• archonet
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    2 days ago

    Why, exactly? Genuinely asking. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m no Apple fan, and he was absolutely an insufferable douchebag to nearly everyone he knew; and was a verifiable self-righteous fuckwit who Darwin’d himself out of existence by choosing woo-woo bullshit over medicine for a very treatable cancer.

    Evil, though, I think might be a stretch – Elon, Thiel, Vance, Trump, Murdoch, the Sackler family, the Koch brothers, etc. all excellent contenders for being truly evil – but afaik Jobs was just a dickhead with an ego the size of a blimp, and I think we ought not dilute that term with just your run-of-the-mill dickheads. Unless you know something I don’t about him.

      • archonet
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        2 days ago

        This told me nothing I didn’t already know. Like I said, he was a dickhead, to almost every single person in his personal and professional life. But evil requires a level of maliciousness that transcends the people you are in physical contact with, imo – you have to be actively striving to make life worse for at least a few hundred people or more.

        A dickhead and a shitty father, sure, I’m not defending his actions in the slightest. But “evil” would require him to have done something much worse than just treat his kid and the people in his immediate orbit like shit. Just my opinion.

        • Draces@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          evil requires a level of maliciousness that transcends the people you are in physical contact with, imo

          That’s a very strange definition. He also led moving manufacturing to China. You may have heard of the suicide nets they had to put up in their facilities.

          • The_Decryptor@aussie.zone
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            12 hours ago

            I’ve never understood why it’s just Apple that seems to get the blame for using Foxconn, they’re estimated to make 40% of all consumer electronics. Nintendo uses them for all their consoles (since the GameCube), Sony use them for their hardware (TVs, the PlayStation, etc.), MS for the Xbox, Amazon for the Kindles, Google for the Pixels, etc.

            I don’t want this to sound like whataboutism, but I’ve just literally never understood why people seemingly overlook all the other companies using them to place the blame solely on Apple.

          • archonet
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            2 days ago

            ah, see, now that’s more like it.

            • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.ee
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              2 days ago

              that’ll do it for you, eh?

              as someone else pointed out, your definition of evil is quite interesting in that a qualification is that it goes past people they are in physical proximity to.

              not sure where you got that, seems a little comic-book-y… how about a nurse in a hospital that slowly poisons a child, watching doctors be baffled and see the parents fall apart with unspeakable grief because she likes the drama and was bored. not evil?

              • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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                2 days ago

                There are plenty of people who are jackasses to those around them, and ruthless in business.

                Describing someone or something as evil really calls for something a bit more dramatic.

                • archonet
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                  1 day ago

                  This.

                  Use words accurately, or you dilute their meaning. Being a shit person is one thing, being evil is on another level. Conflating the real evil fuckers of this world with your average asshole diminishes the true depth of their awfulness.

                  That said, yeah, brutal sweatshops in china were a thing before Apple moved out of his parents garage, so pushing for manufacturing there does indeed make him qualify.

          • tibi@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I tend to agree. Being a narcissistic asshole isn’t the same as being evil. In the first case, it means doing bad things because you are self centered and have no regard for other people. The bad things aren’t done to hurt others, just to in a self serving way. Being evil requires an intent to do harm.

        • steventhedev@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          He was the ringleader of an illegal anti-poaching agreement between tech companies that kept worker salaries down.

          He’s the root cause of much of what is broken with modern tech hiring. Bill gates is responsible for the other half (trick questions, etc)

    • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      It shouldn’t surprise you. Being evil is practically a requirement for that level of success as a capitalist.