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?
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.