At least our current surface finishing technology has advanced so we no longer see the kid sized hand prints [1]. "Apple’s cobalt batteries are built on the backs of child labor in mines, causing severe physical harm to children and violating international standards of human rights." [2] Their PR: "Apple will use 100 percent recycled cobalt in batteries by 2025" [3].

[1] Kid sized hand prints on old victorian roof tiles, https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/13oser2/...

[2] 2022, Child Labor and the Human Rights Violations Embedded in Producing Technology, https://www.culawreview.org/journal/child-labor-and-the-huma...

[3] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/04/apple-will-use-100-pe...

You seem to be assuming that 3 is a lie, but I'm pretty sure someone would notice if Apple wasn't actually changing the sources of their rare earths.

Tracing the source of materials is very non-trivial. Even diamonds, where UUIDs are commonplace, still have to manage the influx of blood diamonds into the global supply chain.

Cobalt is not a rare earth. Changing sources happens gradually, mostly not overnight.

PR means Public Relations and I meant nothing more than the fact that it is an Apple official response. Certainly says something about our times when you directly expect PR to be lies.

They might just as well change their sources now, or after 2025. The trillions are already in their banks; the children that mined until now are dead or close to; we, the consuming public, have been compromised because we like shiny toys (I own quite a few Apple products, at least a dozen children, they are so frail, must have been murdered to manufacture them); all is great. All that's left is to think of a truly unimaginable science fiction story: a $2.7+ trillion company is found guilty for the death of one single child and the company is dissolved.

They're using the Walmart playbook

Some context may be needed. Walmart is known in MBA circles for being one of the first companies to have used detailed data on products to negotiate new terms with suppliers ( usually to suppliers detriment ). Information asymmetry with main goal to increase a chance for an increased leverage is what it is all about.

I suspect the information asymmetry is as big a factor as the scale difference. In most negotiations, Walmart can fundamentally affect the bottom line of the counter party in a way that just isn't true in the other direction. They are more than happy to use this to the counter party's detriment, and even sometimes the consumers.

I wonder if the supplier can similarly have the detailed data on the customer and how that helps in negotiating both ways.

It's asymmetrical for the most part on a lot of stuff Was listening to Bloomberg the other day and they were talking about how Walmart is the biggest grocer in US. They have pricing power because for example they constitute something over 5% of all Heinz sales. Similar for paper products from one of the big companies like Procter & Gamble.

The inverse is not true, as you are unlikely to find any vendor who Walmart makes 5%+ of all their sales dollars off of.

So Walmart can generally turn to any of these vendors and say - we will evaporate 5% of your sales overnight if you don't give into demand, and send all our orders to some competitor.

I've never understood this. If you're not making enough profit - or even loosing money - selling to a large client, you are better off without them. Profit should come before everything else, including growth.

Then you wouldn't exist. Even the smallest business goes through years of losses before it (hopefully) reaches profitability. Pay to sell is the only way nearly 100% of incumbents have to simply exist. If they don't do it, someone else will

Traditionally, businesses build a reputation and customers learn where to find them (a physical location). They then become and stay profitable. Anyone depending on a monopolist for its pay-to-sell strategy won't usually reach profitability. The monopolist might be as small as a greedy feudal lord in the middle ages. Today we have Apple/Google etc

There is a real difference between starting a business and running it at a loss before reaching profitability and consciously entering a contract, where you know you are producing at a loss ( and your contract partner benefits ) that only furthers your profitability gap. If this is the opening bid, it is highly unlikely it will get better. If anything, it will only get worse. You don't make it up in volume when you sell at a loss already.

<< If they don't do it, someone else will

That is the interesting part. The pressure is so high that people are willing to forego their own self-interest and basic critical thinking skills, because someone will do it at or below cost anyway. It is great for Walmart, but it would explain why so many businesses fail so hard. They are way too nice to the other party.

Not enough profit is different from loosing money.

Here the vendors are simply making less money because their product is part of a highly competitive marketplace.

