"That's one of the most provocative things I have heard in a while."
Corporations can and have killed people when they can get away with it: see the embarrassing history of leaded gasoline (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000320/kitman/single is a decent start) for just one example; it is still sold today in Third World nations even though we (and especially corporations) are well aware of its highly deleterious and sometimes fatal effects on public health. The idea that corporations are happy to run roughshod over people's health remains provocative only outside the reality-based community.
"Corporations are businesses. They provide the best service or product to people at the lowest price."
The first statement is true. The second is not. You cannot logically infer the second from the first.
"How could you keep a market interested in your product if you were killing people making it? Do you think some kind of secret trade-off where corporations got to kill vast numbers of people secretly in the middle of the night to keep prices low would actually work for _any_ corporation? If you were a CEO, would you gamble the entire corporate stock on it?"
A common lolbertarian strawman. It's not as if the only people corporations risk killing are customers. Any 12-year-old can see that a guy running a store has no interest in shooting everyone who walks in through his door. But given a complex network of global transactions, where the end consumer of a product may be many steps removed from the product's manufacturer, vendor, and purchaser, there are many points where dangerously cutting corners or exerting pressure to stymie scientific investigations can pay off. And asking whether a CEO would gamble the entire corporate stock on a risky move is a question liable to backfire in your face: I can trivially point to the Enron boys, who may not've killed anyone (at least not directly) but were happy to cause far more damage than any mundane murder for short-term gain.
"It's the stuff of Hollywood fantasy, not reality. Business is based on good faith, trustworthy contracts, and the moral and physical support of all concerned. You can't just start whacking people and expect any of that to stay around. That's not reality. Yes -- you could sell a dangerous product. But that's not killing people. It's a different thing entirely."
Hahahahaha you talk about business being founded on good faith and trustworthy contracts, AND the "moral and physical support of all concerned", and you have the audacity to say someone ELSE is trafficking in Hollywood fantasy? You got a lot to learn, kid.
I think what you're suggesting is the most likely scenario, Jobs is an achingly pretentious nob who doesn't like parodic commentary. A shame. Fakesteve was pretty much the only Apple-related weblog I could stand reading.