iPhones are not worth that answer. Nor is any other electronic. I wish this was escapable somehow, but my employer literally requires and pays for this equipment. To abstain from employment would be crazy – it wouldn't send a message to Apple. What the hell can someone do?
Corporate legal requirement to maximize shareholder value makes their behavior gas like, they’ll expand to fill all possible space and permeate any advantageous cracks. It’s counter productive and contrary to reality to pick on any one company for behaving as they’re legally obligated to do. The issue isn’t apple, the issue is governments that allow behavior we can’t accept by corporations. The way to prevent a gas from permeating spaces you don’t want it in is to seal the space, not rage against hydrogen.
Capital follows the state. The fact that capital also often guides the state is a flaw of the state. Capital is just people doing the job they were hired to do, often in a corporate framework, legally obliged to maximize profit and shareholder value. There’s definitely a feedback cycle, but the source of all control and governance is the guys with the guns and prisons.
> Capital is just people doing the job they were hired to do
No, that's the people that are employed by the capital.
If you do entertain this worldview, then at the very least do it correctly.
The few people usually described as capital are the owners of the vast majority of wealth in the developed world.
And they're most assuredly not following the state. They're constantly pushing for unequal legislation and exploit as much as they can get away with. That's how they gain this kind of wealth
You ascribe way too much power to the individuals who have claim to capital vs the organizations that manage it. It’s really common to do so, it’s easier to vilify a person than a process, and conspiracies are really exciting. I’ve worked in the worlds of those that hold claim to capital and I know for a fact that yes they can make decisions given their claim that most people can’t, they are actually less likely to see their decisions happen because it’s carried out through a large organization. They’re also often subject to boards and other control entities. But more than anything, they’re not evil super geniuses. They’re people like you and me that randomly emerged as the richest people on earth through whatever process that selected them - business success, investing, birth. I knew one guy who struggled with profound depression and low self confidence but was the heir to a largely privately held major corporation. He would gain lots of weight and his jacket would rip down the back before he went out to talk to investors and he was so depressed he couldn’t care - he had to have handlers to change his jacket for him. Some are bipolar and their evil conspiracy like behavior is because they can’t control their mania and no one will tell them they’re sick. Etc. So, yeah. I don’t buy that it’s a few people pulling the strings of the world in a nefarious plot to make women in India work 12 hours a day because they hate women in India and want to see them suffer for profit. It’s a set of non human organisms made up of humans making millions of micro decisions at all times towards the goal of maximizing shareholder value. It behaves like a slime mold or amoeba, as I said elsewhere, a gas, and invades all spaces it can that are advantageous to it.
Here’s a concrete example: is Jeff Bezos powerful? Or is Amazon what is powerful? Jeff Bezos doesn’t work at Amazon any more. Is Amazon less powerful? Who is the Jeff Bezos at Amazon now? Andy Jassy? No. Andy is an amazing person, but he doesn’t have the power Jeff had at Amazon. So who is it in your evil capitalist genius rubric that pulls the Amazon strings? Absolutely no one. It pulls its own strings.
It is. But I assume you work at a corporation, or for a corporation, or have some affiliation with the decisions of a corporation, or have done in the past. Me too. We are all a part of the problem.
I think a general strike is desperately needed. Seeing Biden do a complete about face on unions to enrich the robber barons that run domestic rail was the last sign I needed. Unfortunately the people who would benefit the most from striking are those who either drink the propaganda from conservative outlets or are otherwise marginalized. Felons, people on probation, green card workers, the poorly educated, chronically overworked, etc.
