4 ms·

Your comment seems unnecessarily argumentative, would have been stronger had it followed the Principle of Charity, and doesn't advance the conversation as much

Your comment seems unnecessarily argumentative, would have been stronger had it followed the Principle of Charity, and doesn't advance the conversation as much as it might. I don't want to engage in a back and forth, tedious sentence by sentence deconstruction but I think your first two statements offer an example of how a less quarrel-seeking reading would have helped you find the answers in the text itself and engage with the article better. "The article doesn't even begin to tell us why it's harder to stop multinationals." It says, 'The countries where they are headquartered are unable to regulate them, and the countries where they operate are unwilling to.' Later on the author talks about investment from developing countries to other developing countries and the changing composition of the Fortune Global 500, to give a further explanation. He quotes a researcher who talks about leverage and the 'denominator' problem. "How to stop them what?" 'preventing multinational corporations from violating human rights [...] abuses in poor countries — land grabs, sweatshops, cash-filled envelopes passed to politicians'

anexprogrammer 11y ago
I still don't see the article as addressing that well at all. I re-read it fully before answering. Immediately after mentioning that we think of cash-filled envelopes etc the very next paragraph says that this is not what's the problem. "The countries where they are headquartered are unable to regulate them" ... "This architecture is one of the greatest international human rights triumphs of the last 50 years." ... "they’ve raised the cost of committing human rights violations in developing countries." Well either the regulation is working well or it isn't. It's no longer a piece addressing the shortcomings of multinationals but is a piece pointing out the difficulties dealing with corrupt or overseas regimes. We're now talking of how we trade (multinationals included) with those places. Of course there is some degree of cross-over stemming from trading with. It's far more about the internals of these places "The majority — all 5,000 of them — sell clothes on the domestic market", leasing land from Zimbabwe's ARDA etc. Now I fully agree that this is an problem, but it is not the same issue. Likewise, internal regulations that he mentions. Many of those are not new. The main example, Green Fuel, in Zimbabwe has no external investors or customers. Where's the multinational angle there? So yes they're untouchable, but it's a national issue. It's been that way for a considerable number of years in some cases. So let's discuss why we're failing to make other countries more globally accountable. It's clearly important we consider that. How far can we reasonably expect to influence another nation? We don't often send a gunboat like a Victorian govt might have. Isn't that basically saying that it's not, in this case, multinationals that's the problem here? We can also talk about about shortcomings multinationals, which I already covered, probably at too much length, in the OP.
- Alterlife 11y ago
  I believe the headline is a herring. It's a build up to this paragraph: > You know where I’m going with this, right? I’m about to tell you that the company behind all this is Monsanto, or Shell, or Coca-Cola. That your car is running on the ethanol this plant is producing. That the U.S. government is funding or facilitating or failing to prevent what is taking place here. > But none of that is true. I enjoyed reading this article. It's like a story, and this is 'the twist' - one of many. Even the first two subheadings are misleading. "Naming the shameless" - Big company logo... Can I get my pitchfork? Nope. Turns out this company did the right thing. "Village chief has 500 acre farm, 114 children"... Wow, this guy must be in on it!!! Nope. Turns out he got screwed too. This is a story about a local company in Zimbabwe and a commentary on companies operating out of developing countries where there is not yet a system in place to penalize destructive behavior.

anexprogrammer 11y ago

I still don't see the article as addressing that well at all. I re-read it fully before answering. Immediately after mentioning that we think of cash-filled envelopes etc the very next paragraph says that this is not what's the problem. "The countries where they are headquartered are unable to regulate them" ... "This architecture is one of the greatest international human rights triumphs of the last 50 years." ... "they’ve raised the cost of committing human rights violations in developing countries." Well either the regulation is working well or it isn't. It's no longer a piece addressing the shortcomings of multinationals but is a piece pointing out the difficulties dealing with corrupt or overseas regimes. We're now talking of how we trade (multinationals included) with those places. Of course there is some degree of cross-over stemming from trading with. It's far more about the internals of these places "The majority — all 5,000 of them — sell clothes on the domestic market", leasing land from Zimbabwe's ARDA etc. Now I fully agree that this is an problem, but it is not the same issue. Likewise, internal regulations that he mentions. Many of those are not new. The main example, Green Fuel, in Zimbabwe has no external investors or customers. Where's the multinational angle there? So yes they're untouchable, but it's a national issue. It's been that way for a considerable number of years in some cases. So let's discuss why we're failing to make other countries more globally accountable. It's clearly important we consider that. How far can we reasonably expect to influence another nation? We don't often send a gunboat like a Victorian govt might have. Isn't that basically saying that it's not, in this case, multinationals that's the problem here? We can also talk about about shortcomings multinationals, which I already covered, probably at too much length, in the OP.

Alterlife 11y ago
I believe the headline is a herring. It's a build up to this paragraph: > You know where I’m going with this, right? I’m about to tell you that the company behind all this is Monsanto, or Shell, or Coca-Cola. That your car is running on the ethanol this plant is producing. That the U.S. government is funding or facilitating or failing to prevent what is taking place here. > But none of that is true. I enjoyed reading this article. It's like a story, and this is 'the twist' - one of many. Even the first two subheadings are misleading. "Naming the shameless" - Big company logo... Can I get my pitchfork? Nope. Turns out this company did the right thing. "Village chief has 500 acre farm, 114 children"... Wow, this guy must be in on it!!! Nope. Turns out he got screwed too. This is a story about a local company in Zimbabwe and a commentary on companies operating out of developing countries where there is not yet a system in place to penalize destructive behavior.