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Shareholders Squeeze Cisco on Human Rights
Comatose51 writes "According to this article at Wired, Boston Common Asset Management, has filed a shareholders resolution asking Cisco to 'adopt a comprehensive human rights policy for its dealings with the Chinese government, and with other states practicing political censorship of the internet.' Cisco so far has asked the SEC to omit this proposal from the agenda for the next annual meeting, claiming that it already has a comprehensive human rights policy in place and that 'Cisco does not participate in any way in any censorship activities in the People's Republic of China ...' However, 'a report from the OpenNet Initiative watchdog group last April singled out Cisco for allegedly enabling the Chinese government's notorious "Great Firewall."' As a shareholder in Cisco, I would like to see this issue discussed and voted on."
Oh, wait.
In every other discussion on /. about companies in China, we're told that it's the shareholders that force them to operate there. It's nice to see someone who's socially responsible for once.
As a shareholder in Cisco, I would like to see this issue discussed and voted on.
And as executives, the members of the board would like to see this swept under the rug as quickly and quietly as possible. Remember that such a resolution would impede the company's ability to do business in the single fastest growing tech market in the world.
IIRC, I read in a recent issue of IEEE Spectrum that Cisco was also a winner of one of six huge contracts to rebuild China's Internet infrastructure. I highly doubt the Chinese government would have chosen Cisco if they did not have the ability to sensor as the Chinese government on it. If you can lay your hands on that copy of Spectrum, they specifically discuss the censorship issue and speculate as to whether or not Cisco is party to it.
Me and all 10 of my shares would like to see something done about this!
You probably won't hear it on the evening news in the USA, but Microsoft is also actively engaged in helping China with political censorship.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It is a business of network equipment. It has the primary goal of turning over as much equipment as it can, and make as much money as it can... what's the phrase? "Maximizing Shareholder Value".
It's not Cisco's prerogative to try and tell ANY government how to draw up policy... all they need to do is keep selling hardware... at a profit.
If a couple shareholders don't like it, buy them out and tell them to move on. Seriously.
I mean, puh-leeze...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Because some shareholders are still human?
Oh, of course they don't. But I bet they help wash the dishes. Excerpt from the Chinese translation of the Cisco Stonewaller 3000:
Dishwashing function:
The Stonewaller 3000 features extensive "dishwashing" capabilities. For example, if you would like to block all "dishes" from a certain "dish maker", execute:
dishwash add [dishmaker's website URL] [peasant | party member | chairman] (allow||deny) [notify]
Note: notify sends notification upon use of "dirty" "dishes" to assist you in maintaining clean "cupboards".
------
On a more serious note- Cisco just has to maintain some plausible deniability. Clothing companies have this down pat. They set up a policy that looks great to consumers, and then promptly hire a subcontractor who runs sweat shops.
When a human rights company figures out what is going on, it's nearly impossible for them to come up with hard evidence management at the company knew about the subcontractor's sweat shops; the company releases a press release saying "gosh, we're so sorry, this is all the fault of our contractor." The contractor is fired, the contractor disappears off the face of the earth, and a new contractor with a different name pops up and suddenly out of the middle of nowhere, scores a big contract with a famous clothing company.
Please help metamoderate.
...a "great firewall" here too, sorta. It is used by all the major ISPs on a voluntary basis, blocking access to child porn sites. This is according to norwegian law and norwegian justice system for norwegian users. It is not like this is anything complex, it is essentially a firewall. The point is, in a democratic state the same tool is used differently than in a communist state. The general slashdotism is that P2P is a tool, and so is the "great firewall". Perhaps Cisco's relationship with China goes further and could be considered aiding and abetting breaches of human rights, but I don't think delivering the tool itself is enough. That would put a lot of suppliers of various goods in the same bin at least.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So does Google and so does Yahoo!. But then, Google is held in such high regard here that we can only say such things about them in hushed tones.
