"If I'm not mugging the grandma, somebody else will" is the most disingenuous excuse of all.

You're confusing morality and legality, and it seems you're in good company around here. But it's not the role of corporate to white knighting a country cultural revolution.

Still, interestig to see a nice quip at a completely wrong scale/context captivate such a large audience.

> But it's not the role of corporate to white knighting a country cultural revolution.

You are aware that that is just your arbitrary declaration of what you think their role should be, right? I hereby declare that their role is to do just that. What now?

now china boots you out and you lose a huge market for nothing. oh, and the competitor now enjoying the higher margins will use that money to boost their brand globally, so now you've got less margin and more competition.

How do you know that?

because corporation cannot act for long above the law. whether you like the laws or not doesn't matter.

There is no such thing "the role of a corporate". A company is what you do with it.

corporate acting above the law will quickly find themselves dissolved and ousted from the market. this is not about what people feels it's good or bad, it's about what's legal and what's not in a country.

Sure. And they can simply not operate in that country.

When you consider selection, it winds up the same. Say in china if you follow the pollution laws, your competitors will undercut you and they won't suffer any consequences because rule of law is weak. So if you follow the rules, you go out of business, you don't exist anymore, leaving just polluting companies around.

Likewise, Apple can play China's game, or just cease to exist in china where someone else will merely take their place. The situation is exactly the same, grandma is getting mugged no matter what.

But...even worse than that though, the company has to compete with those Chinese players outside of china as well, and leaving Chinese market share out, that can make it harder....they could disappear entirely from the rest of the world as well (assuming Chinese players are competent outside of china, which admittedly hasn't been shown yet). So at the end of the day, of competition is working perfectly, those that refuse to play in a market can simply be selected out completely. Leaving only players who are willing to mug grandma...not because all the companies are evil, but because the non evil companies died off.

It isn't simple. In the long run, a political solution will be needed, we can't leave morality up to private companies that have to compete or die.

I don't think Apple is going to die if they don't sell in China.

They get what...30-40% of their profits from China?

Here is how it would play out: Tim announces they are leaving China, Apple stock loses 90% of its value overnight, Tim is removed as CEO, new CEO comes in and says they are staying in China, Apple stock recovers 70% of its value.

So ya, even if Apple isn't selected out, Tim certainly would be. You are suggesting actions that a publicly traded company just cannot make. Don't try to outsource such morality to companies, they don't have the ability to act like that and exist at the same time.

>They get what...30-40% of their profits from China?

~20% in Q117, down 12% from Q116 [0]. China is their only shrinking market (at least at the granularity of data provided).

[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/Q1FY17DataSummary.pdf

So 32% one year ago, 20% today. China is much more sensitive to the iPhone release schedule than other markets, their drop in china has more to do with a meh on the iPhone 8 than anything else.

And Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world no? They can't spend the money they earn. They could lose 20% and still not be able to spend what they make.