Shareholders Pressure Internet Companies on Rights 227
whamett writes "A group of investment firms is putting their shareholder weight behind asking high-tech companies that deal with repressive regimes to pay more attention to rights violations. Meanwhile, two of the firms have drafted a separate resolution for Cisco shareholders that's up for vote on Tuesday. All this comes not long after Yahoo's involvement in the jailing of a Chinese journalist left a bad taste in everyone's mouth." This isn't the first time that investment firms have stepped up to the plate on human rights violations.
The comedy of capital (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if Cisco stops dealing with Badmanistan, the Badmanistanians can still import from other countries. How do you stop the use? Maybe DRM restricting what country an item works in? I don't think so. Yet funny if the thought crossed your mind.
Maybe we can make a more concerted effort. Get the U.N. involved and completely stop technology from getting there. I'm sure the hospitals and schools can get by without technology.
Here's a solution. Smuggle guns and ammo into countries with no respect for private property. Let the inner hope of revolution make real change. Rights won't be protected with sanctions. Only by blood do we truly stop those who dare to take our lives, our properties and our natural right to both.
Maybe after we've brought true freedom to everyone else, someone will kindly help us find it, too.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean like DVD Region Codes?
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if Cisco stops dealing with Badmanistan, the Badmanistanians can still import from other countries. How do you stop the use?
I think the primary problem for the shareholders is to stop people taking advantage of poor working conditions in foreign countries (which would be illegal in the USA) and to not aid overtly foreign governments to repress it's citizens (an example would be google and China).
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
We've become desensitized to some terrible property rights violations in this country (U.S.). Smoking bans, minimum wage laws even zoning laws are all inherently evil, yet the majority of
If governments are beating their people or hampering any natural rights, I'm concerned.
As long as our own government continues to breech their responsibilities, I honestly can't focus on other countri
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as our own government continues to breech their responsibilities, I honestly can't focus on other countries.
Great. If everyone in America felt that way you would become irrelevant in the world wide community when it comes to human rights. You can't wait for America to reach perfection, because it will never happen (and the fact everyone disagrees on what perfection is doesn't help).
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Your sig (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Your sig (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the difference between slashdot and a repressive regime. Your post is good in theory. However I have no wish to see tons of GNAA posts on slashdot. So I have to have some way of filtering them. I can choose to surf at 0 or 1, but in that case, I'm filtering out tons of good informative posts merely because they don't conform to slashdot groupthink. Inste
Re: Your sig (Score:2)
Re: Your sig (Score:5, Interesting)
If someone from China is posting here as an AC chances are China's government can watch the whole IP transaction and track down the person if they want to, same probably goes for an American thanks to extensive tapping of the Internet by various three letter agencies.
Fact is American's, like the Brits and everyone else, have "free speech" only as long as their government lets them have it and within the bounds they set. The UK did let people have free speech to advocate fundamentalist Islamic causes, but it is now speech likely to lead to deportation or jail. You don't really have free speech when there are all kinds of arbitrary bounds on it, i.e. you can speak freely until you say something we've decided we don't like and then you don't.
In reality free speech is a completely relative concept. The U.S. has free speech compared to China, so it does in relative terms, but in absolute terms there are countless bounds on it.
In eras rich in fear mongering your free speech rights can be abridged in a heart beat. You need to look no further than McCarthyism in the U.S. in the 50's to appreciate how fleeting free speech is, or today when the Executive of the United States has bestowed upon its self the power to arrest people on a whim, detain them without due process, without access to a lawyer, family or court and even to whisk you away to various secret prisons to be tortured indefinitely up to the end of your life which they have often brought about in these secret prisons. The U.S. projects an image of being free, but in many respects it is carefully manufactured facade, again free in relative terms just because there are places worse, and it is less free with each passing day. Countries which espouse freedom don't make people disappear or torture people and the U.S. most certainly does these things now thanks to government by paranoid wackos who were given carte blanche to be paranoid wackos by 9/11.
In most respects 9/11 WAS all about Al Qaeda attacking Freedom and Democracy in the West. The catch is they are destroying them, not by attacking the West, but by giving power mad governments of Western nations excuses to destroy Freedom and Democracy themselves.
Re: Your sig (Score:4, Interesting)
Plus, I like to add my comment. Of course there will always be someone saying something we don't like, but thats the whole point of free speech. The right to free speech is created to insures that someone will say something that some people will not like to hear. Got problem with your government? Speak out. Got problem with your neighborhood? Speak out. Got problem with your boss? Speak out (anonymous of course). Got problem with slashdot? Speak out (at your own website or blog).
