I don't grasp this logic. Apple builds a feature to help with 911 services so they should fund 911 services? Apple also implemented Amber Alert support. Should they fund the Amber Alert system, too?
Aren't emergency services pretty clearly the government's job? You already pay a fee on your cell bill specifically to cover the cost of 911 services to your local and state governments.
Apple is building a feature that will help them maintain their image and gain more user trust and loyalty. Government services aren't capitalist companies, their job is to efficiently allocate budget, not to "out-compete" anyone.
If Apple starts subsidizing the cost of modern 911 (and building a feature into their mobile operating system to make 911 more accessible is surely subsidizing the cost of upgrading failing public safety infrastructure), they need to bear some responsibility for the system as a whole.
If richer areas see benefits from this and start to drop the amount they spend on something like a private, enterprise mobile 911 product, then other departments are going to follow suit, and suddenly you have less 911 support in poorer/more rural areas because that's where fewer people have iPhones, yet departments are still following national budgeting/spending trends.
You're saying that because Apple enables a feature that helps 911, they should cover he costs of 911 service.
What this implies is that everyone should do the bare minimum required by law, because if they do anything more they should expect to shoulder billions in infrastructure costs that would otherwise be correctly carried by the government.
> If richer areas see benefits from this and start to drop the amount they spend on something like a private, enterprise mobile 911 product, then other departments are going to follow suit, and suddenly you have less 911 support in poorer/more rural areas because that's where less people have iPhones, yet departments are still following national budgeting/spending trends.
You are arguing that lowered support costs will actually decrease support. This makes no sense.
Welcome to the world of government services, where it's literally, by definition, a different place than the capitalist business world.
>because Apple enables a feature that helps 911, they should cover he costs of 911 service.
Yes, there are services where our society has decided that the public government is more appropriate to manage that service, generally because competition motives would cause disadvantaged groups to receive proportionally less service.
If Apple is going to wade into one of these areas, they need to play by the rules of that public service, they can't just treat it like another business metric to compete with.
>What this implies is that everyone should do the bare minimum required by law, because if they do anything more they should expect to shoulder billions in infrastructure costs that would otherwise be correctly carried by the government.
Yes, I believe this is the correct (ethical) way to think about these motivations, because it removes some amount of capitalist competition from the equation, again, in an area that is not appropriate for private competition in this manner.
>You are arguing that lowered support costs will actually decrease support.
Yes, do you understand how budgeting works in government?
This has nothing to with government services and everything to do with the fact that you are describing a situation that is nonsensical.
> If Apple is going to wade into one of these areas, they need to play by the rules of that public service, they can't just treat it like another business metric to compete with.
Apple is not attempting to get in the business of running 911 call centers. They're sending an extra bit of data that call centers can choose to access. That's all. There is no "private competition" with the public service. This is no different than Apple supporting the Amber Alert system or AT&T providing your location to 911 services when they are able to.
> Yes, do you understand how budgeting works in government?
Do you? You're proposing that urban centers will see a drop in cost for 911 support (an outcome which by the way would be nice but is not supported by anything other than wild guesswork on your part) and then rural areas who have not experienced a drop in cost will lower their own budgets for some random reason.
Why do imagine Bumblefuck, Arkansas is looking at New York City's 911 costs instead of their own?
Let us not forget what happened when the convenience of plastics hit the markets, the trash collection sector of the government was inundated with material that it never had to deal with before, in quantities that the developed countries of the world now regret. City and county trash, which is considered the government's job, was utterly and forever ruined by plastic.
Consumers loved plastics, stores loved plastics, everybody loved plastics when it arrived because it was a tremendous improvement upon what existed before, which was mainly cardboard, paper, and glass containers. But trash companies had NO way to handle the quantities other than with landfills. The companies that used the most plastics saw the writing on the wall, they were going to be charged tremendous amounts for the plastic they were putting out. This is what created the recycling programs as we know it: "In order to avoid regulation and the banning of plastic products they used, the beverage and packaging industry pushed municipal recycling programs."[1] Impressive marketing work by pepsi/coke/fritolay to pass the buck.
Apple isn't doing the same thing, because they aren't literally trashing the world, this 911 feature does not create anywhere near such a negative externality, but to say that "we already pay our government for this" doesn't mean that the the corporation is off the hook, "we did our part, now you handle the 99% of effort and costs of getting this feature we are promoting to work, oh and you will need to assume the blame if and when things don't work". I don't think it should work that way...
