Push Button Paradise
Micah Dubinko
Wed, 28 Sep 2005
On Evil, Corporations, and Countries
The forces described in this opinion piece are not specific to any one company, though current events seem to have been.
Reporters without borders (abbreviated RSF in French) an activist organization that promotes many things I care about, recently made waves after Yahoo! reportedly turned over information about a particular user to the Chinese government. Small watchdog-type organizations often need all the publicity they can get, and unfortunately at times go to uncalled-for lengths to get it.
Lots of companies are getting into hot water over China policy, and lots more will continue to do so. But this particular one struck me as strange. It's easy to condemn something that was done but much harder to offer a serious alternative. I had to extrapolate a bit to figure out what RSF was really saying.
Then on NPR today Lucy Marian spoke, and her words helped clarify for me what RSF was trying to get across. She said that international companies have "responsibility promoting American and Western standards abroad." Huh??
First off, in any number of Western governments, if the spooks want to get information about somebody online, they are more than capable of obtaining that information, through court orders or perhaps more powerful legislation (and often in secret), but that's the topic for another David Crosby-style rant some day. Western standards have no special status that makes them automatically worth imitating.
Legally, the mandate of corporations is cold hard fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Violating national laws due to a judgment call just doesn't pass muster. Maybe the laws that enable corporations should be changed to alter this fact--maybe currency isn't the best measure of how a company is adding value to society--but that's a topic for another David Korten-style rant some day.
Interestingly, many people would use the word "evil" to describe a person who cared for money above all other considerations. Yet, that's exactly how corporations, which have legal status as a person in many ways, are defined. So it's little wonder to me that huge companies get such a bad rap. Even so, criticism needs to be fair and constructive, not part of some other agenda. -m
posted at: 21:41 | under: 2005-09 | 4 comment(s)
>makes them automatically worth imitating.
I suppose the history of the concept of "freedom of expression" has its roots in the western world--at least that's what they teach us here in the west--but I don't consider its western origins to be what makes it special.
Ironically, fiduciary responsibility to shareholders is an even more western value.
Posted by Bob DuCharme at Thu Sep 29 07:40:43 2005
"Even so, criticism needs to be fair and constructive, not part of some other agenda."
What other agenda? And why must it be constructive. When Microsoft used non-competitive practices to kill competing software throughout the 90s, was that a time for "constructive" criticism? When Union Carbide's carelessness led to thousands of deaths in Bhopal, was that a time for "constructive" criticism? How about the Exxon Valdez? I can go on. All those companies were doing was trying to manage costs, and thus following this fiduciary responsibility you seem to have become so enamored of.
RSF simply called Yahoo out for an unsavory action. If Yahoo did the same thing inthe US, they would have done the same thing.
I think your position is incredibly muddled, and I can only assume that being a new Yahoo employee you feel you have to defend them at the expense objective consideration.
Posted by uche at Thu Sep 29 10:53:05 2005
The main trigger for me was Lucy Marian's quote (and it is an exact quote, not a caricature or paraphrase--I listened to it several times). When a group named "Reporters without Borders" starts talking about "promoting American and Western standards", that sets off agenda-creep alarms for me.
I agree, though, that the post is somewhat muddled. It doesn't have a single sound-bite revelation or conclusion, and was pretty much real-time writing for me.
(And for the record, I am far from enamored of corporations' over-emphasis on money. If anything, I'm more in the Korten camp, even if I don't blog about it incessantly.)
It's always easier to call someone on the carpet than to suggest concrete improvements. In that spirit, my next posting will offer some suggestions for this tricky situation. -m
Posted by Micah Dubinko at Fri Sep 30 00:14:25 2005
