Could be code name for operating system?
The responsibilities of a corporate mogul are to take care of business, nothing else. Elected officials should operate in their mandated realm (as limited by our constitutional-republic form of government). One should not substitute for the other.
Here is the New York Times article exposing (by our annotations as the NYT would never do) Apple CEO Tim Cook as either ignorant of common attributes of fascism or an hypocritical admirer.
Apple’s Tim Cook Barnstorms for ‘Moral Responsibility’
(quoting Cook) “The reality is that government, for a long period of time, has for whatever set of reasons become less functional and isn’t working at the speed that it once was
Would that it were true but it is demonstrably not. The take over of health care (one sixth of the US economy) , and there has been enormous amounts of far reaching regulation through bureaucratic edict in every aspect of the economy and social life.
And now Mr. Cook is one of the many business leaders in the country who appear to be filling the void, using his platform at Apple to wade into larger social issues that typically fell beyond the mandate of executives in past generations.
The NYT author did not bother to add the words “or competence” . Continuing:
He said he had never set out to do so, but he feels he has been thrust into the role as virtually every large American company has had to stake out a domestic policy.
Emphasis ours. This raises all manner of issues. Think of the implications. It invites government-corporatist symbiosis in the best tradition of fascism.
He was vocal, for example, in criticizing Mr. Trump after Charlottesville in a memo to his staff: “I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights. Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans.”
This is pure calumny from Cook. There was nothing that Trump said that equated white supremacists and Nazis with all who oppose them. One wonders if Cook has any grounding in the history of communism, socialism, fascism as socio-economic movements.
Watching Mr. Cook over the years, I’ve been fascinated to see how he has become as animated when talking about big issues like education and climate change as he is when talking about Apple.
“We’re running Apple a hundred percent on renewable energy today” in the United States, he said over breakfast, “and we’ve now hit that in 23 other countries around the world.”
There would be a whole lot of dissembling going on to explain the veracity of that statement. We could call him the dissembly merchant. We will believe it when we see that all heating, air-conditioning office and manufacturing locations of just Apple proper cannot access fossil fuel sources of energy, because they do not need it or use it. That we believe will expose the lie, not to mention that Appel’s integrated suppliers and its and their employees are dependent on fossil fuel to live (and therefore operate Apple). Insufficient wind or solar that day, no production that day. No talk of buying energy credits while using fossil sources.
That’s not to say Mr. Cook, 56, is running an altruistic institution. Apple received $208 million in tax breaks from Iowa to locate its data center there. The state has aggressively recruited technology companies, including Facebook and Microsoft, with deep subsidies. A Los Angeles Times columnist criticized the state as a “first-class patsy” for making the deal with Apple, which will create 1,700 construction jobs but only about 50 long-term jobs. Apple agreed to donate “up to $100 million” for local infrastructure, including a youth sports complex, offsetting part of the tax break.
Mr Cook would do well to understand fascism a little better rather than be a useful idiot for it. It is somewhat amorphous but this description from a piece in The Atlantic, a liberal publication, ought to give Cook pause:
Most fascist economies followed Benito Mussolini’s definition of fascism as the corporatist control of private industry by government, but most fascist states also tended to annex areas of the economy to government control.
This seems to be, arguably, the essence of what Cook admires — the close association of corporatism and government, special tax breaks for corporations, corporations doing their part for political correctness, exercising influence outside their competence or legitimacy while encouraging active government, (understood as favorable to their corporate welfare). Much more is unnerving in reading the article.
Update 8/30 – related reading from The Daily Caller:
R Mall