> "In order to avoid regulation and the banning of plastic products they used, the beverage and packaging industry pushed municipal recycling programs."
This is tangential, but I'm not sure I buy this. It's not as if glass, cardboard, paper, and metal containers were evaporating into thin air. Pre-recycling, these were also all headed to landfills with few exceptions (e.g. glass Coke bottles).
> Apple isn't doing the same thing, because they aren't literally trashing the world, this 911 feature does not create anywhere near such a negative externality, but to say that "we already pay our government for this" doesn't mean that the the corporation is off the hook, "we did our part, now you handle the 99% of effort and costs of getting this feature we are promoting to work, oh and you will need to assume the blame if and when things don't work". I don't think it should work that way...
As you noted, this situation is far different. It creates no negative externality, because call centers can simply not upgrade and there is no change for them. Or they can upgrade and realistically that will involve paying a fee and they'll be done. The call centers are not bearing "99% of the effort and costs".
Yes, large device manufacturers should help fund the infrastructure they build product support into their products for. You might disagree with my opinion, but I don’t see the opinion as being wildly out of line.
If Apple doesn’t fund it, and per mobile line 911 taxes don’t cover it, everyone’s taxes have to go up to support Apples enhanced feature and the marketing goodwill they’ll receive. Does that seem fair?
I'm just at a loss. This is literally what taxes are for.
If you want to argue that Apple et al should have to pay for their use of, e.g., GPS, I could understand that. (Not agree, but understand.) GPS has enabled high-value features to be built into Apple's products. On the other hand, Amber alert and 911 service support are literally mandated by the government. Apple cannot choose to not include them. (Though in this case, they could choose to not support RapidSOS, at least until it's mandated as well.)
Edit: And yes, it seems entirely fair that taxes could go up to enable additional government services.
It is, but everyone has been avoiding taxes, so here we are with a supposedly first world country with third world infrastructure. Hence, my suggestion.
You have to engineer for the world we have, not a perfect world.
> It is, but everyone has been avoiding taxes, so here we are with a supposedly first world country with third world infrastructure. Hence, my suggestion.
Your argument is that Apple doesn't pay taxes, so they should be taxed to cover the cost of 911 upgrades.
If Apple is so good at "avoiding taxes", how would you possibly make them pay for the 911 upgrades anyway? If you are capable of crafting such an inescapable tax law, why not just apply that to general tax law?
> You have to engineer for the world we have, not a perfect world.
Nothing here is about engineering. This is a proposed cash grab. Apple is successful so we should just take their money, not with reasonable tax law, but with targeted asset seizure.
No. My argument was it would be helpful if Apple voluntarily subsidized rural 911 call center upgrades to support the life critical feature they added to their devices.
You say “cash grab”, I say “corporate responsibility”.
So Apple builds a feature that could potentially save lives. But they are lacking "corporate responsibility" because they aren't also directly funding emergency call center upgrades nationwide.
This viewpoint makes me sad. It's like someone built a house for a homeless family and then they get criticized for not covering the cost of utilities for the lifetime of the house.
> This viewpoint makes me sad. It's like someone built a house for a homeless family and then they get criticized for not covering the cost of utilities for the lifetime of the house.
Likewise, I see it as handing someone a good or service they desperately need with no thought to the recurring costs involved. Just because you believe you've done a good deed doesn't mean you've necessarily helped (see food aid in Africa that has ruined their ag markets).
Call centers can elect not to opt into this if the costs are high. It's not as if Apple has done anything to degrade the existing emergency service process.
They arguably _are_ helping fund it, by paying for the complete implementation of the client-side support for enhanced location services.
Pushing too much of that onto a corporation who makes phones is just silly. It's bloody hard to make any kind of argument that it's even remotely their responsibility.
> If Apple doesn’t fund it, and per mobile line 911 taxes don’t cover it, everyone’s taxes have to go up to support Apples enhanced feature and the marketing goodwill they’ll receive. Does that seem fair?
If tax doesn't cover it, then it should simply not happen, and you stick with the current level of location services provided by the cell phone company. Not happy with that? You probably ought to start a petition to raise people's taxes to fund your local 911 operation better so they can do this.
Don't want to pay tax for it? Shit, who's going to pay for public services if that's your attitude?
Aren't emergency services pretty clearly the government's job? You already pay a fee on your cell bill specifically to cover the cost of 911 services to your local and state governments.