Apple Createth and Apple Destroyeth

Private companies that become very large, influential, corrupt and “evil” are not all that uncommon. In the pre-Internet age, to become bigger beyond a point required government support (legally or illegally). Even in capitalistic nations. Just consider the coal scam and 2G scam to see the role of government in enabling private companies on their way to dominance. Or take the East India Company that even got military backing from the British government: it was so big that it accounted for “half of the world's trade” as per Wikipedia!

But the Internet era companies, while equally big (and potentially evil), don't rely on government backing to become what they are, especially in capitalistic countries (did the government force you to join Facebook? To search using Google? To buy via Amazon? Conversely, did the government do anything to prevent others from competing with these companies?).

And then there’s Apple.

Apple had accumulated a cash hoard of $150 billion just a year back. How much money is that? It is one and a half times UK's spending on their entire educational system. 10% of America's budget deficit in 2012. In other words, comparable to entire nations' spending on some things, and we are not talking 3rd world countries here!

And it’s not just all that cash that makes Apples a mini-power globally. It has the ability to hit entire countries by coming up with new products that make something else obsolete. Finland's Prime Minister, Alexander Stubb acknowledged as much:
“We had two pillars that supported us. Nalle Wahlroos described it pretty well when he said that iPhone struck down Nokia and iPad hit the forest industry.”
The forest industry? The iPad reduced the use of paper that much!

And now with rumours of Apple's new watch swirling, Nick Bilton commented on the next country that might be collateral damage to the Apple juggernaut:
“According to a designer who works at Apple, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, in bragging about how cool he thought the iWatch was shaping up to be, gleefully said Switzerland is in trouble — though he chose a much bolder term for “trouble” to express how he thought the watchmaking nation might be in a tough predicament when Apple’s watch comes out.”

So much power in the hands of a private corporation that doesn’t even have government backing. Now just imagine the power of the next pseudo-private corporation out of China…

Comments

  1. KumarSeptember 9, 2014 at 4:09 PM

    Very interesting.
    I particularly liked your catch title "Apple createth and Apple destroyeth".

    ReplyDelete

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