http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/technology/27iht-google.html
Google Gets Little U.S. Corporate Support in Internet Fight With China

Google, GoDaddy and at least 1 other web host have pared back their business in China.

I thought it was great that Google made the decision to sacrifice profits for principle, and i was hoping that other companies might follow suit to try and shift China away from totalitarian leanings, but this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Quote :

"Microsoft, Yahoo and others have trumpeted the general principles of Internet freedom, but none have directly echoed Google’s call for an end to Web censorship in China. And, GoDaddy aside, no other technology company has hinted at a change in business practices in China to protest regulations and restrictions there. “China is a very important market,” said Jim Friedland, an analyst with Cowen & Co. “What’s the incentive for a government or another company to join with Google? There is none, and that’s why you haven’t seen it happen.”"

3/26/2010 8:45:21 PM

Misleading thread title, interesting enough article.

Not surprising, though. Most companies are just going to go for the money, and Google will keep getting the good press.

3/26/2010 8:49:09 PM

great thread title, but "communist" china is now largely capitalist, despite the ruling party's name.

Your troll thread gets a grade of B+ for originality

[Edited on March 26, 2010 at 8:53 PM. Reason : s]

3/26/2010 8:52:09 PM

^Also, Google isn't protesting China's economic system in the first place... they're protesting the totalitarian-style censorship of information which could be done under any sort of economic system.

[Edited on March 26, 2010 at 8:58 PM. Reason : For the record, I do not associate myself with Solinari or aaronburro. The thread title is just off.]

3/26/2010 8:55:34 PM

Communism isn't what you think it is. China is still communist. Communism is more of an idea of what you want to be, not what you are. China has moved away from socialism, but as their growth slows I imagine they will begin to adopt socialist policies with more fervor.

3/26/2010 8:55:38 PM

hahaha. something not communism is communism because I believe it is! tell us more about those republicans in the house refusing to stop talking, Kris

3/26/2010 8:56:57 PM

^^^ so just replace the thread title in your mind with "Apparently the free market supports totalitarianism communism"

[Edited on March 26, 2010 at 8:58 PM. Reason : ]

3/26/2010 8:58:09 PM

Quote :

"something not communism is communism because I believe it is!"

It's not me, it's Karl Marx.

"Communism (a) still political in nature – democratic or despotic; (ß) with the abolition of the state, yet still incomplete, and being still affected by private property, i.e., by the estrangement of man. In both forms communism already is aware of being reintegration or return of man to himself, the transcendence of human self-estrangement; but since it has not yet grasped the positive essence of private property, and just as little the human nature of need, it remains captive to it and infected by it. It has, indeed, grasped its concept, but not its essence."
-http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
It may be difficult to understand there, but that explains why technically China is still communist.

But I believe the above poster is right, this has more to do with despotism than communism.

3/26/2010 9:03:52 PM

haha. we're communist because we think we are communist, or we want to be so.

3/26/2010 9:26:51 PM

"the free market supports"

how the fuck do you even get off writing that you asshole.

3/26/2010 10:43:37 PM

Quote :

"haha. we're communist because we think we are communist, or we want to be so."

If you have a better reference for defining communism than Marx's manuscripts, be my guest. But I'm guessing you don't, considering I started studying communism extensively 10 years ago, and still don't know of any other definition of it.

3/27/2010 3:30:03 AM

hai guys, the definition of communism by karl marx has the phrase "private property" so clearly communism means capitalism.

3/27/2010 10:11:11 AM

if you understand that to mean something different than it says, please enlighten me.

3/27/2010 11:28:14 AM

Marx sees communism as a step towards Nirvana.

Unfortunately the communist step of eliminating private property, of freeing mankind from the slavery of his property...will be undertaken by...man in the form of a cruel totalitarian state.

The communist step is immoral, because it requires forced altruism which means forced slavery.

