Goodbye

Looking at it as an experiment, my experience with blogging has been interesting. The views expressed on this page are not representative of my own. My objective was to take a current event (at the time of the creation of this blog, Steve Jobs death) and express an opinion contrary to the general feeling of the public. I wanted to make it as controversial as possible, with the hopes of attracting attention based on sheer dissent.

At first, it worked. Page views peaked at 75 views per day during the midst of the hype surrounding Job's death, but it soon became very obvious that a blog topic like this one has an extremely limited life. I chose to expand to corporate America as a whole, and not just the Steve/Jobs case, in the hope to attract a wider audience. Unfortunately, with such long intervals between posts, returning traffic would be greeted with the same content they viewed when they left the page.

That's the story of this blog, and this is it's conclusion,

Over and out. 

The Corporation: Kleptocrat

Kleptocracy: a government or state in which those in power exploit a nation's resources

In an era of financial uncertainty; bailouts, tax cuts, and economic policy change have become ubiquitous. The animator behind these changes is the corporation, with its chokehold on the American population. The corporation has become such a determinant of the international standing of a country that it has begun to define it. But what is the corporation? In most cases it is little more than a cloak hiding inner workings of extortions of the hard working American family. Take a second to think about how entwined your life and 'the corporation' have become, and how unwittingness let it come this far.

Child Labor

Although child labor is on the decline, it's remains widespread and prevalent throughout developing countries, fueled largely in part by corporate America. 200 million children are affected by child labor, and 120 million of these are subject to its worst form. Consumer greed aside, decreased marginal costs, increased revenues and profit margins, and decidedly larger bonuses lead unethical managers to offshore production to contractors with full workforces of children, from ages 5-14. It goes without saying that employing children for manual labor is morally intolerable.

Moving On

Barnes and Noble has finally sold out of Steve Jobs' biography (not a fact), and the hype surrounding his death is beginning to die off. But has the evil disappeared with it?

It's time we move our sights to new targets, to people and organizations that may not have the same following as Mr. Apple did, but share the same selfish motives and disregard for the humanity for the promise of rich returns. When you think of corporations that foster injustice, corporations like Enron, Tyco Ltd., and financial service firms like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch come to mind. Accounting and deception scandals made these companies headline news around the world. What about the companies that deal damage to humankind itself, and not just their wallets?

Deadbeat Daddy

Many people don't know that Steve Jobs had an illegitimate daughter, Lisa. Steve had his first daughter with his on-again-off-again girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978 and denied paternity, going so far as to argue infertility in court (he has had 3 "legitimate" children since). After he lost the case, he would visit infrequently — so little in fact that at 3 years old, she had no idea who he was! Quoting Jobs "I didn't want to be a father, so I wasn't". Although this doesn't get you a one a way ticket to the Inferno, I think the quote and his actions speak volumes of his character.

Do You Think iCare?

Since the release of the first iPhone there have been 17 suicides at the Foxconn factory in China, the factory where most of the iPhone components are manufactured. The working conditions are grueling — a million employees all doing the same repetitive, soul-destroying tasks. In response to the suicides and the controversy concerning Apple's role in the deaths Jobs is quoted as saying, "Although every suicide is tragic, Foxconn's suicide rate is well below the China average", insinuating that working conditions were not a factor at all. Pretty twisted to think of death as stats and numbers, but hey, who am I to talk? I've got a "Steve's Time in Hell" counter on my homepage.

Steve iScrewed Charity Programs

When Jobs returned to Apple after the NeXT acquisition in 1997, he had an agenda. High on his list was cutting funding for all corporate philanthropic programs. This goal was accomplished within only a few short weeks of his return. He reasoned that it was necessary until he could bring the company back to profitability; however, when the company recorded profits of $309 million in 1998, there was no rebuilding of the philanthropic programs seen before the cuts. In fact, under Jobs, it wasn't until 2006 with the arrival of Product Red iPods that another philanthropic program was established. Destination: Hell.