From the article:
Even if it came to a vote and passed, the resolution would not be binding on Cisco's executives. But "it sends a strong message to management, and it gets across the sentiment of shareholders in a way that writing a letter can't do," says Wolfe.
Big whip. It's not binding and is just paper. As for the reasoning that management cares what the shareholder's think...well that argument has been going on for decades.
Also from the article:
"Can companies just claim a total lack of political responsibility in how their technology is used in all instances? It's something that companies should be thinking about when they sell their technologies around the world."
Yes, they can. Companies are out to make a profit not a political statement. Investors, i.e., the shareholders, want a monetary return, not a political return on their investment. As an investor in Cisco I would sell immediately if I knew Cisco was going to quit selling to one of the largest markets in existence because they were going to make a political statment (in fact I would sell short and make quite a bit when this news hit the street as well).
There is nothing that Cisco itself can do change human rights in China. In order for that to happen the people of China have to want the change; really want the change. If tomorrow Cisco stopped selling to China Juniper or another company would just take up the slack. Only if all companies did this would that then make an impact. (And yes, I know you have to start somewhere, but why don't you start with the people in China first?)
Political mongering at corporations has been around for decades and it will not go away. But what a waste of time to fight over a non-binding non-effort.
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and feel Cisco helps violate human rights (and you find this intolerable) just sell your shares.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Cisco does not engage in censorship. They simply make equipment which can be used to engage in censorship. Similarly to a company that makes matches that can be used for arson, or Proctor and Gamble whose Clorox bleach can be used as poison.
There is no way to tell Chinese government what they can and can not do at this point. It would be nearly fatal to impose stiff tariffs, too. So bend over and hand the Chinese that bottle of vaseline.
For some marginally good news for a change, as highlighted by jewishvoiceforpeace.org and corpwatch.org, according to an Apr. 15, 2004 Peoria Journal Star article:
Caterpillar is headquarted in Peoria, which is why the Peoria newspaper ran the story. I've been unable to locate any other newspaper running this story.
The Peoria newspaper portrays it as a loss for the activists, when in fact it is a major victory (the 4% means it has to be discussed at next year's shareholder meeting) and represents a creative and practical means for effecting change in corporate behavior -- much more practical than street riots.
As I've often stated, corporations should not be so large, last so long, and have Constitutional rights. However, if they have to be around, then the proposal contained in the conclusion of the seminal Small Is Beautiful for bridling corporations is good. Small is Beautiful says that since corporations are like mini-governments, run them as a democracy where all the stakeholders (all who are affected by the existence of the corporation, including investors but especially those who live near the corporation's activities) vote.
Failing those two -- i.e. if we can't ban large corporations and if we can't have stakeholders vote on how large corporations should be run -- then participating in the existing corporate governance process -- namely buying stock and voting at shareholders meetings -- is the next best thing.
This peaceful, legal alternative to reining in amoral powerful corporations has gone underreported.
See also the previous UnderReported.com stories:
Not really... this would be more like blaming gun manufacturers for selling to the Chinese. And that would be blameworthy, since, presumably, gun manufacturers would realize that the Chinese are going to use their guns to oppress one billion people.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I often see people in US, the most capitalistic country in the world (this might start a flame war but I'll say it anyway, that is how I see it), who believe that somehow all these companies have morals and are actually trying to change the world for the better even if it means taking a loss. They view companies as they would like to view individuals: honest, charitable, friendly and in general, very nice. Companies will go to great lengths to project that image onto the public. But the reality is that their only goal is to make money. If something doesn't make money - it is not worth doing, it has nothing to do with morals or principles. Even Cisco's self-imposed resolution to not cooperate with oppresive governments is there to keep people like you happy and investing in them, if they can also get away with cooperating with China and make money off of that, they'll do that too.
Sometimes the goverment or the people (through legislature) step in and put "the smack down". Have you noticed how Phillip Morris started airing all these "smoking is bad for you" ads - it is not because they are nice and want to help and educate, they are just "making the public aware" as to avoid paying another settlement, they know that those who are addicted and smoke will not look at the ad and say, "oh crap, so this is actually bad for me! I better quit right now!".
