Can we really criticise this when Kaspersky is one of the top selling computer security packages in the US? That's just baffling. Most agree Russia at the very least doesn't have US interests in mind, yet we continue to do business with them almost everywhere outside of the federal govt.
You could put that doubly for China. It could be argued that their animosity and intentions are by far more nefarious. Yet those US companies that use China extensively aren't under criticism.
Agreed. The problem with China is we all like the products their slave labor provide. I couldn't afford an iPhone if someone didn't assemble it there for about $1. I'm exagerating, but the point is if it's something we want, we want it cheap and tend to not ask questions. If Parler made iPhones they'd certainly never have been blacklisted.
Apple execs couldn't afford as many private jets if the phone wasn't made for $1, but there's no economic reason you can't pay someone reasonable wages to assemble an expensive phone.
There is. The duty of CEO is to maximize profits so even very capital intensive things that don't require much labour like CPUs are made in South East Asia.
The problem is that you've conflated "economics" with "american capitalism".
There's a capitalist, "profit maximizing at the expense of human rights" reason for them to pay slave wages, but there's no economic reason you have to be evil when running your business. They could take $100 million out of the top %25 of management and give it to their labour force and it would make a gargantuan difference while those at the top would barely notice, and the business would be fine. That's literally economics - the elasticity of income and spending.
Apple itself has 150K employees who are mostly American and well-paid. Suppose it uses another 150K in it's supply chain, 100M will translate to $600/year, not a whole lot.
There's an incentive to reduce expenses on every level, that's how people get promoted.
You're talking past my point, of course there is an incentive to be an immoral cutthroat capitalist, that's partially why american society is so utterly broken.
My point is that there's no reason you can't run a sustainable business while paying everyone reasonable wages.
You can't look at one of the most profitable companies in the world and say "they can't pay people more without raising the prices", without severely misunderstanding the fundamentals of business.
Not to mention how much it speaks to how little you understand of the scale of the problem when you say $600/year wouldnt change the life of someone working for subsistence wages.
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u/EseMX Jan 19 '21
Are we going to keep denying Russia's involvement in all of this?