Posted on 03/06/2014 1:54:22 AM PST by Swordmaker
Apple’s normally soporific annual shareholder meeting contained a glimmer of interest this year when a shareholder from a conservative think tank asked the company to stop worrying about sustainability, green issues, and climate change and concentrate instead on the bottom line of profitability.
Tim Cook essentially told his interrogator from the National Center for Public Policy Research to go boil his head, which is nice of him and provides good copy. But this fails to elucidate the dilemma that Cook actually faces. He is indeed focusing on the bottom line by taking the actions that he does on these very issues. It’s just that he can’t actually stand up and say that.
As reported in The Mac Observer:
[Cook] didn’t stop there, however, as he looked directly at the NCPPR representative and said, “If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.”It was a clear rejection of the climate change denial, anything-for-the-sake-of-profits politics espoused by the NCPPR. It was also an unequivocal message that Apple would continue to invest in sustainable energy and related areas.
The other shareholders clearly agreed that such issues should continue to motivate Apple’s actions: 97 percent of them voted against the original proposal that the company should not take regard of these matters.
And yes, sure, I sign up to Milton Friedman’s idea that a company should be viewed as having one purpose and one purpose only, which is to enrich its shareholders. With a couple of obvious caveats, legality for example, playing their part. However, and here’s the dilemma, it’s not actually obvious that Apple’s activities in green and climate change matters do not in fact add to the bottom line.
Let’s think through the things that it actually does. First, its commitment to the use of renewable energy. Whether solar and Bloom Boxes at the data centre in North Carolina, or in their other offices, there’s no indication that this costs more than other energy sources. Sure, green power isn’t economically viable in most places (although in some locations and uses it is) but it’s not actually the consumer of the power that ends up paying that extra cost. Subsidy systems vary but almost all of them have either the taxpayer or all power consumers paying the extra costs. Things like feed in tariffs and guaranteed prices for renewable electricity mean that all power consumers on the grid are paying the higher costs of that type of power, not just the people who are saying that they’re using green power. So while society as a whole might be paying some extra amount for Apple to be using renewables it’s not in fact Apple that is.
Given my background in the minerals trade I’m also interested in Apple’s work on conflict minerals. Yes, the company just announced that its tantalum supplies (used to make capacitors) are now free of material sourced from slaves and child workers in the DR Congo. But it’s worth noting that it’s done this the cheap and sensible way, through the industry smelter initiative, not the expensive and stupid way proposed by the Enough Project and Global Witness and written into Dodd Frank. A few millions (and it won’t have been more than that) to gain the marketing and bragging rights to being conflict free could very well add, not detract, from the bottom line.
There are, however, other areas where Apple clearly doesn’t take the environmentally righteous path. For example, all iPads and iPhones are flown from the manufacturing plants to the distribution warehouses. The reason is that the interest on stock is higher than the air freight costs. So, it’s actually cheaper, costs less overall, to fly than ship them by sea. And CO2 emissions be damned where the bottom line is concerned.
Similarly, the teardown companies regularly castigate Apple for building shiny shiny that it almost impossible to upgrade, repair or even recycle. One example is the practice of gluing batteries into place meaning that once you’ve gone through the battery’s lifespan of recharges you’ve got to junk the entire device. Very sustainable that is: but also highly profitable for the company, which gets to sell you a new one.
A closer examination thus seems to show us that Apple does indulge peoples’ green fantasies when it doesn’t cost them much if any money and entirely ignores such greenwashing when it might indeed affect that profit line.
And that, really, is Cook’s dilemma. He knows this, he’s a sharp enough cookie, but he cannot actually stand up and say so. The golden glow that the company gets when Greenpeace lauds its commitment to renewables is worth money in the bank. For there’s a large enough portion of us mug punters who will decide how to spend our money based upon such considerations. But Cook cannot actually say that Apple only does the easy stuff that doesn’t cost anything for this will shatter that carefully created illusion that they’re not a rapaciously capitalist company focused purely on that bottom line.