Not enough profit is the main reason to shut down a business, unless you have a good and realistic plan on how to reverse that. All that effort and all that risk can be put into more lucrative ventures.

Not enough profit is different from loosing money.

Here the vendors are simply making less money because their product is part of a highly competitive marketplace. Furthermore, their position is weakened because they are poorly differentiated from their competition.

Ok, so what do people expect the alternative route is? It's a known strategy, that works, and increases profit if implemented correctly.

The alternative route people would prefer is for people in charge of these companies to act ethically and not try to squeeze everyone around them for every cent of profit possible. Especially if you're already one of the richest companies to ever exist. That's not very realistic, though, since sociopathy is essentially taught in business schools now.

This. And I'd add, we'd like a legal environment that rewards people and companies who act in this way over those companies that act unethically in pursuit of profit.

So, what corporation pursuit should be deemed ethical if not profit then?

> people in charge of these companies to act ethically and not try to squeeze everyone around them for every cent of profit possible

That's our stock market though. If Walmart isn't squeezing on costs, then it needs to make that up in gross revenue otherwise the stock will suffer.

Is it possible to be "ethical" in how you define it, when the financial market performance of the company is largely dependent on this?

Doesn't Toyota do something like that - from what I remember, they actually assist their partner-supplier-small-businesses to grow with soft loans, technical help and business advise?

If you work full time at federal minimum wage then you qualify for food stamps and other government assistance.

Walmart took it a step further - they have information for their employees on how to do that efficiently, rather than paying a living wage.

Everyone is trying to squeeze everyone else, including you. This isn't about sociopathy, this is just the human condition.

And yet somehow, not too long ago before the sociopaths were allowed to squeeze people, it was possible to buy a house and have a family on one income and your local grocery store could make that happen for it's employees. Now Walmart will literally openly admit full time employees cannot make enough to survive and teach their own full time employees how to beg the government for enough resources to live.

Then we are just blind mice in the maze and can just as well stop talking now. Excuse me, I have some carbon to release into the atmosphere.

Ok, so I agree with any ethics around how people are treated, but a corporation? All this does is squashes Wistron potential profit, no? Are there ethics around how much companies should profit? Should all companies profits be equal?

> Especially if you're already one of the richest companies to ever exist.

How do you think they got there in the first place?

This is part of it, but a bigger part is simply that Walmart approached suppliers with a proposed volume that would require the company to rebuild themselves as an operation in order to meet that demand and the required service levels, at the price Walmart was willing to pay.

If they succeeded (many didn't, ending in bankruptcy), the supplier was now trapped: no one could offer Walmart levels of volume, which the supplier now had to operate at to make a profit. Walmart could come back next year and demand lower prices. They famously joked amongst themselves that their goal was to drive out all profit for their suppliers.

Vlassic Pickles is the classic example of a company that took the offer, rebuilt themselves, and became massively larger than they were before.

I worked at a manufacturer for several years in IT. Walmart was a customer, but only in a limited way (i.e., without requiring huge volumes and service levels[0]). Our main competitor, Rubbermaid, was a tier 1 supplier. When Rubbermaid's main factory in the segment burned down, Rubbermaid withdrew from Walmart as a supplier, citing low profit margins. We got the call to come to Bentonville, where they offered us the chance to replace Rubbermaid, which would mean a fundamental restructuring of our entire operation to service them. We (wisely) declined.

[0] An example of the service level required: Walmart would send an order by EDI that would include a two hour window for delivery, 24 hours out, for a store. That meant you had to have inventory and drivers within a certain distance from every Walmart location so that you could immediately pick the order, get it on a truck, and arrive at the store within that two hour window.

I remember a claim (from Vlassic itself?) also that Walmart pushed them into producing larger volume SKU's, against their (Vlassic's) detailed data on usage, shelf life, etc. Result: more mouldy pickles in peoples refrigerators. Hurt Vlassic as a brand, not really in consumer interest, but Walmart could advertize a $/volume nobody could match.