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying free speech is just for people who want to flame each other to death. Free speech is for solving or preventing problems in our society because the very first step to solving problems is to get aware of them. If no one aware of the problems, then no one will solve it. Plus, knowledge is power. Governments rely on our stupidity to successfully oppress us. "Don't worry, no one will hack the RFID in your passports..." Free speech allows the knowledge to come out. It doesn't matter if people like it or not, or whichever if it is true or false, the words must come out anyway.
Basically, we have to accept the good with the bad.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2, Insightful)
The U.S. has been irrelevant on the human rights front for pretty much its entire existence. It does spout a lot about it, pretends like it holds the high ground on the subject but it is so laced with hypocrisy you have to be pretty naive to buy it and I don't think most of the world does buy it anymore if it ever did, especially after the last 5 years when its become obvious the U.S
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I personally don't have a huge issue with smokers (my dad smokes, I occasionally smoke a cigar and I have many friends that smoke), however, smokers have a direct, measurable, negative effect on people around them simply by lighting up a cigarette (this is in contrast to some other drugs like, say, alcohol or ecstacy). When that goes away, you can argue that smoking bans are some sort of "property" issue.
Or, as the saying goes, your right to swing your arms around ends at my face.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Well, my issue with smoking bans is that they are bans on what consenting adults do inside private property with the consent of the owner of that property. If you don't want to be exposed to second-hand smoke, don't go inside places where people choose to smoke.
If we were talking about situations where going inside the place met a need not a want - like a school or a hospital - then I would agree with you. But I find it hard to see "having someone cook your food for you instead of doing it yourself" or "
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
It's not about forcing "our" morals. There are already international standards of human rights, and I see no problems with demanding that businesses and governments abide by them, be they US or foreign.
I see no problems with many smoking restrictions because smoking infringes on the natural rights of others to breathe clean air.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
I see no problems with many smoking restrictions because smoking infringes on the natural rights of others to breathe clean air.
I love how these brainjobs always pull out the "clean air" bit, particularly when you take into account where these government intrusions were originated. LA, New York, etc...
I got news for you. You come into my property, you'll breathe whatever I tell you to breathe, or you'll get the hell out. THAT is the right that the government is taking away with these little smoking bans: th
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how strict the emissions regulations in NYC are. The population density alone means you're going to get all of your minerals in one breath until said regulations require that vehicles output 78% N2, 20% O2, 1% Ar, 1% CO2. It may not have gotten any worse, but it sure hasn't gotten any better. Growing up in Nassau county (on Long Island), if you were at a high enough elevation, you could SEE the nastiness. It looked like NYC was perpetually getting rained on. So much f
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Americans are desensitized because they don't accept my extreme minority positions.
That seems to be the crux of your arguement.
First we will need to define what a NATURAL RIGHT is, I'm not sure that we can claim that there are any, or at least I haven't run into any in the NATURAL sciences, or evolutionary theory (unless we can say you have the right to TRY to spread your genes).
Please don't posit points as evidence of something, when your points are not supported.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:4, Interesting)
Lots of people in this country don't own any land, and they live in places called "apartments". Before the rise of the middle class, back in feudal times, this was pretty much normal: everyone rented their land from some Lord or Duke or whatever. You don't need to own land to live, have sewers, or even protect your living space from people trying to shit in it (try taking a shit in someone's apartment and see if they don't call the police).
What the parent poster was advocating, I believe, is something alone the lines of a communist/socialist government where all the land is owned by the State, and then leased out to various companies and people. Of course, being an ignorant American I would guess, you'll probably have something negative to say about this because of the "C" word, but the idea does have some merit (although, like anything, it also has problems). With government ownership of land, the gov't could put a quick stop to land investment and speculation, which seems to drive up prices, making it hard for poorer people to find affordable housing. Many realty markets in the US now are having problems because the value of property has risen so much (much faster than wages and salaries), so people are no longer able to afford the same level of housing as they were 5 years ago, unless they were smart/lucky and were investors/speculators themselves. For instance, if you owned 5 rental properties in a hot market, and they all doubled in value over the past 5 years, then you could sell them all now, take the profit, and buy yourself a very expensive residence. But if you only owned one house, it may have doubled in value, but so did everything else nearby, so you can't upgrade to a nicer house, and your pathetic 2% raise last year won't help either. With central control of realty leasing, this would be ended, and people would have to find other things to invest in.
