Every company's priority has always been "make more money above all," it's just that once upon a time some of them beloved that treating their workers and customers well was a part of that goal. History has shown them that wasn't really necessary.

And don't think for a second the US federal government couldn't do a huge amount of damage to anyone it feels like by way of its financial regulators. In general it's better for the US government if Apple continues to exist, though.

> Every company's priority has always been "make more money above all,"

Maybe that's true where you live, but it's definitely not true all over the world, many economies have a free economy yet companies exist for public benefit, not shareholder value generation. It's out there, wouldn't be impossible to implement where you live either.

> And don't think for a second the US federal government couldn't do a huge amount of damage to anyone it feels like by way of its financial regulators

Right, I agree. But I also qualified my statement to not be valid in authoritarian countries, so maybe not the greatest example to use.

I don’t know. You can’t buy the kind of loyalty that treating your customer well earns you (nor buy revocation of the spite that treating them poorly does).

Particular airline like United makes your life hell, or even behaves sloppily and heavily inconvenienced you? You not only hate them, you actively go out of your way to tell your friends, family, and anyone who asks your opinion that you hate them. And why you hate them. (Lost one/only bag, for longer than an entire trip, over ten years ago.) And go out of your way, even at higher cost, to avoid them. (Have never flown United afterwards.)

Aside: We know this can be done competently; see Japan. They’ll even fail sometimes, but I suspect that nearly-always, someone from the airline would be delivering the bag personally after they obsessively located it, as opposed to the “meh” attitude US carriers take.

On the other hand, some company like Valve: for an out-of-warranty product (just time, current-model Steam Deck) that was purchased outside the country and gray-market imported (consumer level, just carried out to another country)… and which they don’t sell in your country… they demurred a bit then agreed to ship a replacement part to the original purchaser. At zero cost. Dealing with product issues isn’t fun, but we all know issues arise sometimes, and they killed the “delight the customer” goal.

Some companies still care, and I’d argue that treating your customers like crap while attempting to extract maximum “short term value” doesn’t actually work. Not in the long term, and in the short term, well… it depends on your definition of “short term”. One bad incident can go viral and wreck your quarterly earnings.