I met an independent trucker who said he sometimes did pressure relief for a large logistics company but would refuse any Walmart deliveries (not to the stores, to central warehouses). He claimed they gave you a 15 min delivery slot on a cross country route, they only way to avoid penalties was to aim to be there hours early and wait on your slot. He said it basically added 3-6 unpaid hours for every trip, and wasn't worth it.

Wow, both examples of single metrics actually hurting the efficiency of the system as a whole.

Mouldy pickles aint good.

Underutilized trucks aint good either.

Remember that when somebody starts talking about how what we have is just a Free Market and the market forces make everything optimized and smooth.

Yes it does, but we don't have a perfect Free Market. It's as elusive as the the perfect Communism.

(Mother Nature is a neutral judge though and keeps score.)

The book The United States of Wal-Mart by John Dicker laid this all out pretty clearly nearly 20 years ago.

* corrected spelling the author's name.

**https://www.amazon.com/United-States-Wal-Mart-John-Dicker/dp...

also another story: https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know-2

Wow that was a oldie. Great link.

Does this book really exist? Google search on Amazon shows no results for this.

Appears the author's last name was a typo. Its John Dicker[0] not Decker

[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/312990

I miss spelled the author's last name but the result still shows up:

https://www.amazon.com/United-States-Wal-Mart-John-Dicker/dp...

This is the same playbook the auto industry has followed for the past 50 years or so.

> "There just isn't a sense of urgency," one Apple engineer remarked."

Apple meets India, nothing new. They'll just have to adapt.

https://youtu.be/BTd-PWYQy4Y

As an aside, it’s ridiculous that video got flagged as a video for kids and suggests downloading the YouTube Kids app.

And there's no way to give feedback that it's been miscategorised

FWIW I think the uploader sets this flag, not some algorithm.

It's not that simple, YouTube itself can also set it, and I'm not sure how that works, maybe it's algorithmic. Sometimes it's done manually.

It's a pirated video (but the original channel seems to be missing that video https://youtube.com/@selfhelpsingh)

> this is what apple does

This is what globalism does. Take the environmental destruction and shitty working conditions that would never be allowed in your own country to other countries and centralize the profits from doing so into the hands of a few.

This is what capitalism does. Crossing borders might make things easier because laws and the cost of doing business will vary, but using your power to squeeze every cent you possibly can out of your business partners is a function of capitalism and not globalism.

No, mercantilist and imperialist societies (Roman Empire, British Empire) did this long before the modern era of private capital. Capitalism is just another in a long line of systems under which wealth and power concentrates into the hands of a few and the many are disadvantaged. The only new thing here is the degree to which technology can extend lines of communication and trade.

Except mercantilist and imperialist societies got their way through violence. They didn't really have "business partners" to squeeze in a modern sense. They had subjects they would steal from and oppress. Capitalism was supposed to be different. Apple notably doesn't have a standing army bigger than the US like the East India Company did in relation to England. If the results end up looking similar, that is a huge indictment of the system.

It's cheaper without having a standing army. I wouldn't say that capitalism is another system, i would just say it's an evolution of imperialistic society that reached the equilibrium of most profit and least resistance from the people

What do you suggest as an alternative to our imperfect capitalism?

Star Trek

I too look forward to the post scarcity society that replicators would enable, but until then we as a species really need to learn to rein it in before we consume ourselves into a corner we can't get out of.

Globalism prevent wars by making countries dependant to each others (Montesquieu Doux commerce theory).

Globalism permits to all countries around the globe to develop.

Nobody is preventing these countries to set laws about environment and working condition (which they actually do).

And by the way, I invite you to go to these countries and visit the factories there, and you will realize that western companies are raising standards (security and quality) on their suppliers.

> Globalism prevent wars by making countries dependant to each others (Montesquieu Doux commerce theory).

