People don’t care about Technology
and Technology doesn’t care about People.
You already deeply, fundamentally, and inherently understand what I mean after reading only the headline. But since this is an article not a Tweet, I’ll expand on the thesis.
People don’t care about POTS or DSL or GSM or CDMA or WiFi or 3G or LTE or 4G or UWB or 5G or 6G. People don’t care about SMS or MMS or RCS or A2DP or HFP or SBC or AAC or LC3 or BLE. People don’t care about email or iMessage or Google Chat or Facebook Messenger or Slack or WhatsApp or Signal or WeChat or SnapChat or LinkedIn Messages. People don’t care about Apple or Google or Facebook or Amazon or Microsoft or FCC or IEEE or 3GPP or Bluetooth SIG or XRA.
People care about people.
Some people are inherently more selfish than social. These people are called assholes. However, there’s an exception here, and it’s a rather odd one that stems from a legal definition. A corporation is also a person.
While a human being is defined as a “natural person,” a corporation is defined as a “legal person.” There are many different corporate structures, but the predominant one used by the US Tech Titans currently ruling the planet is called C corporation.
In the evolving community of legal persons, a C corporation is an asshole.
An inherently good & law abiding corporation is not free to prioritize its employees, its community, its society (i.e. natural persons) over the profit-hungry interests of shareholders (i.e. soulless persons) if it is structured as a C corp. It is bound to its legal obligation, its fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.
Apple and all the other US Tech Titans are like the bus driver in Speed. Capitalism has rigged the thing to explode if the driver lets off the gas. Break out the popcorn and fasten your seatbelts. It’s gonna be a suspenseful ride. Wait… buses don’t have seatbelts. Ok then just try to stay calm, if you can.
Galileo was a martyr in the epic battle between the Catholic Church and Copernican heliocentrism. Despite the fury with which the Catholic Church fought, it ultimately lost the battle to define the relative motion of celestial bodies in our beloved solar system.
If you’re a heretic than so am I.
You see, no matter how much wealth and power and weaponry and influence you may wield, words have a tricky way of catching like fire. And you can’t fight fire with wealth or power or weaponry or influence.
Your fortress is not safe from a scorched Earth - it can burn from the inside out, no matter how impenetrable you make it.
On the whole, shareholders don’t care about people, neither natural persons or legal persons. Shareholders only care about money and they only care about corporate profit as a means of generating money for themselves. They don’t care where you build your products, how you source your material, how you dispose of your waste, how you treat your employees. Well, to be fair, they do care about these things, but only due to the indirect impact they have on corporate profit, and perhaps also to whatever extent they still have a soul.
Shareholders have demonstrated prioritizations time and again.
You’ve gotta break some eggs to make an omelette, right?
Wrong. You don’t have to make an omelette.
At Apple’s recent annual shareholder meeting, we saw how this played out. 64.4% of shareholders agreed with Apple that paying Tim Cook 1447 times more than the average Apple employee seemed fair. Now to be fair, this year’s meeting wasn’t all old boys club pats on the back.
Two shareholder proposals passed during this annual meeting of Apple owners. Given Apple’s public-facing values and the recent flaring of long-standing civil rights concerns within our global society, it seems odd that Apple would recommend against a shareholder proposal to conduct a Civil Rights Audit. Regardless, the proposal passed by 53.6% of shareholders.
Unsurprisingly, given their dishonest & overt effort to block Nia Capital’s proposal for a Report on Concealment Clauses, Apple also recommended against this one. Unfortunately, at the shareholder meeting Apple announced that the proposal did not pass. But *wait* surprise & delight- it actually did pass! What percentage of shareholders supported this one? 50.4%
Ok, enough about breaking eggs, how about making omelettes? The world and I both love Apple deeply, and we love the products that Apple makes. No small part of our admiration stems from the values Apple upholds.
I don’t love Apple because they pay me a lot of money. I don’t love Apple because their products cost a lot of money.
I love Apple because Apple is Apple.
But Apple’s shareholders are beginning to ruin things and rot the Apple core. However, the wealth and power and weaponry and influence that they wield is no match for the transformative nature of words.
Apple’s shareholders defeated a proposal to reincorporate Apple as a Social Purpose Corporation rather than a C Corporation. It’s no surprise that this proposal was defeated, but make no mistake - it did not fail. It was just “ahead of its time.” Social Purpose Corporations, and the more stringent Benefit Corporation, and the even more stringent B Corp certification, are all newly developing corporate structures. Definitely not ready for prime time with the US Tech Titans.
But if Apple means what they say and wishes to genuinely uphold its social & environmental values, it’ll ultimately have to practice what it preaches. Apple is a leader & innovator in Tech, so no one expects them to pave the way towards more equitable & sustainable corporate structure. However, Patagonia and others are blazing the trail if not building the highway.
I think more of us shareholders, customers, employees, people, and human beings ought to follow in their footsteps on this rocky ascent to climb the mountain of Capitalism and plant a new flag atop it.
This article is the first of a 2-part series, paired with the second here.
