Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fundamental issue is the expectation that all public companies must keep growing and show profits quarter after quarter, year after year. This is obviously unsustainable. Hey, feel free to invest your retirement savings in a company that doesn't grow profits year after year, I'm sure you'll do great!
>invest your retirement savings We would need to rework the whole system if we threw out the "constant growth" method of running a company. If we take care of the people so they don't have to worry about saving for retirement, it's possible to redesign the economy in this way and our goals as a society. You obviously can't change one major axiom of the US economy without revisiting the remaining axioms!
Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
211–220 of 378 posts
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Companies are easier to not do business with. Some companies, however at a certain point, it becomes extremely difficult to not doing business with specific companies. For example: describe how you would stop doing business with Equifax. Also, how would you stop doing business with Google. You cannot simply stop using the search engine or Gmail. You would have to block (or stop using) websites using Google Analytic…
> For example: describe how you would stop doing business with Equifax. I can't speak to every area of their business, but as a credit consumer: You freeze your Equifax credit report and only work with lenders who will accept pulling a report from a different agency.
> I can't speak to every area of their business, but as a credit consumer: You freeze your Equifax credit report and only work with lenders who will accept pulling a report from a different agency.
Are there actually any lenders that would actually be Ok with that when you apply for a mortgage? It's de rigueur for them to demand your credit report from all three major agencies. I suspect that's because some of your accounts may be missing from one report or another, and they don't want borrowers tactically freezing the one credit report that has adverse information.
I suspect the only way to stop doing business with Equifax is to stop using or applying for credit. For many people, that means forever renting their housing, because they'll never be able to buy.
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#213I actually applaud Poulson for leaving Google in protest of Google's Chinese business practices. Having mentioned that, I think I have to part ways with him when he implies that the correct way to "fix" this is to have the government come in and make these sorts of business decisions for the company. I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Especially when it looks like this whole thing is…
> I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Yea, but I'm a big fan of regulated food, clean water and pollution standards. Upholding your obligations is a requirement to receiving the protection of the government as you conduct your business. It's a two-way street. > Especially when it looks like this whole thing is Google specific. The better question is whether Google is acting as a monopo…
You're comparing food and water to how a company does business in another country. These two things couldn't be more different. Does the US government also manage food and water in China?
> The better question is whether Google is acting as a monopoly
That's an entirely different question. The letter seemed to target the china problem directly, which is more about censorship than monopoly. If anything, monopoly is just being used as an excuse here.
> but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first?
Isn't Apple bigger by most metrics?
> you haven't made a sufficient case that "favorites" are being played
I think the point is, if favorites aren't being played now, this sort of move incentives companies to suck up even more to lawmakers. If Google gets screwed for doing business in China while thousands of other companies get away with it, what kind of incentive does that show?
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#214I actually applaud Poulson for leaving Google in protest of Google's Chinese business practices. Having mentioned that, I think I have to part ways with him when he implies that the correct way to "fix" this is to have the government come in and make these sorts of business decisions for the company. I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Especially when it looks like this whole thing is…
His long-term goals seem to be industry-wide ("I would hope that The Committee would help protect the environment needed for future whistleblowers by taking steps to guarantee ethical transparency and oversight across Silicon Valley").
I think you're reading into this something you fear, but that is not even on the table.
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah right, "following the laws", because discussions of morality can be reduced to whether it "follows the law" or not? No, that's absurd. Google is objectively abetting an authoritarian regime and providing it with extremely useful tools to maintain and strengthen totalitarian control over 1.4 billion people, and this is wrong.
I'm not going to defend what Google is doing. Having said that you should be very careful when asking corporations to enforce any kind of morality. The electorate defines our morality through government. Companies should play no part in this definition outside of the rights of their employees as private citizens. You should also be very careful when imposing your own personal views on people living in an entirely dif…
It's not Google's job to go to every government in the world and tell them how they should run their country.
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. OK. Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else?
A company complying with the laws of the country it does business in seems fairly uncontroversial to me, even if you may not agree with those laws. Do you want your companies to be extensions of US foreign policy?