Yet, are there things that are more important than money?
Fortunately, many of my peers in the United States of America feel that some things are more important than money. Consider the case of Stanford University. It is probably the most commercial of the elite universities and has strong ties to industry. Yet, Stanford University recently divested its investments in Chinese companies like PetroChina, which is commited to indifference to the Sudanese victims of human-rights abuses.
What surprises me about the lead article in this discussion is that Boston Common Asset Management, which (to my knowledge) is not an official advocate of socially responsible investing, has done such a clearly socially responsible act. Does anyone know of any funds managed by Boston Common Asset Management? I want to invest a significant amount of my 401K monies into those funds.
Like Stanford's Board of Trustees, I too am committed to the cause of human rights. I invest exclusively in socially responsible mutual funds.
By the way, there is a significant and measurable difference between Western society and non-Western society. In the West, you will often see incidents of this kind, where shareholders actually demand that companies support human rights. Cisco will change. Reebok has already changed and is now an official supporter of Amnesty International. Can anyone find examples of such shareholder activism in, say, the Chinese province of Taiwan?
No, if you're talking guns and murders, it would be more like this conversation between a gun salesman and a customer:
Customer: "I'm looking for a gun, can you suggest one?"
Salesman: "Okay, well, what do you need to use it for?"
Customer: "My wife has been having an affair, and I need to off the bastard who's getting on her."
Salesman: "Oh, good, well, I have the perfect choice right over here..."
If not even the shareholders gets a vote in how the corporations is run. What is running them?
Cencorship constitutes a gray area in politics. Can you prove to me that their censorship violates human rights? If it's gone too far, can you show me how far is too far and prove to me that the lives of the people are worse because of this? I don't want theories or political arguments--I want data. We have cencorship in the United States, you know, but you don't see Cisco turning on our government, do you?
I object to Cisco Routers being used to route packets that contain child porn, racism, and jingoism... Perhaps Cisco should install software on all their routers so that Cisco engineers can examine every packet that they route and determine if it's for a moral purpose.... This would be like buying half-dozen shares in the Remington corporation and demand they stop selling guns to people who kill things with them... Cisco's business is firewalls and such...they have no control over what the purchasers of their equipment do with them...and if Cisco cuts off direct ties to China, then any one of their hundreds of resellers will sell the product to the Chinese.
-merlyn
Whose responsibility was it to insure that IBM's equipment wasn't used for nefarious purposes by Hitler's regime? Who was there to tell IBM that their equipment might be used to sort people like worthless cargo at concentration camps?
I would argue that it was EVERYONE'S responsibility - although no one seemed to think about it at that time. This time there is a clear indication what China is up to and that this equipment is clearly being used in a manner inconsistent with our values.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
It's called "Socially Responsible Investing". One of the interesting things I learned at the Great Hudson River Revival is that there are many different mutual funds out there that invest in socially and environmentally responsible companies.
And yes, some of these funds do "beat the street" when it comes to performance. It may take a little work, but you might be able to convince your employer to make it possible for you to put pre-tax money into these funds. (For a 401(k) for example)
Google search: SRI investing
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
While I have little or no love for Cisco (they're pretty much the Microsoft of the networking hardware world), I'm not sure how it can be "their fault" particularly if China buys the same Cisco kit the rest of us do and uses the same old standard features that Westerners routinely use for corporate firewalls etc, only to build their giant firewall.
What's Cisco supposed to do? Just blanket not sell to China Inc. (china essentially operates like a large corporation) just in case their kit is used for Evil(tm)? Many western corporations are as powerful as nations and quite Evil(tm) too - for consistency, shouldn't Cisco therefore also be compelled not to sell network hardware to Shell Oil or Halliburton, say?
