>> “the ability for people in China to use this tech is more important than your ability to generate satire.”
How about "the ability for people to be free and have free systems and society is more important than the money we hope to get from doing business in China".
But here we are in Silicon Valley where business and money rise above all else including national sovereignty.
As long as western companies can’t do unrestricted business in China, neither should Chinese companies be able here. The earlier we break the toxic relationship, the better.
> As long as western companies can’t do unrestricted business in China, neither should Chinese companies be able here.
Well, they can't and they don't. They have to follow the local laws.
Facebook, for example, doesn't operate in China because Facebook made the deliberate decision that they don't want to follow the same laws Chinese companies have to follow. Their comment was this: “We need to figure out a solution that is in line with our principles and what we want to do, and in line with the laws there, or else it’s not going to happen. Right now, there isn’t an intersection.”
There is a fine mist of ilusion of rule of law. But the party is outside of it. And the truth is, the laws is more similar to the law of network connections within the family graph of a mafia clan.
Its basically just used as a body wrapping foil, once the graph has decided to finnish of some node.
Stop projecting western values upon a completely different scenario, just because its apt at mimicrcy.
In the context of china. And its reflected in the sallaries. Its a decorative position of a society pretending to be ruled by law. But in the end its not.
So why pay them as good as they do in the west.
A lawyer in the west is basically a guidance councelor for CEOs or politicians, determinating how much and how they can move within the system to a position. It is paid accordingly, if work occurs in this capacity. The rule of law is detectable by the price that can be extracted for providing the service to move within the framework and not violating it, aka incur punishment.
If that pay is low, then there is no punishment for violations, or the punishment depends on different criteria entirely. Which could be formulated as a lack of rule of law. There might be invisible rules, ceremonys, within the party, but they are not enforceable, except by higher layers in court. And they are also not part of the discussion scope.
Honestly this is my main problem with TikTok. I know Meta and Google spy just as much as TikTok. However it is problematic that Chinese app companies have full access to Western markets while the reverse is severely limited.
I'm not sure why this point isn't rammed home at every opportunity. Reciprocity is a cornerstone of many trade agreements and tariffs/protectionism are a common answer to foreign government favoritism of domestic companies (e.g. CCP protecting its own).
No one should be able to do unregulated business anywhere. Trading with China is good but they shouldn't be able to influence our culture to conform to the whims of their government at all
I mean, doesn't the concept of a free society apply to private corporations as well? The government is not restricting you; the private company is exercising its right to run its business according to its own free will. The principle of a free society suggests that "if you don't like the company's policy, find another one or create your own." Is that wrong?
Scrutiny is justified. However, it should be within the scope of whether the product fulfills the need and should have nothing to do with "sovereignty" or "free speech rights," don't you think?
Can't believe how often I see this sentiment, and how nonsensical it is.
We're private citizens, nothing prevents us from criticizing them for a wide variety of reasons. If you want to restrict yourself and ignore everything except the literal function of the product, you're free to do that, but you can't argue everyone else has to do the same.
Or is your argument that we have some kind of social responsibility to judge products based on exclusively on what the product does, but the product has no social responsibility whatsoever? That's a double standard that can't have any justification.
No one is preventing you from criticizing them. I am just saying that criticism from the standpoint of free speech or sovereignty is inconsistent with the idea that you can satirize whatever or whoever you want.
> I am just saying that criticism from the standpoint of free speech or sovereignty is inconsistent with the idea that you can satirize whatever or whoever you want.
I don't understand what you are saying. Criticising a company on free speech grounds who prevent you from satirising someone is absolutely consistent. What inconsistency are you seeing?
For the record: pretty much all clothing is still created with effectively slave labour.
Either in the harvesting of the cotton, refinement to cloth, sewing to clothing or finally when dyeing.
And the second example: apple still has an assembly manned by Uruguay internment slaves and pretty much everyone here fawns over it every chance they get.
So from the perspective of HN both of these are seemingly acceptable
>Should a company be allowed to do business with a company that owns slaves?
They do, all the time. Manufacturing, mining (particularly of the rare earth metals that go into electronics) and agriculture all depend on slave labor.
It certainly should be illegal, but a lot of the comforts of first-world civilization would vanish and the velocity of modern capitalism would grind to a halt, so politically speaking apart from token gestures that don't threaten the status quo that isn't likely to happen.
I think generally owning slaves goes against the idea of freedom (let's discard the concept one has the freedom to sell themselves for once). Thus company does not have the right to own slaves.
People don't automatically be free if every western company stops doing business in China. Withdrawing from the market can't really do anything about that unless it can put a lot of pressure on the power holders.
How about "the ability for people to be free and have free systems and society is more important than the money we hope to get from doing business in China".
But here we are in Silicon Valley where business and money rise above all else including national sovereignty.