3/28/2010 1:19:57 AM

I love hearing white man talk about the horrors and peril of a society with no concept of property rights. . . but then again it makes that society so much easier to exploit and conquer.

3/28/2010 1:25:59 AM

Quote :

"the horrors and peril of a society with no concept of property rights"

His criticism is about the "communist step" towards such a society -- not with the society itself.

3/28/2010 8:22:33 AM

^^^ what happens when totalitarianism and profit go hand-in-hand as in this case?

3/28/2010 10:55:05 AM

all democrats support communism.

3/28/2010 2:59:47 PM

Quote :

"Marx sees communism as a step towards Nirvana."

WTF? Have you ever read any Marx?

Quote :

"The communist step is immoral, because it requires forced altruism which means forced slavery."

Again, WTF?

3/28/2010 3:12:58 PM

Quote :

"I love hearing white man talk about the horrors and peril of a society with no concept of property rights. . . but then again it makes that society so much easier to exploit and conquer."

A white man would be more likely to know something about communism, as the Soviet Union was populated with a mostly white citizenry.

It is unclear for Cuba and North Korea, as in both cases foreign capitalist firms combined with massive black markets represent a substantial portion of economic activity. As such, I would not call them communist, more like kleptocratic messes. While the Soviet Union also allowed foreign capitalist firms to operate within its borders, and black markets were also prevalent, their combined output never amounted to much in pre-1980s USSR.

3/28/2010 5:07:27 PM

In the US's heroic war against communism we have supported straight up despots and totalitarian rulers that made Mao and Ho Chi Minh look like humanitarians..

3/28/2010 6:25:08 PM

I'm less upset about the humanitarian issues, but just think about how much money was wasted by spending it on on guns and spaceships instead of focusing on trading and technology.

3/28/2010 8:47:47 PM

Quote :

"think about how much money was wasted by spending it on on guns and spaceships instead of focusing on trading and technology."

plenty of the latter came from the former.

3/28/2010 9:57:34 PM

Yeah, we got lovely inventions like the nuclear bomb, which will probably end up eradicating much (if not all) of the human race at some point in the future. Maybe using war as a means to an end (in this case, technological innovation) isn't such a good idea after all...

I have no doubt that any technology developed for war could have been developed without war. Protectionism (which may be a byproduct of nationalism) is the only thing standing in the way. We should have global collaboration, not "let's invent this before other countries do, to prove we're better!"

3/28/2010 10:48:43 PM

Not nearly enough. Had we traded with the USSR and shared technological advancements we could have achieved some truly great things. We may have gotten some technology from space and making missles, but it's like needing a box and going out and buying a TV just to throw it away and keep the box. Sure you got your box, but you could have just saved some money bought the box by itself.

3/28/2010 10:50:01 PM

Quote :

"Had we traded with the USSR and shared technological advancements"

Weren't like 700,000 people murdered under Stalin? And weren't something like 3 million people forcibly sent off to Siberia? Why on earth would we want to trade with him or help him in any way?

3/29/2010 12:30:25 AM

Not at all. We have studies to show what the effect of lifting the embargo on the USSR would have done: nothing. It turns out, only a few western countries had any embargo what-so-ever on the USSR, and even they had exceptions (our titanium had to come from somewhere). Well, a study of trading pattern records was conducted and found that even western countries with low tariffs on soviet goods (norway, sweden, finland, denmark, etc) imported a negligible amount of consumer or industrial goods from the soviets. It seemed the soviet system was incapable of meeting western standards of quality at any price. They tended to import more consumer goods from Japan on the other side of the world than the Soviet Union, with-which Finland shared a border. The only exception was the temporary exportation of automobiles which were being made in a transplant factory built and managed by a western capitalist firm. But to meet quality expectations, the factory had to import almost all the machinery and parts from the west, burning up a lot of hard currency in the process. Although, last I heard, the factory was still under capitalist management and still making cars. Only with the adoption of capitalism to more of the economy since then, they now make cars using domestic parts. This tale was out of The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy by Philip Hanson, if I remember correctly. An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. is always good for a laugh (my copy was published in 1972).