Shareholders are allowed to care about whatever they want. It's their company.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The interesting similarity is this pair of conversations:
China: I need a router.
Cisco: What sort of router?
China: A router that can filter all mention of free thought and democracy.
Cisco: Ah, you want the UberWhip9000.
Parent: I need a router.
Best Buy: What sort of router?
Parent: A router that can block off large portions of the internet.
Best Buy: Ah, you want the SuperRouter9000.
So, really, the Chinese government is one giant safety mom, with a billion kids. That minivan must get really poor gas milage.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
From http://www.bostoncommonasset.com/ Boston Common Asset Management is a full-service, employee-owned social investment firm dedicated to the pursuit of financial return and social change.
i.e. they are in the business of asking companies like Cisco stuff like this. It is there unique selling point, it is how they make money.
threadeds blog
You got Cisco on my human rights!
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
So, since Human Rights have nothing to do with profit, as you say, then you'd have no problem with investing in a company that (for the sake of argument) used stolen human organs and blood drained from kidnapped orphans to make a profit?
That'd be ok, wouldn't it? Because, as you said, your investments to make profit should be somehow seperated from your feelings on human rights?
Ok, so how about we cut to the chase, then? How about I offer you $1,000,000 tax-free (pure PROIFIT!!!) for your wife and daughters, so they can be used in a fatal and painful medical experiment?
That should be cool with you, shouldn't it, since you are a guy who likes to seperate his financial considerations from his morality?
They have a word for people who place profitabiliy and money above concerns of human rights and basic morality.
We call those people sociopaths.
Shareholders are the owners of the company. Within reason, they can collectively use this power to further any agenda they want, be it political, environmental or the usual financial. From Wikipedia: In the United States most cooperatives are corporations or limited liability companies. Co-ops can further the agenda of getting organic food out to the people who want it, providing low cost housing to members, or simply sharing access to automobiles to reduce environmental impact. I for one am glad that these shareholders aren't just passing the buck on this issue. Heck, I'm happy to see the investors taking responsibility on any issue like this. Although one can still suspect that there are alterior financial motives, but it could be as simply as good PR in an industry that considers access to information to be important enough to boycot, or at least choose a competitor's product, because of their involvement in China.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
An entry goes in the annual report supplement for proxy votes. The 62.27% of shares held by institutions and insiders goes along with the board to vote against it. Most of the folks getting the proxy statement don't bother to register a vote.
If as many as half register a proxy vote, and all of them vote in favor, that's a whopping 18.87% of shares in favor. Proposal fails...
for 18 months I can tell you the great firewall is a serious problem. Not only does it block news and political sites (as well as tons of other stuff that can only makes you say huh?) but the increased latency makes VoIP and IM quite spotty.
It slows down the entire internet outside of china, even if the website is not being blocked.
Even if you pay for a proxy server outside of China, this is a serious pain that impairs any Internet related business.
I will never buy Cisco products, or any other company that is involved in it.
Perhaps it would be better to boycott companies that are big buyers of Cisco products? This worked pretty well in Forcing the South African Aparteid Goverment to change.
Anyway, after living in China I am not convinced they are on their way to a huge bubble and collapse. Sure, I see tons of new buildings and businesses, but there are also tons of scams and empty buildings. I wonder if they will not soon overdevelop beyong their capacity to use? Well, I guess we will just see.
Peace, or Not?
You folks complain about the US government sticking its nose into the business of other countries. Now you want US corporations to try to dictate internal policy to other countries as well? Why? Who made Cisco into World Policemen, Jr.?
Ooh, maybe now with this shareholder resolution, not only will the Chinese be censored by their government, they won't have jobs either! Of course, those Cisco employees working with China won't have jobs either, I guess. Great work, guys! Let's kill more jobs and pretend that makes people more free!
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
resolved? It seems the only time they even make token gestures toward human rights in when we lean on them.
We don't need yet another new programming language. Let's just pick an existing language and fix its flaws.
