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827a | 5 days ago

Your learned helplessness is defeatist and boring. We need not be Moloch's subjects; Apple's business priorities are not the result of some natural and unstoppable force, and their leadership is not exempt from responsibility because of your belief that it is. Someone, sometime, in a surprisingly boring room, wearing a surprisingly boring suit, made decisions like those which opened a factory in China instead of Texas.

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kccqzy|5 days ago

I do not have learned helplessness. Nor have I claimed Apple’s business practices are the result of a natural force. Nothing is natural here. I said that Congress could have acted. Is Congress part of the nature now?

In contrast you have provided no arguments for why Apple’s leadership bears responsibility rather than Congress.

montagg|5 days ago

Texas would need to train its people. And the people would need to be as hungry as the Chinese were, and are to a certain extent. You should read the book the OT is talking about, it shows how the U.S. didn’t stand a chance in manufacturing, even going back to the 80s. Literally just not getting back to potential clients for two weeks and saying X or Y can’t be done, while Southeast Asian companies were jumping at the chance to build stuff.

There’s a giant cultural shift that needs to happen in the U.S. to get that back—not sacrificing labor laws, like China does, but the same idea that X or Y CAN be done, and actually jumping at the chance to build stuff instead of feeling entitled to it.

We do have agency, but the agency actually starts in the U.S., in education and culture, and not with a company like Apple.

shimman|4 days ago

All these things sound like great reasons to force Apple, along with the rest of big tech, to pay to better our society in the form of taxes.

copper4eva|4 days ago

I think US regulation is a huge part of what you're talking about though. In the US it is a literally pain to do anything new. I work at a chemical plant, and it took years (I'm not exaggerating, it was something like 2-3 years) to get all the permits to build a new unit. Because of how slow the city is.

So when you talk about how Asian companies were quicker to jump on new things, that's exactly what I think of. I haven't worked in Asia, but I imagine their government is not holding them back with red tape even a tenth as much.