He was wrong though, it appears, no? I mean one could argue that there would be more wars without globalism (I'd counter argue there would be less weapons) but one cannot say "globalism prevents wars" in general.

Coming from, let's say, 2nd-world-country that receives it's fair share of outsourcing...

There's absolutely a big push to keep employment laws as well as other laws „flexible“. And keep salaries as low as realistically possible. Otherwise MUH INVESTORS will go somewhere else. To be fair, it's not (just) foreign investors. Local elite is making $$$ providing support to incoming companies. Real estate moguls, construction companies, subcontractors etc.

Ultimately it is a race to the bottom to appease the sacred investor and let local elite enrich themselves.

No, it's a race to the bottom. It forces the countries to which manufacturing is outsourced to, to not have strict labour laws, low salaries, lenient pollution control and keep conditions generaly favourable for the company, at the cost of the people working there, or else the multi-billion dollar corpos will turn to another country to get the cheapest manufacturing possible

Unfortunately your theory falls apart once you read literally a single book on macroeconomics.

My theory that multi billion dollar companies base decisions like where to manufacture on costs? Or my theory that this set up forces lenient labour laws? I really do not know anything about economics, so would love to hear what you have to say. Would be helpful if you could link some things too

> would love to hear what you have to say

What he said, by implication, was "read a book on macroeconomics".

> If you see lots of positive or misdrecting comments, it's not necessarily a coincidence (imo).

I like HN a lot but for this type of topic, its consistently, desperately, and annoyingly un-objective (if thats a word). I do get that we humans tend to form echo chambers by ourselves just to validate our viewpoints and decisions however subjective they may be, but I expect a bit more than what I see here from some of the smartest folks on Earth.

Their influence is very visible also in other places, ie otherwise great web for photography - dpreview.com is a pure echo chamber for Apple. Every apple product is discussed in details and glorified, any problems are completely ignored. Most competition is given almost 0 coverage, especially direct competitors or those that currently surpass some of their tech at given time. And we don't talk US-vs-China stuff, many phone manufacturers don't have any China ties at all, or are outright US companies.

There is no way in hell Apple is not pouring tons of cash into ironing their fuckups, or just errors in judgement, infrequent as they are, and HN is way too visible and important to not be part of such an operation. To skip it would be a very junior mistake, and there are no juniors in this space in 2023, not with richest company globally.

> a sense of urgency

I've never heard this phrase from anyone that wasn't nakedly seeking power and compliance from others.

I first heard it from the military, where training seeks to recreate the stressful fast-pace conditions of an actual battle or war.

Years later I started hearing it in business too, as if management circles thought it would be useful in increasing production rates. Not accounting for the fact that levels of urgency similar to military training may not be sustainable in peacetime, and result in workforce burnout and other problems.

A better alternative I’ve seen in high-impact academic research groups is “focus”, rather than urgency. Focused effort produces research results, and can even be energizing rather than draining and burnout inducing. I would hope business circles would adopt that academic approach rather than the military one.

None of your statements disagree with the comment that you're replying to. All of those situations are ones in which people are nakedly demanding compliance

I didn’t say I disagreed.

That is not my experience at all. It's even used by sports announcers. As an example: "The offense needs to move with more sense of urgency given the clock."

In the workplace it's deployed against those with a blunted affect, ie on the autism or ADHD spectrum. If you're not visibly freaking out with everyone else, it's because you don't care. Sports probably doesn't have the same numbers of these populations as tech.

I've never seen it used in that kind of crude way. It is generally used when someone constantly is slow to respond or does not meet agreed milestones. In business, being late is much more noticeable in a negative way than being on the spectrum.

Your analogy is completely off base. There’s endurance sports and interval type of sports. The examples you provided are what seems to be interval type of sports.

High focus and high intensity is not sustainable over duration. Performance degrades over time without recovery.

> If you see lots of positive or misdrecting comments, it's not necessarily a coincidence (imo).

And right there the topic drowns in whataboutisms before it disappears from the frontpage.