Altivo

If only Google wouldn't fund lobbyists fighting to kill legislation that would ban the import of any goods produced in Chinese forced labor political prisons ...

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avon-deer.livejournal.com

A good first step by Google. Now all they have to do is not be evil.

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zenicurean.livejournal.com

Turning to the worst of capitalism is entirely understandable given that they'd just experienced the best of Maoism.

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zenicurean.livejournal.com

I'm quite surprised Google went for this. Surprised but (very vaguely) optimistic. Even if I'm getting a strong "Chinese authorities didn't keep their part of the bargain, so we're miffed" vibe off this thing, that's secondary, I'm just looking to see if they'll follow through.

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schnee.livejournal.com

The cynic in me can't help but feel that this is basically just a convenient excuse for a decision to pull out of China that had already been made — that essentially, they're going to go out with a bang, as it were, in an effort to polish their tarnished reputation in other markets a bit more again.

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Coyotes certainly have that legendary aura in native American stories. It seems that those who live with them on a daily basis tend to think of them as little more than rats though.

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Like any capitalist corporation can avoid being evil. It's inevitable.

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My own skepticism centers around the idea that probably it wasn't paying off for them anyway, so they were looking for an excuse to back out of China.

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I'm inclined to think you're right.

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avon-deer.livejournal.com

Pretty much, which is exactly why I snigger at their corporate slogan: "Don't be evil." :D

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If only Americans wouldn't BUY those goods, and WalMart wouldn't sell them.

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I view Google's previous stance this way: by cutting people off altogether based on ideology you disagree with, all you accomplish is leaving them isolated and uninformed. When you make small concessions, you keep your foot in the door just a little, you have a chance at nudging it open a bit more, and at the very least, you have a presence that you can use for good.

Just saying, "We won't censor anything for the Chinese government, so we won't have anything to do with China anymore," is not terribly unlike abstinence-only education. Congrats, you stuck to your high moral ideals. Too bad you have a pregnant teenage daughter.

China will only get worse without subtle outside pressure and information seeping in. The Chinese government will not allow the deluge of information that would come with a free and open Google and internet, yet. Google has just ramped-up the pressure, basically telling the government that it can't have its cake (Google's cooperation) and eat it too (attempt to obtain intelligence on political dissidents illicitly from Google's services). I suspect there will be compromise that will see the door inched open just a little more.

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And this is the point-- we are in a market-driven economy, which allows us to choose. We can buy American, and keep Americans employed. We can buy quality goods and benefit the environment by reducing the waste produced by cheap, broken junk going to landfills. We can buy locally and support our community businesspeople who will spend a larger amount of their income locally.

Or, we can go to Wal*Mart and buy only on a price point, which gives us crappy goods made in China that supports their socialist regime and sends all the profits to the Walton empire which was built on the blood and sweat of 38-hour-per-week-so-we-don't-have-to-provide-you-benefits employees.

The choice is the consumer's, and that is where the blame lies.

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duskwuff.livejournal.com

Google isn't the dominant search engine in China (that honor goes to Baidu), but they do still have 25-30% of the market. That's nothing to sneeze at.

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duskwuff.livejournal.com

The Chinese government's ill-deeds appear to go beyond attempting to get into the email accounts of political dissidents. Details are still a little thin at this point, but word seems to be that there were also attempts involved to steal source code and other IP from Google, as well as possibly other companies.

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dakhun.livejournal.com

Google is the last global internet company to manage its own China arm.
In other words, they were the slowest to clue in.

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Profiting off supporting a tyrant's evil ways is no better than being the tyrant itself.

This "profit makes right" mentality is one I bitterly disagree with, kakoukorakos. Capitalism is not morality. Capitalistic power through evil means is a tyranny that has no moral nor ethical right to exist, and those profiting off exploitation and abuse deserve violent retribution and destruction.

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Google's evil deeds go beyond doing business making tools of evil for China. "Don't Be Evil" Google was one of many large U.S. corporations actively lobbying against legislation that would forbid the importation of goods produced by forced political prison labor in China.

Read that again: Google is a pro-slavery lobbyist in the 21st century.

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That precludes the possibility of common good or an absolute, undemocratic morality, which is an ignorance I cannot forgive you for, kakoukorakos.