Also, it'd be a lot easier for the gov't to get things done if it owned everything. If they want to put in a new highway to stop congestion and accidents, they no longer need to spend exorbitant amounts of (taxpayer) money on over-valued land to get people to sell; they'd just give them eviction notices and help find comparable places to live, and then they could build the highway in just the correct spot. If a company is polluting too much and going through the court system is too slow, the gov't can just cancel their lease on their factory.
Of course, the downside to all of this is that if you don't own the land, then you probably don't own the buildings on it either (what would be the point), and there's not much incentive to do more than the bare minimum with it. You might not going to get the gov't to build you a luxurious mansion on your leased property. Or if you're a large corporation looking for someplace to build a $3 billion semiconductor fab, why would you build it someplace where the gov't can decide next week that it needs the land back for a highway? And how exactly would you get the gov't to build a $3 billion fab?
I don't think gov't ownership of land is the greatest idea either (unless someone can explain a better way in which it'd work), but your comments are totally nonsensical.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Government ownership of land already takes place on a massive scale. i.e. what do you think nations are? The "united states" of america? Canada? etc? What about reserves and parks, Government owned corporations, the military bases, etc?
There are lots of BENEFITS to government / democratic ownership of public resources (i.e. lands that
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Not true. When property gets expensive, the poor make more money. If a poor person can't live in Wealthy Neighborhood X, they won't. Yet X needs waiters, cashiers, gas station attendants, etc. If a poor person can't live in that neighborhood, they'll get paid more to commute. Competition solves the problem.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
So, he's right in thinking that others think he's nuts?
Or he's right in thinking that his unsupported claims are right?
I love it!
Reply to sig (Score:2)
In case anyone wants to remember/learn about Orz.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
US corporations are not concerned with smarter and harder workers, they're concerned with *cheaper* workers. Any moron in India can read scripts off a page to be SBC tech support, sure, but it's their super low hourly wage and state-funded telecom connectivity that won them contracts. What US companies love more than anything are devastated economies and broke-ass 3rd world nations full of people that will work for next to nothing
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Um, no.
From a good deal of first hand experience with such outsourcing, no. In general (of course there may be exceptions), they make stupid mistakes, lack initiative, and work no harder -- in many cases less hard. But, they are an order or two of magnitude cheaper.
With some things, stupider and slower is
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
The only people who *really* have a say are pensions and mutial fund companies, and they don't want to shake the boat w/ other's money.
Most people trust others to manage their investments, and only direct owners can vote. That's why they almost always lose.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
And I'm sure everyone gets an equal amount of votes...
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:5, Insightful)
Today, no one but the ultra-wealthy have a vote. Your ballot choices means zilch -- everyone you vote into office just extends the future power of that office.
In a true free market, every ollar is vote, but being a billionaire isn't total control of the poor.
How much can a billionaire buy in respect to need? Only so many bananas, eggs and gallons of milk. Overbuying leads to waste and loss of wealth.
Maybe the wealthy will buy all the land? How will they maint in it? How will they build on it? How will they clean it, paint it, power it?
Hording doesn't make wealth, hard work does. Many children of the wealthy lose the family fortunes. I know of 3 100-year old contractors in the Midwest that went bankrupt at the hands of the third generation.
Money in the hands of the majority middle class has more power than the minority, except with regards to government. Don't be fooled by what is mostly class hatred. The poor have more opportunities to become rich in a free market than in a regulated one.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Hording does not make wealth, but it helps to keep in. Actually its the governments primary function (in USA) is to ensure the protection of wealth. Certainly the wealthy are pushing laws every day to ensure this as well.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:4, Insightful)
Hard work often results in very different outcomes, especially when someone lacks the means to overcome a barrier to entry. A rich person with a good idea can develop and implement it, and reap many rewards. A poor person with the same good idea needs to attract investors to overcome the barriers, and then once they do, they have to share the profits with the investors, whose only required skills are having money and being able to tell a good idea from a bad one (not trivial, sure, but it's still infinitely preferable to being the poor guy).
"Hording doesn't make wealth, hard work does."
Investing is an opportunity the poor don't have.
"The poor have more opportunities to become rich in a free market than in a regulated one."
Depends how it's regulated.
Hordes (Score:2)
That may have been true before the term "Intellectual Property" was coined. Given the existence of laws against manipulating markets and regulations on monopolies though, I find the assertion highly suspect. The old cliché "The rich get richer" is also strong evidence to the contrary. Had there been no truth to the phrase, I doubt it would have endured for so long.
Maybe the wealthy will buy all the land? How will they maint in it? How will they build
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:3, Insightful)
Slaves.
Don't make a mistake in the southern U.S. at some points slaves outnumbered others 15-1 yet they were unable to revolt.
