Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Nov 9, 2007 13:33:02 GMT -4
Bibles are being outlawed at the 2008 Olympics, not the country as a whole.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Nov 9, 2007 13:36:43 GMT -4
A Chinese friend suggested that this is a hard one to call. You want to be in a country. You want to make their government like you. What do you do if they ask you to help them find a political agitator? I don't think it's that tough. If China asks you to find a political agitator and you agree with the agitators position and know he is going to be tortured, imprisoned, or even executed for doing what you consider the right thing, then the right thing to do is to give up on trying to make the government like you and tell them to get someone else to supply their internet needs. You would effectively be giving up access to a huge market but you would be doing the right thing. You break your contract and pay the penalties.
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Post by Bill Thompson on Nov 9, 2007 16:55:05 GMT -4
A Chinese friend suggested that this is a hard one to call. You want to be in a country. You want to make their government like you. What do you do if they ask you to help them find a political agitator? I don't think it's that tough. If China asks you to find a political agitator and you agree with the agitators position and know he is going to be tortured, imprisoned, or even executed for doing what you consider the right thing, then the right thing to do is to give up on trying to make the government like you and tell them to get someone else to supply their Internet needs. You would effectively be giving up access to a huge market but you would be doing the right thing. You break your contract and pay the penalties. I was speaking on a company's behalf. From a corporate point of view, it is a very tough decision. The needs of the many would outweigh the needs of the few. Maybe Yahoo got insurance from China that the people would not be executed and so blood would not be in Yahoo's hands. From Yahoo's view, getting into China would not be a matter of greed but a matter of improving the lives of millions of Chinese and open up better trade and commerce between China and other countries. Yes, it would be a tough decision.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Nov 10, 2007 13:33:28 GMT -4
Utilitarian arguments don't really apply unless you consider allowing some to be tortured, imprisoned, and executed equal to providing millions internet access. Personally I don't think internet access is worth killing any number of people for.
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Post by Bill Thompson on Nov 13, 2007 3:22:59 GMT -4
Utilitarian arguments don't really apply unless you consider allowing some to be tortured, imprisoned, and executed equal to providing millions Internet access. Personally I don't think Internet access is worth killing any number of people for. I think from the communists point of view, these people upset the natural order of their society and need to be put in prison. They are trouble makers, to them. We are not so perfect and just. I had a neighbor who was a lawyer and he told me faults of a democratic free-market system that I had never thought of. Drug companies often know that a medicine can hurt or kill people and if they can make enough money off of the medicine to float the costs of a law suit, they will release the medicine. This does not happen in a communist country. Products, services, or music that lead to teen pregnancy are often sent out to the market in a free market economy if they will make money. This does not happen in a communist country. So here comes Yahoo to China. The Chinese government knows there are trouble makers who are wanting to change the government in China. Yahoo has to weigh the good and the bad. And, besides, it is not Yahoo's place to judge. And besides, if Yahoo, overall, brings happiness and well-being to the Chinese people, what is one imprisoned, outspoken, political agitator?
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Post by Data Cable on Nov 13, 2007 11:19:48 GMT -4
This does not happen in a communist country. But apparently painting toys with lead and using antifreeze as a sweetener do. No teen, nor anyone else, has ever been impregnated by music. [Edit: refuting another silly claim]
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Nov 13, 2007 12:44:11 GMT -4
I think from the communists point of view, these people upset the natural order of their society and need to be put in prison. They are trouble makers, to them. And the communists are wrong, because they are protecting a totalitarian system that diregards human rights. Nope. In a communist country people with the condition the drug was intended to treat just die. Or they grab a sample of a drug produced in the US, copy it, and sell it without paying the creators, and the few who are killed by taking it have no legal recourse at all. That's the problem right there - it is Yahoo's place to judge. They need to judge whether they are willing to live with censoring the content they provide and providing the Chinese government with targets in the form of people engaged in what would be perfectly legal behavior here for the money the Chinese are willing to provide them with. They chose the money and Congress is calling them on the carpet to justify themselves. Saying "but it was a lot of money and only a few people died" is not a very good excuse unless you can show a lot of good being done as well, and censored internet access doesn't seem like a lot of good to me.
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Post by Bill Thompson on Nov 13, 2007 13:02:10 GMT -4
Jason, we need to find more things we can disagree with. I think it is still less than 10.
All you say in your post amounts to an opinion. The Chinese have a different opinion. They live in a system different from ours. Yahoo is in their world when they go to China. When in Rome do what the Roman's do.
Pretending that we are on such a higher ground to look down upon them is unethical.
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Post by Data Cable on Nov 13, 2007 13:27:03 GMT -4
Pretending that we are on such a higher ground to look down upon them is unethical. Funny, you don't seem to have any ethical problem with looking down upon those whose opinions disagree with the president or policies of the US government.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Nov 13, 2007 13:27:41 GMT -4
We are on higher moral ground than the Chinese government. Anyone who can't see that is, to put it simply, ignorant.
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Post by Bill Thompson on Nov 13, 2007 15:17:53 GMT -4
We are on higher moral ground than the Chinese government. Anyone who can't see that is, to put it simply, ignorant. A very educated professional chinese woman I work with would say the exact opposite. Have you been to China? She has been to both the USA and China. She thinks the actions of Yahoo are understandable. My view is that they are just different. But I can think of lots of ways that they are better morally. Shall I name some?
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Nov 13, 2007 15:27:04 GMT -4
Suppression of the press, censorship of the internet, occupation of tibet, suppression of religious freedom, re-education camps for political dissenters, the Tianamen square massacre where 2,000-3,000 of China's brightest were killed for engaging in peaceful demonstration, Mao's "great leap forward" which caused about 40 million of his own people to starve to death because of his faith in communist rhetoric, the Cultural Revolution in which half-a million people died and historical sites, antiques, and historical cultures were destroyed forever, and population control laws.
Those are probably good starting points. Your friend is fooling herself if she thinks China and the US are morally equivelent.
EDIT: My favorite quote from Firefox is appropriate here: "Mr. Grant, you are an American. You are a free man. I am not. There is a difference."
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Post by Ginnie on Nov 13, 2007 17:35:24 GMT -4
Gee whiz Jason, I agree with you.
Well, at least that the Chinese government is immoral. I wouldn't extend that to its people. (Not that you have either).
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Nov 13, 2007 17:42:38 GMT -4
Like I said, it happens sometimes. Don't let it bother you too much.
And no, the Chinese people on the whole are definitely not bad people.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Nov 14, 2007 2:11:41 GMT -4
And no, the Chinese people on the whole are definitely not bad people. Well it depends, those that are busy ripping off western products with shoddy rubish and replacing pharmacy drugs with horse tranquillizers and then filling up my inbox with their spam are.
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