That philosophy legitimizes the Nazi party and slavery when the popular majorities allowed those things to come to and/or continue to hold power.

Tyranny of a majority over a minority is an inherent evil to democracy, one that some form of checks and balances against "will of the mob majority" must be acted upon by a non-democratic element -- whether from a powerful revolutionary or Republican representative acting in the interests of the greater good instead of merely the popular majority.

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schnee.livejournal.com

That's humanity for you. x.x

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If only it were that simple. Alas, more and more US consumers have less and less choice. WalMart has left streets that were once filled with locally owned and operated businesses looking like bombed out riot relics in small towns all across the midwest and south. I've seen it, I've watched it happen. Once WalMart is the only merchandiser in the area, their prices seem to rise, but even if they didn't, the local consumer ends up with no choice. Buy at WalMart or not at all. These are people who are not equipped socially, educationally, or financially to shop online. They depend on local supply.

Worse, as the economy in their area declines to a monoculture of people who work for WalMart as well as shop at WalMart, they have less and less financial resource with which to make a decision. They not only can't buy a domestic product of better quality because it is not being offered for sale in their area, they can't afford to buy that product because they themselves are no longer earning enough to pay for it.

WalMart is only one of many large corporate culprits behind this steady feedback loop. Just saying "people have a choice and get what they choose" is oversimplifying it far too much. There are hundreds of factors that have combined to create this situation, and attacking only one or two of them will do no good at all.

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Or, as I suspect, some number of top decision makers knew perfectly well what they were doing but decided to take what profit they could anyway. This is what always happens in capitalism. The larger and richer a corporation becomes, the more isolated from reality, ecology, and macro-economics their managers become. It's the old "let them eat cake" syndrome.

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I have no idea what you're going-on about.

If you want to live in a totalitarian state with a planned economy, you can be my guest-- there are still a few in existence. Either China or North Korea would be outstanding examples. They each have Great Leaders who only look out for this "common good" you talk about. Yeah, often that means killing those evil capitalists and "anyone who disagrees with the Party", but you can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs. It's also worth pointing out that these exciting places are so concerned with the Common Good that individuals are worthless. Possibly the worst mining disasters the world has known? In China, rather recently. Workers die all the time for the Common Good, but that's okay.

The Nazi party you mention? Oh, another totalitarian planned-economy socialist society. The USSR, under which millions of citizens were brutally exterminated under Uncle Joe Stalin? Whoops, another planned economy.

Sorry, but it's your immoral philosophy that legitimizes brutal repression, mass killings, and theft.

There is no greater morality than to make virtuous decisions even though you have free will to make immoral ones. I view choosing to support my local economy, busuinesses that treat their employees ethically, and my countrymen by taking my business to them even if it costs more, and to seek out durable goods that protect the environment as well. Some purchases fit all those requirements, some only a few. But i do what I can, because it's my moral responsibility to do what I can. It's also an acceptable situation to do without if I can't satisfy those requirements, which I do as well. I also exhort others to be conscious of their decisions well.

I have no problem taking my tiny share of credit for following my conscience (which had been nagging at me for the few years I had a Sam's Club membership) and taking my business elsewhere. One of the few Sam's Clubs to ever fail in a viable city in the USA was right here, just this month. That's the power consumers hold. OTOH, the Costco just a few blocks away is thriving. I took my business there because all accounts indicate that the businessman that started that business DOES take very good care of his employees and makes an effort to sell products that are a little more in-line with my sense of morality.

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But it *is* that simple!

I haven't set foot in a Wal*Mart in many years. If consumers realize what they support when they go to a Walton-empire store, they can take their money elsewhere. Sam's Clubs and Wal*Marts can and DO fail when consumers vote with their wallets. Search Google News, you'll see that this happened as I state above.

