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Maybe I don't understand the whole Google+China issue, but if you can do business with people you disagree with, can't Google do business with China?

• mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Whether or not a particular aspect of Google's business with "China" [1] is ethical -- and whether or not "the business" can be readily separated into "ethical" and "unethical" pieces that can be independently pursued (or not pursued) while maintaining Google's own ethical standards -- is, not surprisingly, a question of ethics and politics. One which I don't think is best carried on here at Hacker News. [1] "China" is a word for a very big place. Does it refer to the government, or the people? Is there a difference? This footnote is too small to contain the volumes of debate which might ensue from this question.
• olavk 18y ago
  I think his issue is not with doing business with China, but rather with the censorship Google has implemented in the Chinese version of the search. One thing is to do business with an entity you disagree with, another thing is to act unethetical (or "evil") yourself in order to do business.
  • orib 18y ago
    What's the difference between financially supporting someone who would do evil, and doing it yourself? Is hiring a hitman wrong? Is shopping at a known hitman's store, knowing that the profits he makes will be invested into killing wrong? It's an extreme example, but if you feel that something a company is doing is wrong, financially supporting them is also wrong. If you say "I'm supporting an entity that does wrong, but the benefit it brings me is greater than the guilt I feel from using them" is one thing. saying "I support them financially, but I disagree with them, therefore I'm not supporting immoral behavior, and am still moral" is just stupid and hypocritical.
    • derefr 18y ago
      This is what I call "the Vegetarian's dilemma." Basically, you can't be a vegetarian (for moral reasons) and a capitalist, in the modern, western world, at the same time. Say you shop at a store that sells meat. Your money helps them buy that meat, even if they make no money on the meat, as they can use it as a loss leader: they have your funding to fall back on. So you stop shopping there. But, hold on, the employees at that shop get payed by the other customers there, right? Customers like, say, the baker and the landscaper that you use. So now you can't pay them either, as they'll go out and pay the shop, and then the shop will go out and buy meat. Take it as far as it can go, and it's clear that you can't participate in a capitalist society that also contains immoral business transactions without rendering yourself immoral.
      • orib 18y ago
        Yes, precisely. This is the point at which you say "I may be indirectly supporting the slaughter of animals financially, but I need to eat. The benefits outweigh the costs, and I'm reducing the demand for meat. I hope that will make a difference. Maybe eventually demand will drop to the point that stores stop carrying meat if enough people follow my lead." No, you can never support only entirely moral entities, but you can still make a difference. It's not an either-or proposition.
    • olavk 18y ago
      > What's the difference In theory nothing, but you have to draw the line somewhere. By eating at a restaurant where the cook uses a pan made in China, you are indirectly supporting the Dafur genocide. So you draw an arbitrary line, which is better than the alternative, which is cynicism.