Capitalism, greed — and Google's return to China

© 2018 Peter Free

 

27 August 2018

 

 

Capitalism's prime directive — "do sin" — ?

 

Google looks as if it is headed back into the Chinese market. Succeeding there will require conforming to the PRC's strict censorship requirements. That's a capitulation to slave-making that Google had previously rejected as being unethical.

 

Evidently recognizing this glitch, Google reportedly concealed its planned geographic expansion from most employees. Scroll down to item 11 at this link.

 

 

This market dilemma . . .

 

. . . illustrates why capitalism's fundamental deadly sin (greed) fuels further sins. It is impossible to base behavior on money lust, as capitalism does, without eventually rejecting even basic morality in the interests of acquiring still further loot.

 

Thus, Google will assist the Chinese Establishment's thought control. All in the name of corporate and shareholder lucre-sucking. This is Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in bloom.

 

 

"More and more, faster and faster" — as a philosophy — gets us where?

 

Capitalism's emphasis on acquiring "more and more, faster and faster" is one of the subjects of Ian Angus' book — The Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System (2016). Reviewed here.

 

Angus' examples are well-taken. They flesh out my Google instance.

 

 

Founding economics on a deadly sin goes unquestioned in our culture

 

For example:

 

 

[Economics professor Ann Lee, New York University, said that:]

 

Google is out to make money.

 

[T]here are many shareholders that want to see Google's stock price go up. Clearly, it's in their very right to pursue one of the largest markets in the world.

 

 

[University of Virginia's media studies professor Siva Vaidhyanathan agreed:]

 

Google can't ignore China. To ignore China is to ignore the world.

 

It's almost malpractice for a business that has global ambitions to ignore the largest market in the world.

 

© 2018 Listening Post, Google's China push outweighs censorship concerns, Al Jazeera English (27 August 2018) (at 4:12, 2:05 and 7:55 minutes — in the embedded video clip)

 

 

Notice Professor Lee's, "Clearly . . . in their very right"

 

Maybe so to an economist.

 

Certainly not to an ethicist. Or even to an arguably decent human being.

 

 

The moral? — Raking in lucre is so prime a capitalistic directive that . . .

 

. . . almost no one bothers to question whether institutionalizing such an obviously deadly sin is wise.

 

In metaphorical terms, the devil (in ourselves) blinds us to the usually repulsive social consequences of choosing such a starting point.

 

In this regard, I find it cynically laughable that so few among the world's mainstream religions question our fondness for justifying clear wrong-doing in the interest of profit. Guess what's motivating them, too.

 

My point is not that humans are pieces of shit. It is that we are thoughtlessly turdish.

 

And look where that remediable trait has taken society's boat.