Therefore, when Cook is asked by some activist why he’s wasting money on greenery and not running the company purely for profit Cook cannot tell him the truth. That the company is being run for profit as it only does that amount of greenery that improves the profit margin and it most certainly doesn’t do anything that actually costs. For that would be to defeat the objective of doing the little that is being done.
Boy did I tick off A) Apple users or B) communists : )
They’ll put it in a green or blue trash bin and they think they’ve done some grand deed. Even better, they’ll try to sell them, thus passing the disposal problem to someone else. And then it’s out of sight, out of mind. “Not my problem.”
Liberals can pat themselves on the back all day about their 'green' machines; the certain fact is that practically every electronic device in the US is, at its core, coal powered.
And it's not just Apple products, or computers. The light in Starubucks? Most likely from a coal-fired generator. How'd that coffee get hot? How'd that paper cup get made?
This 'green' nonsense is just that: nonsense.
I have what is considered an “old” iMac at work. It’s four years old if it’s a day. The rest of the company has already turned over their PCs. And I have a ways to go before I’m asked if I want a new computer. My iMac is still quite useful and will be for a long while yet. And it still feels “new” to me!
And the iMac I type this message on is even older and I still think of it as my “new” computer!
I do hate to see perfectly good machines go to waste. Your is truly a valuable service. You know how to rescue perfectly good equipment and doubtless know how to dispose of it properly.
Actually, coal has dropped from about half of US power generation at the beginning of this century to about a third today, and that trend line is continuing. Natural gas has gotten that much cheaper that fast.
Nope. We just prefer the truth be posted instead of these myths. Or do you prefer to pass on lies?
Hilarious. The point is that they can be as green as they want, but they're still using carbon to fuel their lifestyles.
Of course, they won't be happy 'til we're all siting in the dark, freezing.
bkmk
I have a 2008 Mac Pro that still works beautifully :-)
Many articles about the working conditions. Here are just a few comrade.
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/apple-factorys-wall-e-robots-and-suicide-nets-revealed-50007049/
Suicide nets installed
http://gizmodo.com/5574993/foxconn-is-installing-safety-nets-on-buildings
My, my. You Apple bashers can't debate without ad hominem insults and attacks, can you?
That article came from 2012, TWO YEARS AGO (By Rich Trenholm on 21 February 2012, 5:48pm), and turned out to be a non-Apple assembly plant. In fact, as the article YOU linked to specifies: "Foxconn is just one of Apple's suppliers, and Apple is just one of Foxconn's clients. Gizmos including the Xbox, PlayStation 3 and Amazon Kindle are all built at Foxconn City. . ." but they do not mention Apple products as being made at Foxconn City because they are not assembled at the Shenzhen plant but rather at a plant several hundred miles away. As a matter of fact, the article also states the starting hourly wage at the Shenzhen plant was £1.10, but the wages at Foxconn's assembly plants where Apple products are assembled the starting wage is £3.30 at Apple's insistence, and has been since 2008.
The article also states that "18 workers over several years" committed suicide at Foxconn City. . . But, Minnesota_bound, that number over "several years," in the equivalent of a city of over 250,000, is actually a remarkably LOW rate. It is FAR lower than the suicide rate for the national population of China or the same age cohort. The article misrepresented the ages of the workers. "A workforce of rural Chinese teenagers lives in dorms, carrying out mindlessly repetitive tasks, fighting the boredom and alienation that drives some to suicide, and all to feed our gadget lust." When in actuality, the workers range in age from 18 to 29. . . and Fair Labor Association, in their final report on Apple's plants, found only 12 underage workers, all of whom who admitted using false IDs.
