Full-blown globalists until they want something, whether less regulation or $8/hr foreign slave labor.
Late stage capitalism clearly isn't compatible with actual patriotism. Most patently patriotic business (and government) decisions would nowadays be called "isolationist" or whatnot. We're a long way from the Mad Men era.
Peter Theil was right to criticize Google cozying up to China. But rather than respond to that point, this guy calls him a hypocrite for backing a seasteading company and gaining dual citizenship in another country. Why argue with his original point when you can just throw ad hominem attacks around?
Plus all of the dog whistles in this article are below the NY Times. Implying that Zuckerberg speaks Mandarin and therefore can't be trusted on China is beyond ridiculous. Or that Google is "rallying around the flag" just because they met with Trump once (I mean, he's the president... ignoring him isn't exactly an option.)
Ad hom attacks are not fallacious when calling into question the motive and hypocrisy of the speaker.
Thiel is making broad, jingoist claims about Google being treasonous without evidence and while google.com isn't even accessible inside the country [1]. This is after Sheryl Sandberg (also on the FB board) hired an agency to spread George Soros conspiracies about critics [2], so this pattern of stirring-the-pot behavior from Facebook isn't quite so uncommon.
The author here is right to call Thiel's motive and behavior into question.
> Implying that Zuckerberg speaks Mandarin and therefore can't be trusted on China is beyond ridiculous.
This is a straw man; the actual argument is that he has been trying to cozy up with the Chinese government to gain a competitive advantage. The full quote:
> Mr. Zuckerberg, who speaks Mandarin, is an odd choice to lead the charge against China. He has spent much of the last decade trying desperately to curry favor with the Chinese government in hopes of getting Facebook’s apps — which are banned there — permission to operate in one of the world’s most lucrative markets. Mr. Zuckerberg even reportedly offered to let Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, name his second child. (Mr. Xi declined.)
I'm sorry, I fail to see how critiquing his attempts to move his billions offshore and gain citizenship abroad is an "ad hominem attack" rather than "legitimate criticism of his alleged patriotism"
Can we just all agree most big tech companies are systems of power, and they will gravitate to other systems of power (the US, China) based on whatever best advances their own interests at a particular moment in time?
if I have the ideas, I'm the one with the power. I remember when Google first had notions of "don't be evil", and I thought that was good enough. It's in their original shareholder documents.
Apparently that isn't good enough. But what's to keep someone like me from looking at the fact that Google's original structure wasn't good enough, so that essentially there is a diff where they take out "don't be evil" from their corporate charter, and deciding: okay, we need something more formal, so that a company can't just diff "don't be evil" out of its documents.
What's to stop someone from starting a company and giving it a constitution not to be evil, defining evil, giving it 9 justices as a balance of power, and so on?
Corporate documents have a ton of weight.
For reference, here is the exact moment Google diff'd "don't be evil" out of one of its own documents:
>"Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct"
>“Don’t be evil” has been part of the company’s corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, “do the right thing.” However, Google retained its original “don’t be evil” language until the past several weeks. The phrase has been deeply incorporated into Google’s company culture—so much so that a version of the phrase has served as the wifi password on the shuttles that Google uses to ferry its employees to its Mountain View headquarters, sources told Gizmodo.
>Here’s the relevant section of the old code of conduct, as archived by the Wayback Machine on April 21, 2018:
>> “Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.
>> The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice. It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. We set the bar that high for practical as well as aspirational reasons: Our commitment to the highest standards helps us hire great people, build great products, and attract loyal users. Trust and mutual respect among employees and users are the foundation of our success, and they are something we need to earn every day.
>> So please do read the Code, and follow both its spirit and letter, always bearing in mind that each of us has a personal responsibility to incorporate, and to encourage other Googlers to incorporate, the principles of the Code into our work. And if you have a question or ever think that one of your fellow Googlers or the company as a whole may be falling short of our commitment, don’t be silent. We want – and need – to hear from you.
>And here’s the updated version, first archived by the Wayback Machine on May 4, 2018:
>> The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put Google’s values into practice. It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. We set the bar that high for practical as well as aspirational reasons: Our commitment...
> I feel like an independent ethical judiciary would be a good step. Companies are insanely powerful, they can do whatever they are set up to do structurally. What's the correct structure here?
there are companies that are owned by their actual stakeholders, i.e the customers[1] and/or the employees[2], in that circumstance changing the corporate charter would require the actual people affected by it to have to vote on the change and approve by some amount of majority depending on how the bylaws are setup
my guess is, if it was up to google employees themselves, don’t be evil” would not have been removed, and might have even been expanded upon
I think the author might be confusing nationalism and patriotism? I'm not sure what's unpatriotic about working with other countries while recognizing that those countries have their own interests.
This opinion column, written with an argument "These hypocritical tech company execs" is missing the actual story: In the United States right now, companies feel that making statements in line with government propaganda and actions that symbolically support it, is what will make the difference between being regulated or not, in business success. The regulators will decide what and how to regulate based on how much a company is liked by the President.
