Another entry in states punishing companies for what the state government regards as “woke” policies.
Steve
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It would seem ironic to discriminate against a company for discriminating. Two wrongs make a right?
Would not such penalized companies have their own legal recourse? Certainly seems arbitrary and capricious. For example, are they also punishing companies that are avoiding legal pot investments, or casinos, or gun manufacturers? The implication of such punishment is that it would force companies to quid pro quo - invest in Kentucky industries or be blacklisted.
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Will companies be forced, as you suggest, to invest in oil, or coal, or guns, or tobacco, whatever is popular in a particular state, even if the company’s own analysis says it is a bad investment, or face retribution? Will companies be forced to adopt anti-gay HR policies? Will companies be forced to adopt HR policies that eliminate women from promotion, because offering women opportunity is deemed “anti-family”?
Steve
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All these very astute examples and “what ifs…” show just how dangerous even something taken for granted as an absolute universal good like “freedom”, even “economic freedom” can be. The very concept of “society” and even civilization itself, is based on the premise that we all have to give up some of our freedom to act in order to gain more overall.
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Pretty much just ignore the states that act that stupidly. It means those states are bad investment risks for many businesses. You know, the companies that create jobs. They will “go elsewhere”.
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It is not the government’s business. Unless the government is trying to make things better for the people of the state. I guess keeping tobacco profits and coal miner profits makes a few people happy. Note not the workers in the least…in other words most people are not getting any benefit in KY from this.
In fact KY is being held back by poorer paying jobs. These actions continue to keep KY a poorer state. Yes there are consequences to bad policy decisions.
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I would suspect the “JCs” are more concerned with states that have cheap labor, low taxes, and anti-union “right to work” laws. So which way will the BoD go? Do the right thing for people, or maximize profits?
Steve
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Doing the right thing for people maximizes profits.
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Like the iPhone builders that maximize Apple’s profits?
Mike
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Well, it should in theory.
Just like crime shouldn’t pay.
But there’s no actual evidence that it’s true.
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Yes, exactly! Providing hundreds of thousands of jobs that take people out of subsistence wage agricultural work and into tech assembly work that pays them 5 to 10 times more is definitely the right thing.
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What good is that higher wage if you are effectively held prisoner in your factory and adjacent barracks, unable to be with family and friends of your choosing?
The goal of a company should be to maximize the return to its owners. The question is: maximize the return over the next quarter, or maximize the return over the next decade or two?
Taking care of people is probably consistent with maximizing the return over the next couple of decades. But it probably gets in the way of maximizing the return for the next quarter (or next year).
Ditto for things like green energy. Good for long term profits, not good for short term.
–Peter
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Well, for one, you can send money home to your family back at that subsistence farm so they can survive. Just like 10 million central/south American workers in the US do every month.
Another good point! Both Apple and their subcontractors have done a remarkable job at maintaining reasonable profitability over the long-term. In fact, there was a quick blurb yesterday about a new contract manufacturer that Apple is starting to use to assemble the latest iPhones. Turns out that they have had a long-term relationship starting with simple cable assemblies more than a decade ago, and slowly moving up the manufacturing chain, to now finally reaching the pinnacle of assembling the most advanced product. I think they are called Luxshare or something like that.
Here’s yet another thing that Apple does better than almost anyone else and is in fact a leader. They are fully dedicated to green energy AND to reuse of rare minerals whenever possible.
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That’s a trade off for the worker and their family to decide. I’m not saying that anyone choosing to be separated from their family for the sole purpose of sending money home is making the right or wrong choice. But I do think that living as a prisoner in exchange for a higher wage is a questionable practice at best.
I also refuse to say that subsistence farming is a bad thing. Again - a personal choice. If its successful as a subsistence farm, you have all the food you need and a source for clothing and shelter. Perhaps a bit of barter is necessary with your neighbors. But it is not necessarily a lifestyle that should be looked down upon, as if people should aspire to have more and more. If you have all you need (and a little of what you want), is it necessary to want more?
On the other hand, not all subsistence farming is successful. It may not be providing for all of a family’s needs. Having someone in the family move to the city to provide wage income supplementing the farming is probably necessary for some.
I think its worth pointing out that those workers in the US are, for the most part, not held prisoner by their employers. They typically have a pretty good level of freedom. And I’d also point out that those who ARE effectively prisoners are the victims of criminal activity, even if their captors are not currently being subjected to criminal penalties. Neither of those observations are necessarily true in China.
Being profitable over the long term and having that as a goal are two different things. It is true that if you have next quarter’s profits as your main goal, and meet that goal pretty consistently, you will also have profits over the long term. But that is not the same as focusing on long term profits rather than short term profits.
Rather than focus on a single company here, I’m trying to look at a larger picture.
–Peter
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You left out one other thing that they do right…they installed the best suicide nets that they could find in the iPhone prison^h^h^h^h^h^h dorm cells
Mike
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