Equality is HARD and equal rights is harder, but that's why we pursue them, not because they are easy but because they are hard.
Reply to sig (Score:2)
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:5, Interesting)
Hard work can make wealth, but wealth does in fact also make wealth in the Capitalist system. Yes you can get some clueless heiress that will squander a fortune or tank a multigeneration family business.
But, if you have extensive wealth you can with relative ease continue to generate ever greater wealth by investing it in relatively safe investment vehicles in perpetuity, by tapping a financial manager if necessary. It is simply vastly easier for the affluent to make money than it is the poor, people who are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads, to pay for home heating and gas to get to work.
It is a simple fact that without progressive taxation wealth rapidly accumulates in the hands of a tiny minority, while the vast majority get ever poorer. It was this way in the U.S. in the early twentieth century when progressives introduced progressive taxation and it is this way again today since the Republicans are dismantling progressive taxation, devastating wages for the lower and middle classes, cutting taxes for the rich while they bleed workers white with inescapable payroll taxes the surpluses from which they are squandering so their will be no money for workers benefits when they reach retirement though they paid 12.5% of their income most of their lives in to these bankrupt systems.
You might trot out Bill Gates as a rags to riches example, well his family was relatively affluent and he never really had to worry about basic survival. He also acquired the lion's share of his wealth by essentially illegal economic activity, the same goes for the Walton family. Gates and the Walton's started out engaging in hard work and hard nosed business but there is a point that they transitioned in to acquiring their wealth by monopolistic and underhanded business practices, not so much "hard work". Ethicless monopolies are remarkably lucrative when done well.
I think you will find many rags to riches stories where people engaged in economic activity that was either outright illegal or certainly unethical and that they screwed a large number of people to acquire their wealth, the didn't just "work hard".
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
That simply is not true in the EU, US, or any of the other established democracies. Corporations and the wealthy don't win through force. They win through apathy. You could run for president tomorrow if you wanted. The only thing stopping you from winning is the reluctance of private citizens to hand you a buck to further advertise, and the fact t
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Really? Imagine a man who's robbed and left destitute. There are no employment laws, so employers are free to offer him room and board but no cash. Since he has to eat, he has to take the job anyway. He never earns another dollar, and therefore has no "vote". In effect he's a slave. If he has any children, they will also spend their lives as slaves. Congratulations, you've reinvented feudalism.
How much ca
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
I beg to differ. I voted last Tuesday and helped elect two members of my school board (some of the first people I've ever helped elect in 3 years of voting). Being a college student, I'm quite far from being ultra-wealthy.
Your ballot choices means zilch -- everyone you vote into office just extends the future power of that office.
In many cases, yes. If that is the case, you should be running for office in order to reverse that trend. Once I graduate, I pla
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:4)
I'm all for creating revolution and anarchy in badmanistan, but we must be careful which revolutionaries we help out. This is essentially what we did in Afganistan with the help of Bin Laden before we realized that he wasn't on our side either.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Careful now. After Kelo, [findlaw.com] you might get yourself branded a terrorist.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? Repressive regimes and respect for private party are not really mutually exclusive. The West is so eager to deal with China today because they abandoned Socialism for Authoritarian capitalism(a.k.a. Fascism) in the last 20 years. They do have private property as a result and it hasn't stopped them from being a repressive regime. Repressive regimes trample private property rights when it suits them, but as a rule they don't because they want capitalists to invest there so they respect private property, especially of foreigners, to get investment. China really isn't very different from the U.S now. Since a recent Supreme Court ruling government entities in the U.S. can seize your property, reimburse you what suits them, and turn it over to a private developer to profit on.
Western countries are pouring capital into China, and transferring IP there because they think there is a buck to be made there, more so than in any of the aging economies in the U.S. Europe or Japan. When there is a buck to be made Westerners could care less if they are dealing with repressive regimes. Americans were enthusiastic investors in Nazi Germany in the 30's including the Bush family who were the American bankers for the Thyssen family who helped put Hitler in power. The U.S. went out its way to install the Shah of Iran who was one of the Middle East's most repressive rulers, right up there with Saddam. The U.S. installed countless right wing dictators in the Western Hemisphere who "respected private property" of U.S. corporations and the wealthy and ruthlessly killed, kidnapped and tortured everyone else.
"Get the U.N. involved and completely stop technology from getting there."
