by observationist | 2025-11-18 19:21:33+00:00
Yes, we're absolutely holding Apple accountable for outsourcing jobs, degrading the US markets, using slave and child labor, laundering cobalt from illegal "artisanal" mines in the DRC, and whitewashing what they do by using corporate layering and shady deals to put themselves at sufficient degrees of separation from problematic labor and sources to do good PR, but not actually decoupling at all.

I also hold Americans and western consumers are responsible for simply allowing that to happen. As long as the human rights abuses and corruption are 3 or 4 degrees of separation from the retailer, people seem to be perfectly OK with chattel slavery and child labor and indentured servitude and all the human suffering that sits at the base of all our wonderful technology and cheap consumer goods.

If we want to have things like minimum wage and workers rights and environmental protections, then we should mandate adherence to those standards globally. If you want to sell products in the US, the entire supply chain has to conform to US labor and manufacturing and environmental standards. If those standards aren't practical, then they should be tossed out - the US shouldn't be doing performative virtue signalling as law, incentivizing companies to outsource and engage in race to the bottom exploitation of labor and resources in other countries. We should also have tariffs and import/export taxes that allow competitive free trade. It's insane that it's cheaper to ship raw materials for a car to a country in southeast asia, have it refined and manufactured into a car, and then shipped back into the US, than to simply have it mined, refined, and manufactured locally.

The ethics and economics of America are fucking dumb, but it's the mega-corps, donor class, and uniparty establishment politicians that keep it that way.

Apple and Google are inhuman, autonomous entities that have effectively escaped the control and direction of any given human decision tree. Any CEO or person in power that tried to significantly reform the ethics or economics internally would be ousted and memory-holed faster than you can light a cigar with a hundred dollar bill. We need term limits, no more corporation people, money out of politics, and an overhaul, or we're going to be doing the same old kabuki show right up until the collapse or AI takeover.

And yeah, you can single out Google for their misdeeds. They, in particular, are responsible for the adtech surveillance ecosystem and lack of any viable alternatives by way of their constant campaign of enshittification of everything, quashing competition, and giving NGOs, intelligence agencies, and government departments access to the controls of censorship and suppression of political opposition.

I haven't and won't use Google AI for anything, ever, because of any of the big labs, they are most likely and best positioned to engage in the worst and most damaging abuse possible, be it manipulation, invasion of privacy, or casual violation of civil rights at the behest of bureaucratic tyrants.

If it's not illegal, they'll do it. If it's illegal, they'll only do it if it doesn't cost more than they can profit. If they profit, even after getting caught and fined and taking a PR hit, they'll do it, because "number go up" is the only meaningful metric.

The only way out is principled regulation, a digital bill of rights, and campaign finance reform. There's probably no way out.