spend some time in a small town. specifically a small town in farm or oil country, where trucks are an essential work vehicle, and everybody buys a new one at $70-80k every 5 years.
the guy who owns the local car dealership runs the town. he's got money unlike anybody else in town does. some towns have rich farmers, or rich people who've made their money elsewhere, but unlike them the guy who owns the car dealership knows that his revenue stream depends on maintaining a good relationship with the town, and so he spends money like nobody else does. every local event, sports team, church function, whatever, it's always sponsored by at least one car dealership. and every congressperson who represents one of those districts knows that they really don't want to get on the wrong side of the car dealers.
Apple only dreams of having as much distributed local political power as the car dealers do.
the guy who owns the local car dealership runs the town. he's got money unlike anybody else in town does. some towns have rich farmers, or rich people who've made their money elsewhere, but unlike them the guy who owns the car dealership knows that his revenue stream depends on maintaining a good relationship with the town, and so he spends money like nobody else does. every local event, sports team, church function, whatever, it's always sponsored by at least one car dealership. and every congressperson who represents one of those districts knows that they really don't want to get on the wrong side of the car dealers.
Apple only dreams of having as much distributed local political power as the car dealers do.