That is pretty out of touch with reality. Many of the electronics you buy today are MADE IN CHINA, the U.S. or U.N. couldn't boycott them if you tried. I guess you boycott buying stuff them which would have an impact but you would quickly realize the U.S. economy is totally dependent on China. Stop buying there and Walmart's shelves would empty and many smaller towns would realize they have no place to shop without Walmart and its Chinese goods.
The main thing China is importing are raw materials. In the case of oil, for example, they are securing their own oil fields and supplies so they will be largely immune to an oil boycott, which has been a weapon of choice by the U.S. in the past. Pearl Harbor was precipitated by a U.S, British and Dutch oil embargo against Japan. The Chinese are securing oil from Venezuela in particular because Chavez would never follow a U.S. lead boycott against China without the U.S. parking warships next to their oil terminals.
Chinese technological and manufacturing prowess is rapidly eclipsing the U.S. partially thanks to Western companies transferring their manufacturing base and technology R&D centers to China. Cisco gear can't be boycotted from China. Much of it is developed and manufactured there. Cisco's CEO Chambers routinely broadcasts the fact that Cisco is a "Chinese company" now.
Bottomline is the West has more to fear from China boycotting them than the other way around.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:5, Insightful)
One needs to be careful with this. For two reasons:
1. If you fail to time things correctly, the revolutionists will be caught (one by one) with the guns in their homes and charged with a crime.
2. Violence tends to begat violence.
Of all the revolutions that come to my mind at the moment, only two stand out as only going as far as necessary, and no farther. The first was the American Revolution. They only shed blood after they declared independence from England, and carried the war only to the extent necessary to defend the new nation. Note that the American situation was rather unique in that American were normally well armed, and that their forces were vastly inferior to those of the enemy.
The only other situation I can think of was the transition from the Communist Russian government to the psuedo-democratic government. It was largely a bloodless affair, as the remaining people in power just wanted to make their problems someone else's.
Every other coup that I can think of was a bloody mess with a questionable outcome. The French Revolution was a particularly good example of things going from bad to worse. France eventually recovered, but not until after a series of civil wars, exectutions, and other unpleasentries. From a lot of the feedback I've been getting, it sounds like the Chinese are not really there yet.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that you have to be careful in supporting revolutionaries. Sometimes they're in it for the right reasons, but sometimes they're just looking to seize power themselves.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
But what revolutions are good for is for shaking up deeply entrenched static situations. The result may be worse than the life before it, but it's also less controlled and therefore susceptible to being changed by softer methods.
The French Revolution (along with other revolution of a similarily bloody nature that first turned disastrous,
Been to Kashmir? (Score:2)
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Mahatma Gandhi provides one obvious counter-example.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:2)
Tell me, where exactly in nature does your natural right to property reside? Can you objectively demonstrate its existence? Or are you just tacking the word "natural" onto your opinion as a cheap rhetorical trick?
Only by blood do we truly stop
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:4, Insightful)
There is an obvious problem with this approach which is why modern corporations probably wouldn't adopt it even if it was viable. The old IBM did for the most part have indentured life time servants. Unfortunately they are expensive when they get older, and productivity often declines. Skyrocketing health care costs alone speak to disposing of them when they reach middle age. No other corporation is going to buy them at that point, unless there is a corporation in the market for marginal slaves. When there is an abundance of 20-30 year old slaves in Asia who wants a 40 or 50 year old. I guess since they are in indentured servitude you could just deprive them of health care but then their productivity just declines even further. Pretty sure slave holders in the South couldn't just kick them off the plantation when they were no longer useful and no one else would buy them. Killing them outright probably happened but was kind of frowned on even in slave owning circles.
Modern corporations might prefer indentured servitude since they could discard benefits etc, but they would still need a quick, cheap mechanism for discarding the unproductive ones. In fact the system they have now really works a lot better. You are pretty much an indentured servant, as long as you work there and especially if the job market is tight but they can dispose of you when you outlive your usefulness with relative ease and with no concern if you land on the streets and starve.
Thanks to globalization they can buy new indentured servants in China or Burma for pennies an hour and throw them away too in favor of others elsewhere whenever they get bothersome.
All in all advocating that corporations give up the sweet deal they have for the responsibilities of slaving owning looks like kind of step backward.
Re:The comedy of capital (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporations can already dispose of workers with relative ease so I'm not sure what they gain in return for the massive responsibility of owning someone. Sure they give severance packages sometimes when they discard someone but that is mostly to make the masters feel better and to keep the serfs they keep from getting restless.
When you own someone the burning question is how do you dispose of them in a market awash wit
Hurt them where it counts (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't even get Walmart to stop hiring illegal immigrants and hiding them in the backs of stores in America, how are we going to stop The Gap from using sweatshops or whatever it is they do to get clothing made?