You're well-read, so I'm guessing you're familiar with Herbert Marcuse and his "One-Dimensional Man" philosophy. If not, it's the root of the captialist counter-culture of which I speak. To apply this philosophy in my way, I say that there is no gun held to the consumer's head that forces him to choose a Ford or a Chevy or a Toyota, even though the marketing forces try hard to make him think that those are the only choices...he also has a choice to not buy a car at all, to buy a bicycle instead. So what, if Wal*Mart is the only store in town? You, of all people, should realize that you could even make your own clothes rather than shopping at Wal*Mart, or contribute to making them with the textiles you produce and paying someone who's better at sewing to tailor your textile. That sort of arrangement is how the textile industry that the USA has largely lost was originally built. There are so many other options between the extremes, too.

There are many ways to exit the feedback loop. Sure, many consumers won't because they're complacent and lazy. Doing the right thing is rarely easy. One person alone won't make much difference, but thousands of people flipping tags to see the country of origin does. The backlash against the way Wal*Mart does business and China does its controlled capitalism has been mounting steadily as American industries derail and consumers begin to realize the damage they've done. I hope I see America return to greatness within my lifetime, and I may once again become one of the capitalists who helps it along. Stranger things have happened. :P

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Source, please.

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I think Google proved that it can both operate a profitable business in a repressive country and avoid being evil. Or did you read what this was all about? They were using their position to provide political dissidents in China with GMail. They refused to hand any emails over to the government, unlike Yahoo (which is why I will never use Yahoo again, ever, the fuckers). So the Chinese government attempted to hack into the GMail servers to gather intel on the dissidents, and Google flipped-out.

If Google loses its foothold, it will probably be a substantial blow to those working for change in China. Google did have to make the message to the Chinese government clear, though. And it may well be capable of exerting some influence. At the very least, the Chinese people are seeing unsanitized results that show them just how much their government is attempting to hide from them, the block pages the "great firewall of China" is throwing up may give them a clue at just how much they're missing. That knowledge empowers the people by giving them a sense of what they're missing.

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The problem is much larger than what you seem to realize. WalMart is only a symptom, not the disease itself.

Yes, I know how to make my own clothes, and in fact I'm not buying clothing from WalMart for many reasons. But even I can't make everything myself, and reducing myself to the narrow-bordered life of a 19th century pioneer is not going to do anything to improve the larger picture. All it will do is let me be sanctimonious about my own involvement. Hardly a way to influence anyone at all.

We live in a culture that is forgetting the basics of survival faster than it learns anything new. People really do not know how to cook, preserve food, sew, or even shop. The entertainment industry and the mass merchandisers have grown to take advantage of that situation, but they didn't actually create it. The underlying failure is much deeper and harder to repair, and no amount of objectivism, capitalism, socialism or libertarianism will do a thing to help with it.

Yes, I avoid buying stuff from China when I can tell the origin. More and more often, though, even when I'm quite confident that something is imported, it is not clearly marked as such. The free traders and profiteers have exported so much of our industry that even our food is coming from China, and most people are utterly and blissfully unaware of the fact.

I perceive an apparent contradiction in your arguments. On one hand, you seem to think that congress with the western world is a good influence on China, yet on the other you suggest that we should boycott those products of slave labor. This is a conflict I can't resolve. How can you do both?

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No contradiction, really. All the stuff about Chinese slave labor is overstated-- not all of Chinese industrialization is slave-driven. Not all Chinese tires are unsafe, not all Chinese toys contain lead, and not all Chinese food contains poison. Some companies are extremely image-conscious and can generally be trusted to frequently inspect the Chinese factories they contract to manufacture for them.

But that's really all beside the point. Providing services to China that its citizens wants keeps the lines of communication open. Feeding their ever-growing taste for capitalism makes their capitalist tendencies grow, and they hunger for even more. That's where leverage comes in; it's as simple as consumers being more ethical and aware, and DEMANDING accountability in manufacturing such as certification from trustworthy sources (with media verification if possible) that goods are produced in an ethical manner. Consumers in the USA did the exact same thing when manufacturers in the USA behaved as badly as the Chinese, and the result was government agencies that at least make token efforts to assure quality, consumer watchdog groups, and manufacturing & labor standards.

For now, I'll let the less ethical shoppers feed China's hunger for business. It's fair to say that probably 80% of consumers have lower standards than I do, but if Chinese businesses want my business, they'll have to do better. It's in their best interests to do so, however, because I'm a premium customer-- I may demand more, but I understand that I have to be willing to pay more too. Who doesn't want to make substantially more money if all they have to do is be a little more responsible?

