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Beware of geeks bearing gifts

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Re: Beware of geeks bearing gifts

#71

Post by Theory5 »

pearkes wrote: post #14

> What Facebook and Google have done is discovered a village with no water and they plan to bring them cheap Coke to buy when—if their motives were truly honorable—there is another glaringly obvious option: you could teach them to build a well. Funny you should mention Coke. It turns out that these businesses desiring profits can pretty efficiently solve or make improvement to problems, like distribution, in places l…

You cannot use Coke as an example. They have a strategy that can aptly be described as "profits before people". They've hired terrorist groups to kill workers who've done nothing but try to organize a union to have enough money to feed their children.

http://killercoke.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Coca-Cola http://colombiajournal.org/colombia73.htm

It's like saying that the mining companies in Virgina have done nothing but help the people in that region, forgetting of course, the Battle of Blair Mountain, or the wages, or the treatment, or the pollution.

Some companies actually care. But Coke does not. It will never. You speak about the solution to a problem being motivated by profit and that is exactly what the unions were, a problem that was solved by the need to profit.

Some companies need to be stopped. To be taken down. Not because they produce a bad product, but because they are to far detached from "the human condition", and therefore see people as simply an obstacle to their profits.

Re: Beware of geeks bearing gifts

#72

Post by s_q_b »

wavefunction wrote: post #42
pearkes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, let me clear – I'm not saying a huge multi-national corporation is squeaky clean because of one positive thing they've done. The point I was trying to make is that the motivation of said company may not be to "save the world", but the results (and the impressive efficiency of attaining them) may do a lot of good, even if indirectly.

Efficiency is not the only thing that matters though. As drcongo pointed out Coke is very efficiently depleting the normal aquifers that native farmers rely on in their quest to build a market for their product. Now if we consider that Coke is a luxury when compared to a necessity like water for drinking and irrigation, we should conclude that a luxury that precludes a necessity is superfluous and should be prohibite…

If Coca Cola is depleting a shared resource, then there is an unpriced negative externality. The solution is for the government to transfer some of the gains from the new more efficient system to those worse off under the new equilibrium.

This can be accomplished by taxing the corporation for its use of the aquifers, and transferring the payments directly to those that lost use of their wells.

The end result is that everyone ends up with more wealth than they had under the old system.

Re: Beware of geeks bearing gifts

#73

Post by saraid216 »

pearkes wrote: post #14

> What Facebook and Google have done is discovered a village with no water and they plan to bring them cheap Coke to buy when—if their motives were truly honorable—there is another glaringly obvious option: you could teach them to build a well. Funny you should mention Coke. It turns out that these businesses desiring profits can pretty efficiently solve or make improvement to problems, like distribution, in places l…

In other words, they have permission to make mistakes, because we have lower expectations of them? If that's the case, you're doing us all a disservice by telling us they're not evil after all.

Re: Beware of geeks bearing gifts

#74

Post by pearkes »

saraid216 wrote: post #73
pearkes wrote: post #14

> What Facebook and Google have done is discovered a village with no water and they plan to bring them cheap Coke to buy when—if their motives were truly honorable—there is another glaringly obvious option: you could teach them to build a well. Funny you should mention Coke. It turns out that these businesses desiring profits can pretty efficiently solve or make improvement to problems, like distribution, in places l…

In other words, they have permission to make mistakes, because we have lower expectations of them? If that's the case, you're doing us all a disservice by telling us they're not evil after all.

No, I think I may not be making myself clear.

Good regulatory structures, like we've been trying to develop alongside the emergence of the free market as "the way", are important, along with the consumer being keenly aware of where there product comes from, the morale implications of buying such a product, and so on.

However, it's hard to debate that the undeniable force of a humans desire to move _themselves_ forward (or their company, for the sake of themselves) has taken us up and to the right in situations like these.

Re: Beware of geeks bearing gifts

#75

Post by saraid216 »

pearkes wrote: post #74
saraid216 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, they have permission to make mistakes, because we have lower expectations of them? If that's the case, you're doing us all a disservice by telling us they're not evil after all.

No, I think I may not be making myself clear. Good regulatory structures, like we've been trying to develop alongside the emergence of the free market as "the way", are important, along with the consumer being keenly aware of where there product comes from, the morale implications of buying such a product, and so on. However, it's hard to debate that the undeniable force of a humans desire to move _themselves_ forwar…

> (or their company, for the sake of themselves)

But not their governments? Isn't "America is number 1" still a profit motive?

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