Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
A couple points here:
-- AT&T top executives were not celebrities. Maybe they had a Nobel prize scientist (did they?), but the CEO was less prominent than Tim Cook.
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Tim Cook isn't a celebrity. He's a CEO. If he were fired tomorrow, all the Apple fanboys would have an apoplectic fit, but after a day or two, no one would really care. They'd all be speculating about the new guy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
-- In 1981, AT&T was number 1 in market capitalization, as Apple is today, and by roughly similar margins. But the percentage of the US public who owned stock was less than today. And the percentage of the public who loved AT&T products (and associated them with the company) was small compared to the hoards of Apple fanboys.
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Everyone used the Bell System. Well, almost everyone, except for some areas served by General Telephone, like Santa Monica.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
One problem with punishing people for crime is that it, to a large extent, hurts innocent bystanders. Lock up a burglar, and you devastate his children. But we do that anyway. Lock up Tim Cook, and you hurts a couple million stockholders. That, I predict, we won't do.
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The whole purpose of punishing a company is to punish the shareholders for not adequately supervising the management. The shareholders do this by electing a board, who is supposed to look after the shareholder's interests.
If a company is behaving badly, the shareholders deserve to be punished for it. Hopefully, it will teach them to be wiser when voting for the board members.