Wal*Mart is not even really a symptom, it's just a convenient, universal bad example. People thought it was great at first, just like a kid eating cake and candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but I think they are starting to feel sickly and realize their short-sighted stupidity. Wishful thinking, perhaps. And you know something, Wal*Mart will not give up without a fight. When enough customers vote with their wallets and demand a change, they will deliver.

I don't view the decline of survivalist abilities to be necessarily a bad thing. In modern urban life, those skills are not only utterly unnecessary, but can be difficult to practice. In rural areas, they have of a place. The primary difference in urban vs. rural cultures is that urban cultures rely heavily on a division of labor. Individuals become concentrated, they each do a very specific task, and they do it very well. As a whole, urbanites don't waste as much time on survival or doing things they're not very good at, which gives them more leisure time. Rural folk are much more dispersed and have to be survivalists to some extent. They have to be able to do a little bit of everything, often will spend a lot more time doing it due to lack of skill, and do it less well than a specialist or industrial process would. It's just a different lifestyle with a different type of satisfaction. Rural folks pride themselves in self-sufficiency and a broad range of skills. Urban folks pride themselves in nice things and leisure activities. I can't honestly say one is right and the other is wrong. They're just different ways of life for different types of people.

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"Survivalist" is an overly narrow word for what I mean here.

People who don't understand basic nutrition and know nothing about food preparation inevitably become victims of the fast food and processed/packaged food industry. Looking at what is sold in the massive "grocery" departments of WalMart stores around here, it's clear that 1) yes, they are catering to the highest demand, and 2) that demand is greatly underinformed or else driven by lazy and immature tastes. Acres of frozen convenience food and sugar laden (HFCS in most cases) products, and almost no unprocessed ingredients like flour, beans, rice, or even fresh meats or seafood. Everything is preprocessed to eat from the box or stuff into a microwave. The salt and sugar content is off the top of the scale, and diabetes and hypertension are rampant in the US today.

To me this is corporate greed driving the market by withholding proper nutrition in favor of unhealthy but easy alternatives. Like letting kids eat whatever they want, in which case most of them will eat nothing but sugar. The reason? They make more money that way, and the ethics of poisoning millions of people doesn't bother them in the least.

The same happens in other industries. The auto industry whipped consumers into a frenzy with television ads featuring high powered cars being driven by professional race drivers on back roads. Why? Because in the short term it was profitable for them to push that crap. Then when the price of fuel exceeded $4 a gallon and the bank loans dried up for overpriced new car purchases, what happened? The execs bailed with their outrageous salaries and perks, and thousands of workers were left jobless with only limited support. Secondary industries that supplied the automakers or provided services to their facilities and workforce were hit even harder. The entire collapse was foreseeable and even warned against repeatedly, but of course no one wants to listen to a "naysayer."

Corporate capitalism invariably does the wrong thing. That's the bottom line. Small businesses may often do better at both ethics and responsibility, but they are frequently crushed by the big corporations.

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Any more, though, I think the meaning of "survivalist" has changed-- it's now someone who can be partly or mostly self-sufficient without relying completely on goods and services from others. As you note in your example, it's cheaper and faster to buy prepackaged from a store or even just eat prepared food at a restaurant.

You make the same mistake Chibi does, in blaming corporate greed for the choices of consumers. People want what they want, and they usually are too stupid or selfish to make good choices. Even when they see anti-fast-food propaganda like Super-Size Me, even when they know it's bad for them, they still buy bad food because let's face it-- it's delicious. I'm a flexitarian (less strict vegetarian) and I know this stuff is cheaper, faster, and typically more delicious than food I prepare at home...I just know it's shitty food with shitty karma attached to it. It takes self control to say no to it and do things the right way.

This is why illegal drugs, tobacco, and other destructive vice substances will always be around no matter how many Surgeon General's warnings get stamped on the packaging or the government tries to nanny them out of existence. If the government tells people what they can't have, they just go to the black market if they want it bad enough. I have yet to meet a younger smoker who doesn't fully acknowledge that they knew smoking was bad for their health when they started, and a good number actually say they wouldn't quit if they could...they LIKE smoking and always have. They like the taste of tobacco. They like the socialization opportunities, standing 15' from doorways outside in the freezing cold with other smokers. They simply don't care that they might get lung cancer, that they pay a small fortune each year for their tobacco products, that they're sick more often due to suppressed immune systems, that their clothes smell, and that they can't sense it because they've lost their senses of smell.