Re:Hurt them where it counts (Score:3, Informative)
Umm, did you read the article? It's the investors of these companies (in this case) that are pushing for protection of human rights. However, their intetions aren't exactly altruistic.
FTA:
"On the broadest possible level, democracy provides the best possible environment for investment," Kanzer said.
and
Wolfe maintain
Re:Hurt them where it counts (Score:2)
You must be new here.
"It's the investors of these companies (in this case) that are pushing for protection of human rights."
If it doesn't hold a profit incentive to be respectful of human rights, odds are a company won't do it. Corporations remove the humanity from humans in power of them.
Re:Hurt them where it counts (Score:3, Insightful)
This is naive at best. Many multinationals are reaching the point that they could discard their American presence in a heartbeat if the need arose.
If you start "penalizing" them for doing things that are reprehensible but profitable chances are it would just hasten their abandonment of the U.S. Most multinationals are at
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Irony Is Projectile Vomiting Me In The Face (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Irony Is Projectile Vomiting Me In The Face (Score:2)
We are also immortal! Inviolable! Unassailable in our Glory! Our mighty hosts of lawyers sweep all before us!
Kneel plebain! Kneel and gaze upon the world which we have wrought for you! Bite not the hand that feeds thee!
So Preacheth The Church Of The New Global Capitalism!! Hail Satan!
Color me cynical... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Color me cynical... (Score:2, Interesting)
Compromise is necessary to get anything done, including some compromise of ideals. You do it with yourself every day.
Re:Color me cynical... (Score:2)
Re:Color me cynical... (Score:2)
Quite to the contrary. I'm idealistic about my country, and despite that, I realize the compromises which must be made in order for it to work. Freedom to do good implies freedom to do bad. Freedom means that some will win, some will lose. Some will take advantage, and some will be taken advantage of.
If you think it's unethical to have anyone ever starve, then freedom is unethical. If you think it's u
Re:Color me cynical... (Score:2)
Just say "no" (Score:2, Interesting)
Does that include sanctions against CNN? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does that include sanctions against CNN? (Score:2, Informative)
Yeah, well they covered up the fact that there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq either, so I guess it all balances out.
How is this Ciscos faule? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yahoo handles content, the routers just pass bits
Re:How is this Ciscos faule? (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently you can if your name is Sony. Just takes a Windows rootkit.
Re:How is this Ciscos faule? (Score:2)
Re:How is this Ciscos faule? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, if the gun company sold large quantities of guns and ammo to a repressive government and sent over a bunch of buys to train government thugs on the most efficient means to kill large numbers of peaceful protestors, then we might have a reasonable comparison.
Wow... (Score:2)
We have a hell of a lot of house cleaning to do here before we go judging others.
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
Colonialism is evil (Score:2)
It is not our responsibility to "liberate" people. If you are being held captive it is YOUR responsibility to fight for your liberty. Nothing wrong with helping, but helping doesn't mean "we are here to liberate you."
Re:How is this Ciscos faule? (Score:2)
Re:How is this Ciscos faule? (Score:3)
Cisco has a large role in building and maintaining much of their network, including the filtering and blocking of websites the state considers threatning. This is not like China is using off the shelf parts to demonstrate such extreme levels of access control;
Stock Trader POV (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, making people mad is costly for a stock. Bad news is bad, but uncertainty is much much worse. Will all of their customers leave? What effect will this have? There's thousands of publicly traded companies out there, so there's no reason to buy stock in one which has an uncertain future.
While i'm glad to see there are some responsible investors out there, they don't amount to a very large portion. When you look at the ownership of Cisco [msn.com], you see that the two investors mentioned in the article aren't even listed. They each own less than 1% of the company's outstanding shares.
Recently, I was amused by something that happened to Intel. They received an award for corporate social responsibility. The stock traded down that day.
IG Farben was a hot stock once too (Score:3, Insightful)
Investing in companies that get up to baaad things is seen to be high risk for other reasons. Dealings with dodgy regimes tends to be opaque so all kinds of extra costs can appear such as corruption with the possibility of future legal actions against
It's just plain sad (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not really a political or litigious person by nature, but as I've aged, I've come to this somewhat depressing conclusion; occasionally, the only way to effect change in this world is to exact some kind of financial cost on those who disregard the rights of their fellow human beings.
David Brancaccio (from public radio's Marketplace) wrote a quite entertaining book [amazon.com] that deals with the concept of socially responsible investing, and asks the question of whether or not applying fuzzy concepts of "good " and "evil" to publicly traded companies makes any kind of sense.
