Addressing he NCPPR representative directly, he said: “If you want me to do things only for ROI [return on investment] reasons, you should get out of this stock.”
Um… That’s what he is paid for and if he doesn’t want to do that, perhaps it is he who should be thinking about getting out. Investors aren’t investing their money for the benefit of the AGW religion, they are investing because they want a return and rightly so.
Cook, who is generally known for his level-headed demeanour, also insisted that he places more importance on helping people and the environment than on pure profit, saying: “When we work on making our devices accessible to the blind, I don’t consider bloody ROI.”
Well, you should. That’s your job.
The 53-year-old has also committed millions of dollars of Apple’s money to various good causes – in contrast to his predecessor Jobs, who reportedly once told colleagues that giving money to charity was a waste of time.
I might not have had much time for Jobs, but in this instance, he was right. The state takes money and gives it to charity. While it does that, then we – and that includes businesses – should refrain from giving. It is not the place of the state to give out money to causes we may not wish to support.
Anyway, Tim Cook can believe in whatever he wants. However, to accuse not only potential investors but potential customers of being “deniers” because they question the orthodoxy of AGW is pretty foolish. Just reading below the line of this article you see a fairly typical reaction to his wild insults. If he wants to lose Apple investors and customers, he’s going the right way about it.
I’ve never bought an Apple product and have no plans to.
ALL money in a company belongs to its shareholders exclusively for their benefit, not for management to indulge their ideologies or causes.
I have used Apple computers for more than a decade now, I get annoyed at the ignorance of supposedly intelligent CEO’s. It took years for Mac to shake of the never quite there image and now that they have a reputation for expensive ( although compared to 10 years ago they are MUCH more reasonable ) quality products it only takes an egotistical prick like this to bugger their hard won reputation. I am a died in the wool skeptic, about everything but I will continue to use their computers, they can shove the tablets and phones up their collective arse as I won’t buy anything that actively allows TPTB to spy on me.
I have to disagree with you on this one.
“ROI” used to be one of those vague hand-wavy “happiness” measurements. Its current meaning is a corruption, not its original intent. It’s like worshipping at the altar of the Body Mass Index.
Besides which: “consumer goodwill” _is_ a perfectly valid return on investment! Apple are in the boutique consumer electronics market and making people feel good about what they’ve just bought is a part of that. This is marketing and PR. And those both tend to lead to profits in the medium and long term.
Apple don’t do this merely because it helps Tim Cook sleep at night: Apple’s move towards low-footprint products – Apple frequently list the eco-credentials of their products, such as using lead-free glass, bromide-free circuitry, etc. – began years ago, well before Steve Jobs died of complications caused by stubbornness and ignorance.
That’s just common sense, whether you agree with the AGW bollocks or not: less waste = lower manufacturing costs = increased profits. It’s why this whole scam about businesses “wanting” to pollute our world has always been complete nonsense: not merely because businesses are also run by human beings who have no particular desire to be killed by their own products, but mainly because most businesses wouldn’t *survive* if they kept using old manufacturing processes and equipment for decades. Even Foxconn are investing heavily in automation and robotic production lines. Robots don’t need wages, feeding or sleep.
The goal of *any* business involved in designing and selling physical products for money is to increase efficiency by cutting out the waste in their processes. All successful businesses do this. And this is why CEOs who plan for the long haul are much more valuable to an economy over their lifetimes than short-termist asset-strippers like Icahn and the equally blinkered greed of the NCPPR.
The NCPPR is wrong on this one. They desire short-term gain, and that kind of short-termist greed is what tanked the economy last time. And the time before that. And the time before that…