In fact, your attempt to SMEAR Apple is entirely misdirected, as your OWN links demonstrate. The workers using the media to push their desire for more pay, pay similar to what APPLE insisted its workers receive, made the "suicide" threats to get attention of the Western Press. The workers never intended to kill themselves. They actually were more upset with the cutting of OVERTIME opportunities because Foxconn instituted a cut in the number of hours a worker could volunteer each day and week in response to the Fair Labor Association's report that criticized the number of overtime hours workers were voluntarily putting in. . . Foxconn limited the hours to meet the criticism, but the workers wanted the hours to maximum their income! This came out later. Don't believe me? Here's proof from your link, that you probably didn't bother to check:
"About 200 workers threatened to take their own lives on Friday at a building owned by Apple's Chinese manufacturing partner Foxconn over purported wage disputes and workplace conditions.So, you are incensed that some small number of a Chinese workers who committed suicide who HAPPENED to work for a company that builds Apple products, but not at the Apple lines, among a lot of others, at a rate FAR, FAR lower than the rate found in the general population or even in the same age group, AND the company takes some steps to prevent even those few suicides. . . Gosh, you have a lot of time to worry about small things. Tell me, do you get incensed about the suicides at Microsoft? How about in the Post Office? Do you know the suicide rate among DENTISTs is among the highest of all professions??! It's far higher than the suicide rate of Foxconn workers.Update: To clarify, Foxconn's Wuhan factory is responsible for building Microsoft's Xbox 360 and isn't associated with Apple hardware.
It really is highly amusing when you provide the ammunition to shoot your FUD down. One more quotation from the first article: "The Foxconn factory is revealed not to be the hellish sweatshop I imagined when news of suicides and poor worker conditions began to emerge. . ."
I'm a packrat. My wife is always after me to get rid of stuff. Thirty years ago while browsing in a computer store, I bought a cardboard box full of scrap motherboards for $5. Forgot about it for twenty-five years, until I looked them over. Just so happens several were revision 0 Apple II motherboards, serial numbers in the first few hundred made. I sold the worst to a hobbyist expert for several hundred. Could have gotten much more but wanted to see him restore it, which he did into a perfect functioning Apple II worth maybe $10G. My $5 investment paid off! (And is still paying off, many of the items are rare.)
A lot of early 70s & 80s stuff that got trashed during the 90s is worth much more now, partly because few examples remain. I just like fixing stuff, and like you, I hate to waste.
Ouch, that hurts (me). That would be 2009? I'm typing on my 2010 Mac Mini Server, and I consider it one of my "newest" machines. Bought it used, full of software, and upgraded it with SSD storage. My main machine is a 2006 MacBook, with a hybrid 750GB SSD. Still performs well for many things. The family members use the MacAirs but I prefer the older machines. I used to be a network manager and administrator, mostly Windows stuff. We were swapping out machines every couple years because PCs became obsolete so quickly. I learned to hate Windows after supporting it so many years from NT through all subsequent versions of Windows. I like my Macs more than my PCs.
yep they just hang the nets around the buildings for volleyball practice.
Do you really want to look as stupid as you are making yourself look? Your own articles you linked to showed the LIE you are pushing. The whole “ suicide” epidemic was a negative marketing ploy cooked up by Google. You cannot turn 18 suicides in an actual population of 1.5 million workers in SEVEN industrial complexes over the space of four years into an epidemic. . . it was a dis-information campaign orchestrated by Google to push their Android products over Apple’s by giving Apple a black eye. Three International Labor Rights Organizations at the request of Apple investigated and reported the CLAIMS UNFOUNDED!!! Give it up.
Foxconn installed the nets at the one plant where they had two suicides in one month as a response to the flurry of international bad publicity.
Hell, Minnesota, in 2011, 32 people jumped to their deaths off the Golden Gate Bridge and they stopped 75 more who tried. . . and the population of San Francisco that year was ~813,000!
Guess what—for almost 77 years, since the bridge opened and the first jumper, they've been talking about putting nets on the bridge but they haven't done it yet—despite 1500 people killing themselves.
Apple has a store in San Francisco. . . and their headquarters is just down the peninsula. . . Shall we blame Apple for those deaths too? After all it's just as logical as what YOU are doing. . . and the bridge jumping suicide rate per capita in San Francisco is far higher, too!
Whatcha think?
Do you now see how absurd the anti-Apple suicide propaganda was? And is? There literally was no "there" there!
I don’t agree that Anthropogenic Global Warming is any kind of real science, but at the same time, I have no problem with Apple or Tim Cook and his comments - in terms of me getting an iPhone or iPad or Macintosh ... etc.
If you refrain from every organization or device recommended for boycott on FR, you’ll be living as a hermit in a remote area of Alaska.
You got that right ... :-) ...
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