31–40 of 112 posts
I was actually frequenting the taste of DC with my wife and kid this weekend and found that the protest was just half a block away. It was pretty awesome listening to them drop F bombs left and right out of their loud speakers with hundreds and thousands of kids right there. Great example....
Do you buy any food at all that is not grown by local organic farmers? If you do, chances are you have a much stronger business relationship with Monsanto than Paul Graham does. After all, you are directly giving money to a supermarket, which is giving it to a big agribusiness, which either is Monsanto or is a customer of Monsanto. All these evil things that Monsanto does? They're done with your money. Contrast that…
That being said, the emergence of the organic food movement and such businesses such as Whole Foods goes to show that people are starting to adjust their spending habits.
In an effort to support this, I'm sure you'd agree that the end consumer should be supported in understanding what is in their food. Interestingly, Monsanto actively opposes the labeling of GMO foods, or the labeling of milk as being rBGH free.
(Quick hint if you care: buy your milk in Canada - or anywhere else in the western world - where rBGH has been determined to be too dangerous to add to milk).
Why would we lynch Cloudant, but Apple and other companies (that make much more money from Monsanto) get a free pass? Of course a startup is excited to get a big client, as they should be. If Apple was a small company and signed a deal with Monsanto they'd probably make a big deal about it too. For a startup a big client can be the difference between success and failure in the early days. Apple has no such excuse, th…
Do you buy any food at all that is not grown by local organic farmers? If you do, chances are you have a much stronger business relationship with Monsanto than Paul Graham does. After all, you are directly giving money to a supermarket, which is giving it to a big agribusiness, which either is Monsanto or is a customer of Monsanto. All these evil things that Monsanto does? They're done with your money. Contrast that…
-I suppose as someone that gets the majority of my food from a local CSA, the farmer's market and a food co-op, I'm allowed to challenge your point in your reckoning. But I very fortunately live in a community where such alternatives are an option. The expense or total lack of viable alternatives to food produced by big agribusiness isn't the result of an unadulterated free market, it's in large part because of policy lobbying from these businesses for massive subsidies and anti-competitive intellectual property laws and enforcement (e.g. successfully suing farmers whose non-GMO plants were cross-pollinated by Monsanto varieties from neighboring farms). You can't use "take your business elsewhere" free-market logic when the company in question has systematically choked off competition so that there are no alternatives. You're right, what Monsanto does is with my money, in the sense that way too many of my tax dollars go to the company.
-"Evil is efficient" is a lazy and indefensible excuse for bad behavior. Green business has successfully shown that, actually, "good" can be more efficient, especially if you take a long-term view of your business.
-While I would find doing business with Monsanto personally distasteful, what Cloudant does with Monsanto is, I guess, Cloudant's business. However, trumpeting the fact in a press release makes a statement about the company's values at a level that invites public scrutiny. You can't put out a press release and then cry about the blowback you get from it.
-Finally, I think there's a larger point to be made here about the hustle that founding a startup requires and the temptations you face when things aren't going well and you're facing a quickly disappearing runway. Maybe things are moving too fast for you to really think about what you're doing but remember that the day you stop making decisions that you believe in for the sake of external pressure, your vision starts to slip away from you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's virtually impossible to live in modern society If you truly consider those "multinational companies" to be so unethical and dastardly, then don't. Live outside of modern society. Many people do. You do not. Your hypocrisy is telling.
how is this different from a simple proposal that dissenters simply leave society ? I'd prefer dissent to be a little more structurally integrated into our society, thanks.
It isn't. If enough people leave, the old society disappears and a new one forms. If not enough people leave, then the people who left were morons and suffer for it. As simple as that.
The funny part is, everybody knows the above. It's a part of human nature. It's how new societies form and old ones disappear.
I want companies to be more ethical too. I want honesty and transparency - just like I want a government that works.
Register your concerns through constructive comments.. save your protest for Monsanto, DC and Wall Street. And, if you really want to make a difference build your own company and lead by example.
Edit: I'd also like to note its impressive this thread is still on the front-page of HN when it could have easily been removed.
I agree with pg on this one, and I find Nick O'Neill's arguments to be as ludicrous as O'Neill seems to find pg's. This must be a fundamental, deeply ingrained, clear-cut difference in the way people think.