And saying the statement is a falsehood does not make it so. If the shareholders really cared about the resolution why did they make it non-binding?
The reason? Something else mattered more: the projected revenue from dealing with China.
What's worse? Someone who says I want the company to make money? Or someone who says the company must be politically minded but in secret hope they really don't do that and actually make money?
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We no longer have slavery (officially) in the United States.... even though slavery was highly profitable.
We also no longer allow 10-year-olds to be worked 12 hours a day in the textile mills.... even though that was also highly profitable.
We also have made it illegal (technically) for large corporations to dump high concentrations of known carcinogens into our rivers and streams... even though these regulations cut into profits.
When your quest for profits starts to infringe on the basic human rights of those around you, then something has gotta give way.
Either you're gonna make less profits, or people are goping to have to give up their human rights so you can go out and buy a second yacht.
Guess which kind of world most people would rather live in?
they wouldn't let cisco do business with a lot of other governments either.
it's just too selective to be taken seriously.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
This is why we shouldn't do ANY business there. Free-thinking countries opened the door to this long ago. Now the market is too big to ignore. We've legitimized China on the world stage and have little choice but to do business with them. The question is, what are we going to do with the big snake we've raised from a tiny baby now that it's outgrown the small bits we'd been feeding it? We've been doing so much business with this machine that it's now huge. The same goes for Vietnam, though we can nip that in the bud at this point (and I'd interject it's a slap in the face to our Veterans that we'd do ANY business with them). The idea that if we do business with communist nations we can "turn them on" to capitalism and eventually democracy is a risky game. I know it's working to some extent in China but it's not at the point it can't go south. If the free countries of the world would have taken a stand against these nations to start with, they'd perhaps rethink their positions. We had the chance when the Soviet Union fell.
US shareholders would do best to get their own government's act cleaned up before getting all uppity over China...
Suppose it wasn't Cisco, suppose the Chineese government was using Linux to build their Great Firewall. Would you then be then advocating that we prevent them from using it (as if you could)? No, more likely we'd all be hailing them as geniuses for recognizing the fabulousness of Open Source.
Seriously folks, do you really think the answer here is for tech companies to become even more controlling of technology?
Add public trading to the mix, and the importance of customer service is diluted. Short term value extraction becomes the most important thing, and goals of course shift, as you note.
Of course, some functions need the capital that (almost always) only an IPO can provide, and many industries are the sorts in which a failure to IPO means you're doomed. Cisco is certainly in this category. But when buying Cisco (or Walmart), one should remember that you're implicitly funding their behaviour. What that means to you? I dunno. For me, I don't shop with either of them. Does this mean I pay more for soap? Probably. It also led to me learning how to make soap. I don't do it any more, but it was neat to learn. I also build network hardware for clients most of the time - they don't need Cisco gear, and I'm good enough at it now that it actually works out cheaper to use OpenBSD on decent hardware. For places where redundancy and optimization is important, we bid it out for the client (Cisco included), and Cisco almost never wins on cost benefit.
Lesson? Small, hungry companies provide better service and product, and the attitude of dealing with the devil you know just means you don't learn anything new. Oh, and that economics dictates everything, but that doesn't invalidate rational exploration of alternatives - heck, some people even call that 'innovation'.
I forget what 8 was for.
The thing is, economics is about the accumulation of things that are desirable (ie, "goods") for oneself (whether one happens to be a person, or a fictional entity like a corporation).
Money is not the only valuable thing. It's just the one that's easiest to measure, and it's pretty much universally exchangeable too.
One might assign a positive economic value to having clean air to breathe and clean water to use. One might also assign a positive value to, say, a legal environment that allows free experimentation with other people's inventions, and the right to improve upon them. One might say that freedom of speech in China is worth something.
All of those things cost money, and until there's a way to identify such intangible and semi-tangible social benefits and account for them (i.e., be rewared for accumulating them) properly, people and corporations will continue to accumulate money only.