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#217I actually applaud Poulson for leaving Google in protest of Google's Chinese business practices. Having mentioned that, I think I have to part ways with him when he implies that the correct way to "fix" this is to have the government come in and make these sorts of business decisions for the company. I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Especially when it looks like this whole thing is…
I find it a little disturbing how we can have laws that stipulate how companies have to treat their workers and conduct their business but as soon as we start talking about ensuring what we consider "rights" are being taken care of overseas it's too far. Not quite as disgusting as how we ended up with torture, including waterboarding, indefinite detainment, and a whole slew of fun activities in the early aughts that…
The idea of inalienable rights is theoretical at best, because a large fraction of the world is alienated from any right one cares to name. As an assertion that humans deserve these things, that they should be demanded without compromise or compensation? Sure. As an assertion that they are in any consequential sense distinguishable from alienable rights? I don't see how.
Virtually every country in the world operates under laws that contravene the US Bill of Rights in one manner or another. The speech laws of nations like Germany and Britain, whatever their merits, unambiguously violate the First Amendment. The Sixth Amendment is unsupported in virtually any nation without an adversarial justice system. The Seventh Amendment is unsupported in most nations, where jury trials are either not practiced or not guaranteed. Even without touching the Second Amendment, the vast majority of liberal democracies allied with America do not uphold the Bill of Rights.
As is, this is easy to sort out: the Bill of Rights restricts the actions of the US Government and no one else. Issues like waterboarding and indefinite detainment operate at the edge of this principle, but I'm content to observe that the Bill of Rights does not discuss citizenship or soil; it simply places restrictions on the action of the US Government towards 'persons'. Rendition and torture are fundamentally different from any question of Google's activity, and were clearly illegal. Similarly, the government is restricted from infringements, not just direct action; the use of proxies like contractors to violate rights is clearly illegal.
In the international case, though, I genuinely don't understand what you're proposing. Google did not violate the rights of persons, citizen or otherwise, US soil or otherwise, on behalf of the US government. (In fact, it's not even clear that it would have violated such rights by running Dragonfly in the United States on the orders of the US government. I desperately want Constitutional privacy guarantees, but the idea is still uncomfortably penumbral.)
So: are corporations obligated to uphold constitutional rights with regard to their own actions, independent of the state? Are they obligated to uphold those rights abroad? Does that exclusively apply to companies incorporated in the US, or those resident for tax purposes, or is a permanent establishment sufficient? If the answer isn't 'incorporated', what are they to do when multiple nations assert conflicting rights, as with Google's Canadian legal mess between 1A guarantees and the right to be forgotten? If it is 'incorporated', what happens when US-dominated companies begin incorporating under international flags of convenience?
I could go on at much greater length, but leave it there. My objection is not that US citizens are special or deserve better than other people, but that attempts to enforce Constitutional guarantees beyond the action of the US government have promptly become both legally ambiguous and frighteningly imperialistic. And so far, I haven't seen any proposal for avoiding that outcome.
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#218Yet another white American who thinks that thinks that their personal moral grievances are more important than a billion Chinese people gaining access to Google. This is even worse than men telling women that abortion is evil because at least men can claim to speak for the fetus. I've yet to hear a convincing argument that Dragonfly make the lives of Chinese dissidents any worse, let alone regular residents.
This comment should not be flagged. It's just a very unpopular opinion in this forum. Study the difference between popularity and merit. Study the history of popular opinion and how new or different ideas are received versus their merit. Flagging often amounts to a very harmful type of self-censorship that just constrains conversation to certain worldviews.
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#219Brian Acton or anyone else feeling guilty about their ad-tech wealth: use your winnings to lobby for a federal privacy bill that is as strong and comprehensive as GDPR (and other EU privacy regulations). The industry is moving to enact something that maintains the status quo [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/technology/tech-industry-...
Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company
#220Brian Acton or anyone else feeling guilty about their ad-tech wealth: use your winnings to lobby for a federal privacy bill that is as strong and comprehensive as GDPR (and other EU privacy regulations). The industry is moving to enact something that maintains the status quo [1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/technology/tech-industry-...
If you don't like Google's tracking practices: don't use Google products. If you're okay with them, then keep using Google products. Free minds; free people; associating with each other freely.
Washington should be weary of regulations like GDPR on principle. Plus I doubt GDPR would have passed if Google, Facebook, and Twitter were, say, French. GDPR was only passed because the companies they were "targeting" (and they were targeting a specific set of companies let's please be real) were foreign.