Capitalist Sins: "It's Just Doing Business..."

I haven’t been to Jeff Jarvis’s Buzz Machine in a while so when I popped over to do a little catch up, I caught his post referencing one of Fred’s at A VC that I either missed or had bounce off my thick skull. The discussion is another one of Fred’s most excellent business ethics and morality plays that he’ll address every once in a while that I enjoy reading.

You can get the detailed run down of the issue over at BuzzMachine and A VC, but the gist of the discussion surrounds the ethics of Yahoo! bowing to Chinese censorship nannies in order to launch access there. A Yahoo executive was asked at a conference whether his company would have chosen to do business with Hitler and Germany during pre-war times. Fred says he should have pulled a P. Diddy and shut the studio down and gone home. Jeff says he damn well better have had to answer the question (perhaps asking the question without evoking Hitler’s name would have been a more cordial way of discussing the topic I think).

My response is as follows:

Both David G. and Jarvis are right. Jeff's position cannot be denied. Semel needs to, and should feel obligated to answer the question. Why? Because their product is communication and information, not farm equipment. Their product's use, if used in it's American fitness for purpose could land a Chinese citizen in jail. I think sweeping China's civil rights atrocities under the rug of capitalism is wrong (yes, jailing someone for looking something up on the internet is an atrocity).

I think David G., Derek, etc... provide good responses to the question, but here's the hypocrisy catch. Haliburton/Brown & Root have shareholders too. I really fail to understand the heaps of shit slung their way from liberal capitalists. Is there a CEO reading this blog that wouldn’t take a call from the Whitehouse for lucrative work? Just asking.

In the end, giving the Chinese a sip from the cup of freely shared information will do more to inspire Chinese dissidents to demand more freedoms than putting a sanction in place as David G. accurately states. We’ve got third graders here in America hacking into the most secure networks of the world. I can only imagine that once the Chinese have Google and Yahoo!, they’ll find away to get access to uncensored information and are probably doing it right now.

There are some very thought provoking comments (mine excluded) from folks all over the world on Fred’s and Jeff's blog so give it a click and weigh in if you feel up to it.

P.S. I love how one guy equates the Chinese ability to download pirated movies and music without paying for it as "China being more liberal than the U.S." Another thief makes excuses...