He was sort of sarcastic about it, and had a tendency to make fun of new-age hippies showing at the annual shareholder's meeting in Montana with their 100% natural non-bleached cotton moccasins, and painfully detailed dietary requirements, but overall it was funny, and it made an otherwise dry subject a lot more palatable. Check it out if you're sick of O'Reilly books - it was a good companion on the road last summer.
Hopefully, we will continue to develop more accurate and effective ways to evaluate companies and maybe even their corresponding Good:Evil ratios in the future; maybe then companies guilty of human rights violations or severe pollution disasters will feel a direct effect on their bottom line.
I believe this is called 'Stakeholding' (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking of investment firms (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Speaking of investment firms (Score:2)
Bias? (Score:4, Informative)
What's This?! (Score:3, Funny)
It's all about profits (Score:2)
This doctrine was established in a landmark Supreme Court case Dodge v. Ford Motor Company [wikipedia.org] which established that even minority share holders can prevent a corporation from doing anything that hinders the maximization of profits.
I could be completely wrong.
Re:It's all about profits (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's all about profits (Score:2, Informative)
Better yet, sell your shares (Score:2)
Leave YOUR morality at the door, thank you.
Re:Better yet, sell your shares (Score:3, Insightful)
Capitalism is neither moral nor immoral (Score:2)
Funny thing about totaletarian regimes (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, last I checked it was illegal for US corps to do business with North Korea and Iran, so I'm never quite sure why those are brought up. But China is a popular target. I can only imagine this is because we are starting to get nervous about such a massive economic force. Sort of in the same way people in the eighties used to yell "Go Home, Jap!" to anyone who looked Asian on the street. But I digress.
Well-meaning (and I do believe they are well meaning) people have said lots of things about how we ought to "not buy Chinese goods" because the Chinese government doesn't respect basic human rights, and the only way to make them see the light of day is to hit them where it hurts -- financially. We say the same thing about "sweat shops" in Vietnam or wherever operated by firms like Nike or Reebok. Not sure if it's still the rage to go off about these.
Now, as a disclaimer, I actually live in China (I'm American, though). I want to advance a theory about totaletarian regimes: they are non-sustainable if the populace is becoming wealthy.
Now obviously this doesn't apply to a place like North Korea where trading with the country (if it were even legal) really means trading with the government, and not with the people. But China and Vietnam are not like that, despite what you may have heard.
In the 1970s, China was in the throes of the cultural revolution; people truly had no rights, they were expected to spend several hours of their day reciting "Wei Renmin Fuwu" and other works of Chairman and Poet Mao Ze Dong. But those days have been a thing of the past since Deng Xiao Ping's economic reforms in the late seventies and early eighties, reforms which continue to this day.
As a direct result of these reforms, money paid into China not only makes the government richer (you can't avoid this, people pay taxes on income) but also, and this is important, it makes the people more wealthy.
Chinese people are not living like beggars (unless you're in Guizhou or something). Especially people in the cities are beginning to do very well for themselves. And if you're in Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou, well, you're essentially living at first world standards. Really.
The problem is, as people get more wealthy, more prosperous, more educated, more connected to the outside world -- read, not isolated from it as they were during the cultural revolution -- they come into contact with a lot of ideas that had previously been considered non grata by the government. You know, like democracy. The other week I was in Beijing and there was a huge advertisement for a development site with Chinese characters as tall as me saying "Bringing a little more culture, a little more civility, and a little more democracy (!!!) to Beijing."
This is the city that sent tanks against students demonstrating just 15 years ago.
Why is this happening? Because the Chinese government too wants to get rich. Even back in the days when Mao had a swimming pool built for himself in Zhong Nan Hai while everyone else was starving, the best the government cronies could hope for was a lifestyle equivalent to a beverly hills hillbilly. Not shabby, certainly. But nothing (and I mean nothing) like what they enjoy now.
Because they want to encourage more investment, they are continuously relaxing their controls. There are two reasons for this. One: certain technology, like the internet, is necessary for commerce. It can also be used by Chinese citizens to learn uncomfortable truths. Because they are addicted to wealth, they mostly ignore the second issue (the Chinese firewall is a joke -- it's there so they can say they're doing something: most of the stuff that's blocked is irrelevant and a surprising large amount of openly rebellious material in Chi
Re:Funny thing about totaletarian regimes (Score:2)
I do believe that engagement, trade and economic development have their places, but so does outside pressure. You propose to simply do nothing and everything will work out. Dr. Pangloss comes to mind. Is that how any of us would manage our personal affairs? Our business? Would that be the response if it was o
Re:Funny thing about totaletarian regimes (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe that it is the case. From my own experiences.