From drain the swap to a political commissar in every swamp. (These are the people that don't like socialism? This is the worst part about socialism! This is the worst kind of 'political correctness', government-enforced) Support our political program, we'll leave your business alone. It's practically a protection racket.
(of COURSE they're all hypocrites, in business and government both, it's just not news, and not nearly as alarming as the part that is news).
12 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 20.9 ms ] threadLate stage capitalism clearly isn't compatible with actual patriotism. Most patently patriotic business (and government) decisions would nowadays be called "isolationist" or whatnot. We're a long way from the Mad Men era.
Peter Theil was right to criticize Google cozying up to China. But rather than respond to that point, this guy calls him a hypocrite for backing a seasteading company and gaining dual citizenship in another country. Why argue with his original point when you can just throw ad hominem attacks around?
Plus all of the dog whistles in this article are below the NY Times. Implying that Zuckerberg speaks Mandarin and therefore can't be trusted on China is beyond ridiculous. Or that Google is "rallying around the flag" just because they met with Trump once (I mean, he's the president... ignoring him isn't exactly an option.)
Thiel is making broad, jingoist claims about Google being treasonous without evidence and while google.com isn't even accessible inside the country [1]. This is after Sheryl Sandberg (also on the FB board) hired an agency to spread George Soros conspiracies about critics [2], so this pattern of stirring-the-pot behavior from Facebook isn't quite so uncommon.
The author here is right to call Thiel's motive and behavior into question.
[1] https://www.axios.com/peter-thiel-says-fbi-cia-should-probe-...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/21/facebook-...
This is a straw man; the actual argument is that he has been trying to cozy up with the Chinese government to gain a competitive advantage. The full quote:
> Mr. Zuckerberg, who speaks Mandarin, is an odd choice to lead the charge against China. He has spent much of the last decade trying desperately to curry favor with the Chinese government in hopes of getting Facebook’s apps — which are banned there — permission to operate in one of the world’s most lucrative markets. Mr. Zuckerberg even reportedly offered to let Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, name his second child. (Mr. Xi declined.)
He is not the sort we want hanging around NZ.
Apparently that isn't good enough. But what's to keep someone like me from looking at the fact that Google's original structure wasn't good enough, so that essentially there is a diff where they take out "don't be evil" from their corporate charter, and deciding: okay, we need something more formal, so that a company can't just diff "don't be evil" out of its documents.
What's to stop someone from starting a company and giving it a constitution not to be evil, defining evil, giving it 9 justices as a balance of power, and so on?
Corporate documents have a ton of weight.
For reference, here is the exact moment Google diff'd "don't be evil" out of one of its own documents:
https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...
I'll now quote this write-up extensively.
>"Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct"
>“Don’t be evil” has been part of the company’s corporate code of conduct since 2000. When Google was reorganized under a new parent company, Alphabet, in 2015, Alphabet assumed a slightly adjusted version of the motto, “do the right thing.” However, Google retained its original “don’t be evil” language until the past several weeks. The phrase has been deeply incorporated into Google’s company culture—so much so that a version of the phrase has served as the wifi password on the shuttles that Google uses to ferry its employees to its Mountain View headquarters, sources told Gizmodo.
>Here’s the relevant section of the old code of conduct, as archived by the Wayback Machine on April 21, 2018:
>> “Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.
>> The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice. It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. We set the bar that high for practical as well as aspirational reasons: Our commitment to the highest standards helps us hire great people, build great products, and attract loyal users. Trust and mutual respect among employees and users are the foundation of our success, and they are something we need to earn every day.
>> So please do read the Code, and follow both its spirit and letter, always bearing in mind that each of us has a personal responsibility to incorporate, and to encourage other Googlers to incorporate, the principles of the Code into our work. And if you have a question or ever think that one of your fellow Googlers or the company as a whole may be falling short of our commitment, don’t be silent. We want – and need – to hear from you.
>And here’s the updated version, first archived by the Wayback Machine on May 4, 2018:
>> The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put Google’s values into practice. It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. We set the bar that high for practical as well as aspirational reasons: Our commitment...
there are companies that are owned by their actual stakeholders, i.e the customers[1] and/or the employees[2], in that circumstance changing the corporate charter would require the actual people affected by it to have to vote on the change and approve by some amount of majority depending on how the bylaws are setup
my guess is, if it was up to google employees themselves, don’t be evil” would not have been removed, and might have even been expanded upon
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers%27_co-operative
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
From drain the swap to a political commissar in every swamp. (These are the people that don't like socialism? This is the worst part about socialism! This is the worst kind of 'political correctness', government-enforced) Support our political program, we'll leave your business alone. It's practically a protection racket.
(of COURSE they're all hypocrites, in business and government both, it's just not news, and not nearly as alarming as the part that is news).