I've been trying to think about the cognitive dissonance that I might fall victim to as well as what I think I see in online discourse. Cognitive dissonance, but also binary thinking.
For example, if one were to compress a lot of the recent narrative we see, an alternative take on this news would be something like: "Apple supports far-right billionaire who gave Nazi salute and is transphobic". An alternative (gaslighting version) could be "Gay billionaire gives money to richest man on the planet who pushes Nazi propaganda".
If one is principled or a social justice advocate, should one then not decry (boycott) Apple and Tim Cook's actions? What about the shareholders of Apple? What about Apple employees?
And if you don't, is it because you don't really believe those accusations against said billionaire OR is that you would rather have your devices or your salary or your AAPL stock?
> There's no other company to send satellites now, there's plenty of places to advertise.
There is only one company that can launch satellites? Even if that were true, your statement is a form my original comment is trying to dissect. The statement you made suggests that once a moral stand inconveniences even the most ardent moralist, they are likely to cave, or to put it more directly: "talk is cheap".
Nah, the government should definitely find other companies to do this job or invest in its own capacity to do it again, but comparing buying ads to deploying satellites makes no sense at all. One is a commodity and the other is a highly specialized business mostly propped up by government itself.
We can do a thought experiment: if the Democratic Party had won, would they have boycotted SpaceX? We can't know for sure what the answer to that would be, but I have a strong suspicion.
The Biden government didn't invite Tesla to an official EV summit where Biden declared GM's Mary Barra as the pioneer of EVs when GM sold 28 EVs that quarter and Tesla sold 200K+.
WSJ later revealed the snub was because of union pressure after donating a lot to the Biden campaign. That's one of the reasons that Musk went down this path after having voted for Biden.
> The Biden government didn't invite Tesla to an official EV summit where Biden declared GM's Mary Barra as the pioneer of EVs when GM sold 28 EVs that quarter and Tesla sold 200K+.
The problem with that is while it triggered Musk, I don't know that it actually accomplished anything useful. Did it affect Musk financially? Or his reputation? Unless there's an impact that I'm aware of, I would classify the act as toothless or, more euphemistically, "not as effective as it could be".
> I don't know that it actually accomplished anything useful
It was a form of kickback to their big donor, the UAW, for a long time they were planning to exclude Tesla from EV subsidies and gave up on that plan only at the last minute.
Then the govt came in with bags of money to try and neutralize the advantage of Tesla's supercharger network by building a bigger network with taxpayer funds. So that the supercharger network wouldn't be a competitive advantage over the UAW car companies who neglected building charging stations and EVs despite billions in profit every year.
Tesla got a lot of that money. Many wanted to only give the money to union facilities, but because the Biden government was functional they dropped the stupid parts of their plans.
Tesla didn't get that money, people who bought EVs got an paid directly by the govt on them and for some reason picked Tesla at a higher rate than other car companies.
It was an EV summit, not about converting ICE to EVs. Even Biden's press secretary made it no secret that it was coz of unions(see quote below), as did a WSJ story after a couple of years quoting insider sources. Also Biden praised GM's Mary Barra as the pioneer of EVs, it was so bizarre, there's video.
> White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Tesla’s absence at her briefing Thursday ahead of the event.
> “Well, we of course welcome the efforts of automakers who recognize the potential of an electric vehicle future and support efforts that will help reach the President’s goal, and certainly Tesla is one of those companies,” Psaki said. “I would not expect this is the last time we talk about clean cars and the move towards electric vehicles, and we look forward to having a range of partners in that effort.”
> Asked if Tesla being a nonunion company was the reason it wasn’t included Thursday, Psaki replied, “Well, these are the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.”
You'll find lots of Apple users/developers on Mastodon and Bluesky who are speaking out about this (and the "Gulf of America" capitulation as well). Exactly what form of decrying do you require?
> You'll find lots of Apple users/developers on Mastodon and Bluesky who are speaking out about this (and the "Gulf of America" capitulation as well). Exactly what form of decrying do you require?
Complaining on social media sites (that one could argue are niche if you think about user numbers or share of advertising dollars or countless other metrics) is cheap and can be reasonably interpreted as loud but shallow moral outrage.
For example, if one were to compress a lot of the recent narrative we see, an alternative take on this news would be something like: "Apple supports far-right billionaire who gave Nazi salute and is transphobic". An alternative (gaslighting version) could be "Gay billionaire gives money to richest man on the planet who pushes Nazi propaganda".
If one is principled or a social justice advocate, should one then not decry (boycott) Apple and Tim Cook's actions? What about the shareholders of Apple? What about Apple employees?
And if you don't, is it because you don't really believe those accusations against said billionaire OR is that you would rather have your devices or your salary or your AAPL stock?