Technology

It reminds me of the argument that beehaw made on keeping lemmy over switching to kbin and that is that we use technology every day built on terrible practices and terrible people. "The Good Place" TV show also made this a major plot point. Essentially the argument boils down to that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

This isn't to say throw everything to the wind and support the worst of the worst terrible practices but it is to say that even when you try, you probably can't make a net positive out of a phone purchase. From the metals mined to the component manufacturing. Overall the end of the day you are still putting money into the GOP pockets because Apple still donates to the GOP. Also Apple still donates more to the GOP than Motorola. Apple gives 200k to GOP and 1 million to the dems https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/apple-inc/totals?id=D000021754. Motorola gives 8k to GOP and 6k to dems https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/motorola-solutions/summary?id=D000000355 So it's fairly silly to praise Apple for it. In fact, I'd say donating at all to one or the other party (bribing) overall is negative.

But either way, there isn't any ethical phone in the world. There are "better" options but it's kind of silly as you can put far more positive things into the world by focusing your efforts into positive actions rather than researching to death which company might give the GOP less money. At the end of the day, these are large corporations and they aren't giving money to government officials because they believe in their policies. It's because they need to influence the laws. I'd frankly say because Motorola has less money and thus gives the government fewer bribes that they are probably more ethical. Which isn't to say if they had tons they wouldn't bribe more or less than Apple. It's just that they can't or don't right now because it doesn't benefit them as it does Apple.

So TL;DR: Buy whatever phone you want. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. If there was, Apple is still far less ethical than Motorola even by their own measurements. Overall on top of that, the less money going towards lobbying the better, and Apple lobbies far more than Morotola and thus you can stuff that in their pipe next time they try to look down on you because you bought a different phone.