Any good act by a corporation can be explained away as a business strategy. Just as any good act by an individual can be explained away as a means to garner status, or because the individual derives personal satisfaction from either the act or the effects of good behavior.
Are you arguing that one must always impute manipulative motives to a corporation? (And should therefore not reward consequentially better behavior, because it must be based on invalid motives?)
Or is your point that Apple is uniquely hypocritical? If so, on what evidence about Apple in particular?
>Any good act by a corporation can be explained away as a business strategy. Just as any good act by an individual can be explained away as a means to garner status, or because the individual derives personal satisfaction from either the act or the effects of good behavior.
Sure, I would agree that if the outcome is good, then the intention is not relevant. Apple might have a positive effect in China despite compromising on privacy.
>Are you arguing that one must always impute manipulative motives to a corporation? (And should therefore not reward consequentially better behavior, because it must be based on invalid motives?)
I'm saying recognize the hypocrisy instead of constructing weird arguments to justify it.
>Or is your point that Apple is uniquely hypocritical? (And if so, on what evidence?
Certainly not. I said its a common business tactic.
> I'm saying recognize the hypocrisy instead of constructing weird arguments to justify it.
People with different priors on whether Apple's managers (or managers in general, or managers of large corporations in general) are likely to be hypocrites, will probably have opposite judgements about which explanation is a “weird argument”. So I don't think framing it in these terms will resolve any disagreement, unless there's some non-circular criterion (maybe you have one and I haven't seen it or am not understanding it) for judging an argument “weird”.
I use the same criterion that people use when they use it in their day-to-day conversations. Lets not get into the definition of words. In any case its not my goal to resolve disagreement or to convince someone of something. I don't view conversations in such narrow ways. I'm only interested in having interesting conversations with reasonable folks.
Are you arguing that one must always impute manipulative motives to a corporation? (And should therefore not reward consequentially better behavior, because it must be based on invalid motives?)
Or is your point that Apple is uniquely hypocritical? If so, on what evidence about Apple in particular?