yes ….exactly 5 years left according to some. But I’ve lost track of how many times the goal post has been moving regarding the death of the planet. Technically we should’ve been extinct at least five times by now. 😁
No offense, If Africans could unite as a region and work for the best of their land, they would become unstoppable. Slavery is prohibited in rest of the world but not in Africa it seems.
You don’t know how judicial systems work, right?
Did you not know about prosecutorial discretion ?
Who do you think decides to press charges in a criminal case? The fairy of justice?
Tim is more about money for himself and fellow executives by making shareholders rich than to really care about the environment in any way that isn’t marketing.
I sometimes feel that capitalism, the way it is currently constructed, is not compatible with the future, but instead of doing something about it, we've collectively decided that the future doesn't matter
So the complaints are criminal, and the complainers will be prosecuted?
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What China does is pay off the corrupt governments of African countries. They promise to put people to work. They either treat the locals as slave labor or, more often, bring in their workers from China to do it all. The local area gets nothing. China has purposely cornered the market on rare earth metals. Apple has no more to do with this than other Tech companies.
I find it always hard to justify bad things and pointing to others for justification. It’s like dumping waste somewhere because my neighbor does the same.
If their is guilt in this case I hope the ones deliberately are getting punished hard. We have a very good judgement system in Europe I trust.
We, at least in the United States, do not practice capitalism any more. With all of the laws and government interference there are nearly no markets that are free to operate on capitalistic principles. So the problems you seem to refer to are the result of government interference in capitalism.
For example, if electric vehicles were good for the world, people would be buying them in droves, instead the government has to subsidize the purchase in order for people to even consider it. That is NOT capitalism, it is a form of socialism. BTW in case you don't know it, the very first car produced by Henry Ford was an EV.
Now I know you probably believe the propaganda about how EVs will save the world and its children, but that propaganda ignores a lot of downsides to EVs. Including the dark side of mining for the raw materials needed. It also ignores the fact that petroleum is a natural renewable product.
The problem here is not capitalism, but the Nanny's that want to have control of capitalism. Capitalism is free and open markets. Most people are scared of freedom because they then don't know and can't control the future.
All markets operate under regulations. Absent regulatory bodies, governments, there would be no markets. And no, a barter system isn't pure capitalism.
Again, absent government, no capitalism.
That makes zero sense, especially from a perspective of capitalism. Capitalism operates on every individual making choices in their own best interest, as determined by themselves. Very few people are buying things because they are good for the world.
Governments exist to manage things that are larger than the interests of individuals, that individuals cannot manage for themselves. Governments implement the values of the people; at least that's the idealized version of a democratic society. Is clean water a socialist ploy? Education? Fire trucks? Police?
There are very few purely good or purely evil things in the world. Life is complex. Morals are not easy.
There's no such thing as a purely "free and open market." Utopian visions aside.
You fundamentally misunderstand capitalism, if you think that. There is no incentive to do what is "good for the world" in capitalism. There is plenty of incentive to do what's good for yourself (i.e. spend less money on a car).
Whether or not electric vehicles are "good for the world" would have no effect on the individual purchaser in pure, economically rational capitalism. The Prisoner's Dilemma is a basic economic example that shows individuals making bad global choices because they make the most sense individually.
(And such situations are the times where interference can produce better economical outcomes, by forcing everybody to make the same, shared choice, even if that offends people who value individual freedoms. Not that governments are frequently effective at doing that, especially in divided countries.)
It doesn't say that.
It says they were asked to police Apple, because they have the toughest supply chain laws. The only involvement of the countries is that the final iPhones are sold there. There's nothing in the complain implying they had anything to do with the extraction or the laundering.
I wish I knew, but it seems pretty obvious that the current religion of capitalism which requires never-ending growth is going to kill us all before long
I suppose when it all goes to ****, that will be the alternative
Are you really saying capitalism can only exist with zero regulation or otherwise it's "not capitalism"?
And, if we managed to tear down every single shred of regulations, how would that solve the issues of environmental destruction and human conflict in any meaningful way?
Actually, China does build infrastructure for these countries. Of course, China needs the country to have the necessary infrastructure to support the mineral trade and shipment. It isn't for the humanitarian value of it. But the locals do use it and see benefits from it that they don't see from aid given to countries under the terms of the Washington Consensus.
They allowed Apple to operate subsidiaries in those countries under that monitoring scheme. If anyone did anything wrong, it was the countries for not applying the proper regulations. Unless Apple was going to Africa and importing these minerals directly, they were imported into those countries.
I still don't see how this is Apple's fault.
Leopold II, the most vile man ever to exist; worse than Genghis Khan, Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler combined. I will die on this hill. The sun will rise in the west and set in the east before I change my mind. Leo's only motivation was greed.
In the case of Indonesia, it was very much extortion. "Give us money or we will block all your imports and possibly arrest people using your products".
You're comparing China to Apple in terms of international influence? Let me put it this way, "When China sneeze, Apple catches a cold."
When you're rich and powerful enough, the laws of man stop applying. China is a country where the rich can hire someone to do jail time in their stead.