Well it's certainly good to see people getting worked up about this, but I think it's critical that the energy has the appropriate focal point. This has
nothing at all to do with Apple. What we're addressing here is a system flaw that pertains to the economic system itself. Capitalism served america rather well for a while (for better or worse) several decades ago, but that time is long gone. The system has been figured out, calculated, and played. And now it seems to have grown and spread to the world at large. You can't fault the companies - not even the ones who play the game exceedingly well. They are only taking part in an ongoing game and the game is simply being followed to its natural conclusion.
We aren't talking about "bad apples" here. These aren't a few rogue corporations who have become slightly or substantially more greedy than the rest. This did not happen because some evil person woke up one day and decided that he could serve himself best by bringing these laws and regulations about, and everyone else could just be damned. Rather, it happens because hundreds of people grow up every day and look at the world around them and say "Aha! So this is economics. Let me see what I can do to earn a healthy living." And so it begins. Rarely does anyone look around and say "Good god! This system we're using has developed some awful unintended consequences. Let me see if there might be a better way of doing this." And so it continues.
In america, we are indoctrinated by the schools from a very early age to see capitalism as the most bestest economic system that ever was. It is delivered hand-in-hand with the equally awesome concept of freedom, to the extent that they are seen as one and the same, and it is indeed a very potent doctrine. Hardly anyone imagines - nay - hardly anyone even imagines
that they can imagine that one might conduct business any other way. In america, no one says "capitalism is the economic system that we use." Rather, they say "the economic system is called capitalism." See what I did there? It's not even a selection from a category. It just is. Green is the color. Chicken is the food. Agilent is the scope manufacturer. People don't even realize they're doing it. At the very most, you might get someone who says "so what do you want to use then... socialism?!?!" as if that were the only other option. In their mind, it is evidently both the only other option and in fact a non-option, once again leaving capitalism as "the" economic system.
In fact it has become so bad that american corporations are actually required
by law to hold the pursuit of profit above even the public interest. A CEO has no choice but to stop wasting money by printing full schematics and repair manuals for his products because there are a dozen shareholders ready to fire him in a heartbeat the moment it's brought to their attention that they're "wasting" money on something which has no appreciable return on investment. He knows this, so naturally he stops printing the damn schematics. Where in the early days of capitalism a company used to be run essentially by one or a few people, and those people made decisions which they felt would best serve their company and their moral obligations to their community, companies are now run by too many moving parts for any one part to greatly affect the end result regardless of moral obligations. This is exactly equivalent and probably directly related to the well known
bystander effect, whereby the likelihood of an individual breaking the routine and "doing the right thing" in a given situation is inversely proportional to the number of individuals present who are permitted the same opportunity. This effectively leaves the whole thing subject to little more than the rules and nature of whatever economic system it functions under.
Given any system of sufficient complexity, it is not easy to know what end a given set of rules will lead to. That's why we simulate things. Often the only way to understand a system is to set it up and let it run its course. We now know what sort of end the rules of capitalism lead to, and no one can deny that it isn't a pretty end. It's time for the people to wipe it out and start over with something which will tend toward a good end - something which naturally encourages things that we consider beneficial, rather than something which impedes progress and causes widespread harm while serving a minority who choose to spend their effort on the otherwise unproductive task of figuring out how to play a silly game.
In short, we have a system which does not merely allow, but in fact
encourages and rewards waste, greed, and corruption. We see this now. In hindsight, there indeed is no way that we should have expected any other outcome. We can't expect to fix this by yelling at the players and telling them to stop doing what's working well for them. The game itself is the problem. This shit's got to go.
(Oops. It's fascinating how one little paragraph can turn in to a novel during a routine proofread.
)
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