The adage that "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink" is apt. The People's Republic of Boulder is very health-conscious and has abundant healthy cuisine choices, some of which are highly affordable, but people still demand less healthy options the most. It's anything but a lack of choice or competition. The Boulder Valley School District decided this year to go healthy for school lunches, including going more organic and shifting emphasis to more vegetarian menus, and it's not working very well. The kids don't like the fresh salad bar, and they'd rather get flavored milk in cartons than fresh milk in a cup that they're more likely to spill on the way to their seat. They think the healthier menu choices of prepared food (rather than the often-packaged food the food services folks just warmed up in the oven or threw onto the stove) doesn't taste as good. Food services is apparently losing money now, kids are bringing their own lunches more than ever. It was more convenient for everyone to just have them buy lunch at school, but when the schools took away the choices of things kids wanted to eat, suddenly the demand shifted to "mommy, make my lunch with stuff that doesn't taste like cardboard". All the snack machines went the way of the soda machines and are gone too, so kids just bring in soda and candy bars from outside.

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I feel you're also way off the mark when you blame capitalism and US automakers & their racy ads for their failures; quite the opposite is true, and it proves my point. Detroit, for the longest time, insisted that Americans wanted trucks and big cars. Their smaller car lines were poorly-made, poorly designed, and unreliable (think K-cars or the Saturn/Geo lines). Yet they were still some of the better sellers for all their failings.

How did Detroit respond to that feedback? It continued to focus on the big, powerful high-profit overkill cars, telling consumers that's what they really wanted. REALLY. WANTED.

What did consumers do? They went and bought Toyotas and helped Toyota to supplant GM as the largest automaker in the world. Why? Because the smaller ultra-efficient Toyotas are reliable, comfortable, and well-designed. Toyota's line is centered around smaller vehicles that are perfect for most everyone's needs and just look stupid being driven around a test track by a professional driver (if you doubt this, watch Top Gear :P ). Even Toyota's trucks and SUVs are relatively small, mocked by the US truck fans, but they're (again) very well-made, they're reliable, and safer in crash tests than the behemoths that Detroit made. Consumers generally ignored the propaganda and the focus in the auto industry shifted, which is capitalism at its finest.

This is worth restating: Detroit automakers only failed because they repeatedly REFUSED to give consumers what they wanted, and attempted to force their backward vision on everyone. Ford sort-of figured things out and got on track with what consumers wanted before the big disaster, which is why they survived the big disaster without going bankrupt. There was simply no place for the vision of GM or Chrysler in the future, which is why they both failed. I'm disgusted at the deranged socialist government behavior that got these terrible companies bailed-out, capitalist morality would've seen them fail for their arrogance and stupidity rather than expecting every taxpaying citizen to foot the bill for keeping them afloat against the will of consumers.

It was a little painful for me to abandon my buy-American ethic and purchase my Toyota 4Runner 6 years ago, but I do have a primary purchasing decision ethic that overrides all others-- I must fill my needs. And Detroit simply refused to deliver.

How would you have had the situation handled? Maybe the government should've taken-over Chrysler or GM earlier and told them what they must make? Welcome to the USSR, comrade. Home of some great military hardware, but some of the worst cars ever made in the world, nothing sucks as much as a former Eastern Bloc civilian automobile. But at Soviet car dealership, car chooses YOU!

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cabcat.livejournal.com

China is changing but it'll be awhile till things are easier for the populace. I think they're worried they'll lose all control if everyone is "free".

Some of these Freedoms have two edges and some I think we could do without to be honest.

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dakhun.livejournal.com

How about "and" instead of "or"?

Google was in China to make a quick buck.
AND
They suddenly realised that they were the last ones at the party.

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I can go with that, except I wonder why they'd care that they were the last at the party. "We won! All the more for us!" is the response I'd expect to that situation.

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