Pangloss

Well a few days ago I predicted that ExxonMobil would post a new corporate record profit and become the world's largest corporation. I appears I was right on both counts. Wal-Mart's total came in just under $300 billion in FY2005 according to Wikipedia, and ExxonMobil managed to rake in about $371 billion, and set a record profit of just over $36 billion (just under ten percent, which is a whopper compared with Wal-Mart's sub-4% margin). http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/30/business/exxon.php

Oh! Well let's see... Gosh, I sure stand corrected there. Clearly you were referring to the government of the state of Idaho, which of course declared war on Iraq and invaded last year, overthrowing its government and ousting its brutal dictator, much to the chagrin of the popular "Potatos for All" opposition party. My bad. You're quite right in pointing out that your original quote couldn't possibly be misconstrued as a criticism of the Bush administration! What was I thinking? Pardon my while I depart lock-step to the tune of the "Idaho Republican Party March". ;-)

I think it's important to keep in mind that one of the main reasons China has been able to dictate what it's people can or cannot have is because they simple have had so little in the past. But now there is a growing middle class, with a higher level of education, an automobile, and kids to raise whom they will want to have at least the same level of lifestyle. The genie, in a sense, is out of the bottle.

ABB = Anybody But Bush. From my first post:

Oh I see. Perhaps I shouldn't have brought it up, then. But just to try and clarify, Greenspan's point was that while corporations are somewhat mindless in the sense that you mention, they do seek competitive advantages against one another, and regulation removes a potential area for marketing those advantages (e.g. "Google: Buy from us because we're not evil", or "ENRON: The Evil Corporation You Love to Hate"). That's the Google "point of view" I was referring to above. If you had the US government step in and say "Google, you can't do that, because China is repressing its people", then Google would have to stop. But in so doing, you relieve the Googles of the market of any interest in further marketing any perceived ethical advantages over competitors, because the next "evil" thing that comes up is just going to get regulated anyway. This is a little silly, because I was the one actually suggesting regulation as an avenue of remedy, so I'm actually arguing against myself. I apologize for overcomplicating the discussion.

It's interesting that I explained in the first post how this position by the US is a bipartisan one, and yet two posters immediately jumped on the ABB bandwagon. I believe I even predicted that in my first post. What a shocker, eh?

61 years and counting.... Yeah that "extreme pressure" has worked so well in the case of North Korea and Iran, hasn't it? We'll just TELL them not to re-establish their nuclear arms, and everything will work out great, right? You can't even say that the reason current peaceful efforts has failed is because they're able to say that other people have them so they should as well. That's because it's not really conceivable that a larger amount of peaceful effort can be tried in either case. There's no sanction that North Korea, for example, could undergo that it hasn't already. And Iran has oil. Furthermore, small countries could attempt to justify the re-deployment of nuclear weapons because they face conventional threats from much larger countries. Since the threat of nuclear retaliation would no longer exist in your hypothetical world at that point, who could say that they were wrong? This is the kind of flaw in your reasoning that renders the rest of your argument moot, and is why most people don't fall into that trap in the first place.

A couple of other points of interest: 3) In order to actually reach parliament, the newly elected Hamas members will have to actually pass through Israel. There is some speculation over whether Israel will allow them to do so. Either way, it raises the pressure on Hamas to deal with the Israelis. 4) One of the newly elected Hamas members is a woman who is famous amongst Palestinians for giving up three sons to the "cause" -- they became suicide bombers. She's in the actual tapes that her sons recorded before going out and blowing people up. Is she retracting her position now? No way -- she has three MORE sons that she's ready to give up to the cause. No, really.

(I could have done without that perjorative first sentence. I am sure what it adds to the debate, and what it adds to the debate is what I posted above -- my honest opinion. That's what you asked for in Post #1. Remember?) At any rate, why wouldn't Google's point of view be relevent here? Isn't it pertinent to the subject? Why would Google's position not be relevant to a discussion on Google's activities in China? I think you misunderstood me' date=' which may well be my fault for being unclear. I made a bit of a leap ahead of the current discussion in order to suggest that opponents of Google's choice might be able to find some remedy in asking the US government to step in. It was simple speculation on my part, tangential to the discussion. I hope this clarifies things. That's certainly a valid opinion, and it would be an interesting subject for another discussion. The specific essay that this discussion triggered a connection to in my mind was Alan Greenspan's classic essay on the nature of anti-trust legislation, and how it could be argued that regulation has, in effect, actually created the need for regulation -- practically out of whole cloth. It's an interesting read, and it can be found (amongst other places) in Ayn Rand's essay collection entitled "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal", available for purchase at most bookstores.

(I know that's not correct to call it "Palestine", but I got halfway through typing that title in and realized that I lacked an appropriate noun, and then I realized it was actually kinda interesting to leave it in error like that, if you see what I mean.) I was just curious what the reaction here might be. Two things about this strike me as being of particular interest at the moment: 1) The level of vehemence amongst the supporters of Fatah is amazing to me. Demonstrating in the streets and angrily denouncing leaders and threatening violence is something I normal associated with Hamas supporters, not Fatah. What's interesting about that to me is that while most of their angst at the moment is clearly directed at their own party, it's also clear that they're not about to jump on the Hamas bandwagon, and in fact today a cadre of policemen very publically announced that they would not work under Hamas. The point being that now that Hamas, the quintessential Middle Eastern opposition party, has to keep the lights on and the garbage picked up, one can't help but wonder how they will react to having such a virulent and demanding opposition party to contend with. What an interesting turnabout! 2) The Bush administration was the first to send aid to the Palestinian Authority (about half a billion dollars). The Bush administration has stated flatly that the funding will NOT continue unless Hamas renounces its terrorist ways and recognizes Israel's right to exist. That will get played up as more war-mongering by the Bush administration, especially in the blogosphere, but it's worth noting that most of congressional Democrats support that position. Senator Barak Obama of Illinois was outspoken in his support of the president's position on this during a morning interview today.