You see... whereas things in the US in the 1960s were not getting better for black people very quickly at all, and MLK was lamenting the complacency of moderate whites, a group not directly affected by racism and therefore relatively unable to relate to it (a problem that persists with most white Americans today, sadly), in China we have a completely different situation. The Chinese themselves -- the ones directly affected by the government's lack of respect for human rights -- are for the most part supportive of the government, extremely nationalistic, and hopeful about the future.
Of course you can write this off to propaganda, but when you grow up as a kid listening to stories from your dad how when he was a kid, people were allowed one (!) mantou per day and that his grandfather used to give him his and eat treebark instead -- true story -- you start thinking, shit, things are pretty good at the moment. I hear a lot of, "I don't know much about politics, but I want the reform to continue. It's good for China" from the youth of today.
The situation in the 1960s was markedly different. Most whites who knew no black people were completely detached from the situation. "So people don't treat you the way they ought to. That sucks, but they'll get better in time, and right now, I don't want to cause a ruckus," says Whitey. Easy for him to say, he's not the one who has to move to the back of the bus.
A much better analogy (and I'm rather convinced you won't be able to find one) would be a majority of blacks saying, "Hey, these Jim Crow laws aren't half bad! Hell, I don't mind sitting on the back of the bus, because I'm sure things'll get better any day now." That is, the person affected by the "regime" complaining.
Don't get me wrong, the PRC government has at times been quite the bully, and is not respectful of human rights by any stretch. And the Chinese are not unaware of this, nor are they uncritical. But they see improvement -- much improvement -- and are hopeful it will continue. It shows no signs of stopping. Why rock the boat? If things appeared to stagnate, if the government said, "Hell, fuck this capitalism shit, it's back to piao and lining up at the co-op for rice", there would be a revolt, no question. But at the moment, things are stable, and getting better, and not at all slowly.
As for the Cisco/Google/Yahoo BS, I agree completely, it's despicable. We Americans, who are from the "land of the free", have an obligation to hold ourselves to a higher moral standard than the PRC government. The Cisco routers thing in particular is bad, because, had Cisco refused to do it, no one in the PRC would have been worse for wear. The government would have developed its own solution or found someone else to do it, certainly, but at least Cisco wouldn't have been pricks. The Yahoo/Google situation is a little more difficult to judge. If Google had for example done the right thing and refused the PRC's terms, they would have been unable to operate in China. Yahoo is the same. As I mentioned in my post, the vast majority of things blocked by the Chinese internet censorship system are completely irrelevant, outdated, and stupid. The really juicy stuff is all in Chinese and most of it is not blocked. Google and Yahoo make finding this information easy, until some lazy government official notices and orders them to block it. During that period of time, which may be months, ordinary Chinese people are able to find the info using Google and Yahoo's services.
Had they "done the right thing", that would not be the case. People would have to use sohu or baidu which are
Re:Funny thing about totaletarian regimes (Score:2)
Re:Funny thing about totaletarian regimes (Score:2)
Anyway... what was your point
Re:Funny thing about totaletarian regimes (Score:2)
Shareholder influence (Score:2)
A share devaluation isn't enough. I would like to see shareholders tried for criminal negligence.
How is this anti-chinese? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't undertsand how this article is anti-chinese people, unless everyone bashing this post equates the chinese government and chinese party members to chinese people.
Yahoo, and the Chinese government did something bad (and is doing) to an ordinary Chinese citizen (took away his rights).
And as people with conscience, we need to stop them from doing this in the future. And so the shareholders have taken the right step.
But how does this translates to an activity against the Chinese people, as far as I understand this is being done to help Chinese people and their rights.
So, please stop being cynical and thinking of western morality conscience people as dissimulators.
Re:More BS political activism from Slashdot (Score:2)
Re:More BS political activism from Slashdot (Score:2)
When I read that, it reminded me of a lady teacher in China who was accused of teaching disloyality to the chineese leader. (Mau?) She was arrested and tortured. She was dazed and confused because she had always taught her students to love and cherish Mau, and she had always been faithfull to his leadership and the teachings of the Communist party.
Well the ironic thing was,
Re:Epoch Times = extremely biased (Score:2)
The only information I could find, after a brief search, was the following which says it is supported, and maybe published and operated, by the Fulan Gong movement:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/hottype/2005/051014_1
You will find some interesting commentary in this book [ninecommentaries.com] which they (publish? support?):