I think they are both right (or both wrong). Or maybe they are not talking about the same thing. I think O'Neill believes Monsanto to be a far worse company than pg (or I, for that matter) do. It's an agrochemical company that does engage in strong-arm legal tactics, but at the same time, it's not on the level of IBM working with the Germans in the 1930's. O'Neill does have a point in that in a free society, consumer…
If Goldman Sacs can be described as a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity", for the way they are intertwined and tangled up with the regulatory frameworks in the US financial system, surely the same holds true for the way that Monsanto and Cargill have such monumental sway over the Department of Agriculture and the way that farmers do business.
That said, i agree with PG that the original post was content-free. I'd actually go further and say that even within gigantic evil corporations, good can be done. That's not to say that it will offset the awful things that Monsanto does, but i don't know that the Cloudant guys are (necessarily) being assimilated into the Borg. On the other hand, there is clearly a gap between the author's ethical judgements and PGs. So if he doesn't trust PG or the Cloudant guys, i can see why he'd be pissed.
You premise that Monsanto is an evil company. And yet people are buying their product willingly. Their GM products increase yields allowing farmers to grow more, leading to lower food prices, which means less people starve. How is this evil? If there wasn't an advantage of using their product nobody would be buying from them. You seem to be proposing that the government should ban farmers from buying from Monsanto. O…
If you agree with them, you will do business with them. If you don’t, you won’t purchase their products.
Which is certainly how I and most of my friends live life. Sure it costs a little bit more to eat healthy local options, but to me it is worth it.
First of all, the article is suggesting that simply dealing with companies with a certain amount of moral ambiguity makes you yourself somewhat inferior. By this logic, one cannot deal with any large company, because as soon as a company becomes multinational, it becomes so diverse that it is inevitable that it will step on someone's toes.
If we look at any large company, Apple with its manufacturing practices, Microsoft with its antitrust case, Intel with it's widespread claims of environmental damage from its manufacturing process, then we must conclude from what this article suggests, that no start-ups should deal with large firms. No firm can claim to be on a moral highground. Even organizations such as green peace, WWF or Sea Shephard, have caused damage to a certain amount of people but our own internal biases (such as a fear of GM or whatever else), and how the company position's themselves reflects how 'good' we think they are.
If anything, Monsanto was better at managing its disastrous PR, then we may have a better opinion of them. We need only look at companies like Apple and Intel to see how effective distraction can be in hiding a companies moral ambiguity. Therefore, I reject the premise of the article that small business should pick and choose its clients based on their 'image'.
Secondly, I think that the suggestion that Cloudant should not have publicized their contact is way off. What gaining a contract like this shows is that you are competent enough to deal with a huge infrastructure. That you are trusted with millions of dollars worth of equipment, whose malfunction may cause huge losses to a large number of people.
As far as I am aware, for cloudant at lease, they have a big win on their hands, gaining an image of reliability as well as a huge revenue stream, something which start-ups are hard-pressed to find.
We can only hold cloudant responsible for it's own actions. In no way is Cloudant supporting the actions of Monsanto. Farmers will not buy seed because cloudant manages their cloud. But other companies, ones we classify as 'good' may use cloudant because of their affiliation with Monsanto.
Do you buy any food at all that is not grown by local organic farmers? If you do, chances are you have a much stronger business relationship with Monsanto than Paul Graham does. After all, you are directly giving money to a supermarket, which is giving it to a big agribusiness, which either is Monsanto or is a customer of Monsanto. All these evil things that Monsanto does? They're done with your money. Contrast that…
1. You seem to think that consuming a GMO is a riskless way to save money. Consider reading "Assessment of the food safety issues related to genetically modified foods" by Kuiper et al. or similar to understand how scientists currently asses risks for GMO food, and then the history of any substance later discovered to be harmful to humans (I recommend Gately's Tobacco book). We have a lot of evidence but it is far too soon to call the GMO race, as the potential benefit is something like $3/meal and the potential cost includes things like cancer.
2. You are forgetting that PG also consumes GMO food, and that OP also runs a business.
3. In transactions engaged in by intelligent people, both sides believe they are getting more value than they are giving up. Because of this, your distinction between OP giving money to Monsanto and PG getting money from Monsanto doesn't matter -- both sides are benefiting more than the cost incurred.
4. Your second to last point ("If Monsanto's business practices bother you, factor that into your purchasing decisions") is obviously true, and exactly the kind of thing OP seems to agree with -- he has even taken it further and used those morals in the design of his own business.
5. "Monsanto is not the only beneficiary of their evil ways, though: because of their evilness, millions of Americans spend less on food than they otherwise would" ... and have an increased risk for all sorts of disease. See #1. What odds do you give that GMOs do not cause an increase in disease? In light of that number being non-zero, would you like to take back this statement?