The "essential services" argument is interesting, and one I have not heard before. I'm not sure that argument, shall we say, has legs, but it's interesting. One implication of that angle is that the US government could direct Google to change its service. But since that's unlikely to happen given China's MFN status and our general free-trade bent, it also seems unlikely that a company will elect to do something on its own that its government wouldn't force them to do anyway. (That being the old "if you regulate them then they have no incentive to approach business in an ethical fashion, since they can just rely on regulation to tell them what's acceptable and what's not" argument. I believe Alan Greenspan first brought this up during his Objectivist period in the 1950s.)

Maybe... or perhaps they just need to be ready to defend the one they have. There's nothing evil about making money, for example, but it's just a matter of time before the far left crowd starts comparing Google with Wal-Mart, IMO. Google is in the business of making money, not setting foreign policy or (fashionable mission statements aside) setting moral standards. And there's money to be made in China. So they're not being evil, and they're doing exactly what their investors expect them to do. After all, it's China's policy to censor content, not Google's. Big business is not the vehicle that will put a stop to human rights violations around the world. If anything, we should be less concerned about solving the world's ills and and more mercenary/confrontational about showboating our greatest asset -- our capitalist culture, and everything it represents that tyranical governments hate and fear. Iran's president wants to nuke somebody? Gosh I'm sorry to hear it. Want a Whopper... your way? There's a genocide in Freedonia? Gee. Have you heard the new Britney Spears CD about Africa? Castro's beating dissidents? Have a Coke and a smile, and you'll be giving ten cents to a poor Cuban exile family in Miami. We're damned good at that stuff, and it meshes perfectly with the American tradition of gradual change and small steps toward a brighter future. And none of our people die in the process.

It'll be interesting to see people's take on it. As that story probably mentions, Google has tried to live with the motto "don't be evil", and is finding that more difficult to do than perhaps it thought it would be. After all, the phrase "don't be evil" is pretty judgemental and VERY non-specific.

But Jim, there's no bias in the MSM! ;-) Thanks for the suggestion, it looks interesting. I don't really have any great suggestions to add in terms of books about this subject, but I do highly recommend Daniel Yergin's classic "The Prize" for a greater understanding of the history of the oil industry and its basic influence on Middle Eastern politics. It greatly improved my understanding of the history of the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia, for example. Fascinating stuff.

Hard to believe it's been 20 years, isn't it? MSNBC is running an interesting 8-page story on the accident, including a timeline of events, investigation and historical perspective. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077897/

Why stop there? Why not toss into your requirements the elimination of our dependence on foreign oil, our "meddling" in the affairs of other countries, settle our debts and trade disputes, and a litany of other complaints against the US while we're at it? Which might end up, at the end of the day, with the US taking care of those things, and Iran holding nuclear weapons. Hmmm.....

Do I need to repeat my question, "FreeThinker"?

Why stop there? Why not toss into your requirements the elimination of our dependence on foreign oil, our "meddling" in the affairs of other countries, settle our debts and trade disputes, and a litany of other complaints against the US while we're at it? Which might end up, at the end of the day, with the US taking care of those things, and Iran holding nuclear weapons. Hmmm.....

That's not what he said at all, and you're *this* close to a warning for flaming.

I tell you what I need more than anything else is a penalty box. Some place where I can put people who've lost their temper until they cool off and can return to civil discourse. Lacking that, this subject is now closed. Y'all can blame Swansont if you like, but trust me: it was a group effort.

ABC News ran a story last night that I think serves as a good example. They were talking about record profits in the oil industry, which I've been predicting for some time now. Conoco reported its earnings yesterday and they were up 66% over last year. I predict that when ExxonMobile reports its figures (next week?) it will reveal not only a ~50% increase in profit over its all-time-for-all-corporations record from last year, but it will also be revealed to be the world's largest corporation, making Wal-Mart look like Joe's Pizzaria. That having been said, the oil companies are everyone's favorite whipping boy these days, and everyone seems to forget a number of factors that should (to some degree) ameliorate that sentiment, such as the fact that the price of oil is a commodity, set by an open market (not the oil companies), or that the oil companies are pumping massive stock value into millions of nervous pension funds, or that SUV sales are plumeting, or that the economy as a whole is doing very well. ABC actually reported some of that, but they did so at the start of the story, which of course is a time-honored tradition amongst reporters. You put your stuff that you don't believe at the beginning, and then you refute it with the stuff you believe in. So the story actually ended with this quote from Hawaiian senator (and Democrat) Daniel Inouye, during the Commerce Committee meetings on oil prices last November: (That's how they showed the quote.) Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/09/AR2005110901070.html Um... what suffering? What sacrifice? Americans spent an average of THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS at Christmastime this year. And I'm not seeing any evidence of Americans dying in the streets because they can't buy heating oil. Do these people even exist? This kind of thing happens all the time, it happens on BOTH sides, and the most logical way to counter it is to stand up, recognize it, and learn the truth.

Basc, there's no question that there are various biases amongst the many diverse sources of news, information and entertainment out there. That doesn't mean that there's no liberal bias in the mainstream media. One cannot dismiss the bias issue as a mere partisan talking point for one side or the other.