In Cupertino, Under the Apple Tree

What got Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay into so much trouble wasn't that they cooked the books, but rather that they let the stock price go down. At least that's the way it looks from Silicon Valley where the big news is the statement by ex-Apple CFO Fred Anderson that Steve Jobs approved the backdating of stock options at the company. So what does this mean?

Apparently nothing, because as every Apple shareholder knows, if Steve Jobs falls, Apple falls, and what's a little shareholder fraud compared to a PE over 38? So what if Jobs skimmed a little shareholder equity to pass out to his buddies in the executive suite, just look at how the company's doing. The executives won and the shareholders won, and as long as nobody got hurt then who cares.

We call this sort of rationalization "moral relativism". As opposed to "moral absolutism" that holds that good is good and evil is evil, the relativist asks how does this transgression rate against other more heinous sins, and the answer, of course, is that as long as everyone's making money then it's a pretty minor offense. If the stock were plunging then things would be different. In that case the shareholder's wouldn't be satisfied until they saw Jobs tarred and feathered and led off to jail in handcuffs.

But Apple is doing just fine, and as it stands now the odds are pretty slim that any further action will be taken against either Jobs or the company. I'm not a shareholder myself, so I don't have much of a position one way or the other, except that I think it just goes to show one thing: When a poor person steals it's called crime, and when a rich person steals it's called cunning. I'm not sure whether that makes me a moral absolutist or not, or just another jaded, disillusioned, 21st century cynic.

Where the apple reddens, never pry - lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.