As for the other way, the soviet planners decided in the 1970s that the importation of western technology (in the form of machinery) should be secondary to the importation of food, as it was the only way to cover up the continuing disaster of collectivized farming. The western world even recognized soviet patents and copyrights, as nintendo paid millions for the rights to Tetris (although the actual creator got nothing).

[Edited on March 29, 2010 at 1:09 AM. Reason : .,.]

3/29/2010 1:03:14 AM

This makes sense. Both the free market and communism depend on exploitation of workers or the people at the bottom.

3/29/2010 1:07:04 AM

Quote :

"Why on earth would we want to trade with him or help him in any way?"

You're only going to make the situation worse by not trading with them. Just look at China versus North Korea.

Quote :

"We have studies to show what the effect of lifting the embargo on the USSR would have done: nothing."

Link plz?

Quote :

"It seemed the soviet system was incapable of meeting western standards of quality at any price."

Many Soviet goods are still in use today, everything from machine guns to synthesizers.

3/29/2010 12:16:35 PM

Quite true. I never had a link. The study was on reserve at DH Hill as required reading in my modern european history class. Although you are quite right, weapons were not classified as consumer goods. But even there, western European states did not buy them. That just begs the question, I don't know where Norway or Finland get their weapons from, but it seems it was not from the Soviets. There is no doubt the Soviet Union exported its weapons to the third world or bartered its consumer goods with fellow communist states, but this says nothing about quality, as these consumers would have no choice in the matter.

The only stable trade the soviet union had with the west was raw materials. They would export raw materials and then import food and machinery. And even that they would mess up, by mixing light sweet crude with sour crude because they found it too complicated to transport oil properly.

3/29/2010 9:29:19 PM

Can you give me the name of the study?

3/30/2010 1:00:44 AM

Quote :

"Protectionism (which may be a byproduct of nationalism) is the only thing standing in the way. We should have global collaboration, not "let's invent this before other countries do, to prove we're better!""

You must not be familiar with human nature.

3/30/2010 9:20:12 AM

Quote :

"I have no doubt that any technology developed for war could have been developed without war."

That may be true, but you'd still be wating another 50 years for some company to pull together the capital to install GPS satellites. You'd also be paying dearly for that service.

3/30/2010 12:29:53 PM

Quote :

"You must not be familiar with human nature."

I'm familiar with it. People are more than happy to work together if they feel they can benefit from it. The problem comes about when governments set up trade barriers.

Quote :

"That may be true, but you'd still be wating another 50 years for some company to pull together the capital to install GPS satellites. You'd also be paying dearly for that service."

I doubt it.

[Edited on March 30, 2010 at 1:18 PM. Reason : ]

3/30/2010 1:18:09 PM

I'll just throw out there that the AK47 is known to this day to be the most reliable and durable light machine gun out there.

Now most other soviet products were crap, but the AK is the gold standard.

3/30/2010 1:43:21 PM

depends on how you define gold standard.

they made different trade-offs with the AK-47 that the US military did not make on their rifles.

If you value the optimized features of the AK-47, then that is your gold standard. However, if you value the features of the M-16 or whatever, then that would be your gold standard instead.

3/30/2010 1:45:44 PM

the AK is guaranteed not to jam. No one ever made any guarantees that you would hit what you are aiming at with an AK.

3/30/2010 2:21:05 PM

Quote :

"That may be true, but you'd still be wating another 50 years for some company to pull together the capital to install GPS satellites."

The government could have done this without war.

Quote :

"You'd also be paying dearly for that service."

It's probably not going to be any worse than how we've already paid for the service, or how we continue to pay for it.

Quote :

"Now most other soviet products were crap, but the AK is the gold standard."

3/30/2010 6:17:45 PM