Appeasing the Monster
People who appease the monster look bad in the eye of history, but Tim Cook either doesn't know this or does not care.
Podcast: Accidental Tech Podcast
Episode: 660: It’s All Chicken Salad
John
This whole thing is a good example of the limits of Apple’s strategy, because Apple’s strategy with the Trump administration both times has been essentially appeasement. Try to make nice with them. Try to make them not mad at you, because when they’re mad at you, they they are. You know, it’s a corrupt administration and they will do things to harm your company individually in a vindictive way because they because they’re just, you know, mobsters and bullies. Right.They will specifically hurt your company and we want them specifically not hurt our company. So we’re working within a corrupt system to try to get favors, blah, blah, blah. The problem with that strategy is the strategy is not to make them mad. And you can blow that whole strategy. Appeasement stops working and becomes pointless the second you push back at all and make them mad at you. Because then it’s like, well, what did you do all that appeasement for?
So it leads to like the sunk cost fallacy of saying, well, we already made nice with all these things. We already did all this stuff. When they ask us to pull the ice block out, if we say no, they’ll be mad at us. And it’s like, well, then what did we do all that appeasement for? What did we sell our souls for before? And so you’re inclined to say yes and say yes to the next thing and say yes to the next thing. And it’s a slippery slope of appeasement.
The word comes up in the context of World War II all the time. Appeasement looks great right up until you have the rise of Hitler. And then it doesn’t look so good anymore, does it? Because you’re like, anyone who is on board with that appeasement thing tends to look bad in the eye of history of saying you are appeasing this monster.