That said, it's not Cisco's job to solve this problem unilaterally. Perhaps governments should impose regulation on such vendors that encourage the development of the social effects we want. By effectively imposing a tax on the entire industry, the operating environment changes and corporate innovation is steered a bit.
But of course there's no such thing as a global government with such power, and if Cisco and Juniper were subject to such regulateion, Huawei would not be. This is international trade for you.
Perhaps shareholders see themselves as part of humanity and are more interested in making the world a better place to live than in earning a few extra dollars.
But that's probably a delusion, after all, with that extra $4, you can go out and buy yourself a better world, right? Well, mabye with $4,000? $4,000,000? $4,000,000,000? How much does a better planet to live on cost?
Perhaps now you'll see why a shareholder should be concerned if the company they partially own is abusing other people.
You can run a LAN/WAN without using proprietary software (which is what Cisco provides -- as integrated HW/SW systems).
The Chinese already make all the hardware they need -- they could build their own damn firewall with a bunch of MIPS/x86/ARM -- whatever -- and the various modems (fiber/ATM/DSL/wireless). Cisco could go "poof" tomorrow, and the Chinese would build their own repressive firewall out of "stock" components.
There are probable a variety of companies (e.g. Google or Yahoo! or IBM) that build their own networks -- because they can, know better, or just don't want Cisco around. Or universities that are too broke (and too savvy) to buy Cisco crap. I don't think Berkeley bought Cisco for a long time (they probably could not afford it).
When I consider this, it makes me think the Chinese really are to blame.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Yeah, tech companies really need to get more involved with enforcing moral and ethical behavior. Hey, maybe we could get Dell to stop selling PC's to all those theiving college students that will only use them to download music w/o paying for it. Oh, wait...
Doesn't China already have a home grown router based on stolen Cisco tech that's just as good? (for those out of the loop, yes)
So why in the world are they even talking to Cisco, which makes something at 10x the cost, except to trick them into adding features they will never buy anyway.
Come on Cisco, get your head our of your ass and wake up!
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Unfortunately, the coin has already been tossed. The problem at this point is that an economic blockade of China would be the same as taking a pistol to our own (economic) head. Not just because China fuels Walmart, but because China owns a substantial amount of our debt.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The primary purpose of Cisco routers is routing network packets and providing network security. The meaning of "network security" is up to the customer purchasing the equipment.
You could say that the primary purpose of matches is burning stuff, and you'd be right. It all just depends on the kind of stuff you burn with them.
n/t
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Maybe I'm missing something here but why do SHAREHOLDERS care about human rights? Human rights have NOTHING to do with PROFIT.
...and would that something be a soul?
Accountability is a good thing. Let's hope it's a trend.
They have an obligation to the shareholders to do whatever the shareholders want and that goes beyond just making money.
I know that one of the basic principles that this country is founded on is the freedom of expression. In an attempt to better inform myself about China and it's policies, I've started to ask questions to myself that I can't really seem to answer to my own satisfaction. I'm curious as to why freedom of expression, and freedom of speech are so important. Links to papers, websites, or your own personal views would be much appreciated.
When possessing the stock means the ability to tell them to stop?
Cisco is NOT RESPONSIBLE for how its products are used and they shouldn't be. A company should not be a moral judge on my use of their product. /. is all about this when gun control comes up and the X gun company is sued because one of their guns was used in a murder. The gun company wasn't the one that pulled the trigger, as long as the gun was sold properly(often the reseller's responsibility, not the manufacturer's) then they are no way liable. It is the moron that killed a person that is responsible for his or her actions.
China is a sovereign state. Like it or not, it is their playground and they make the rules. Cisco can be morally against it, but as a publicly traded company, they don't get to pass judgement on how their products get used(or even get to know, sometimes).
You don't have to like it, Cisco doesn't have to like it. But you can't just decide one day that a company has to determine if the use of their product is "ok" with their personal views and should be sold to the customer or not. The customer does what they want, period.
Israel's enemies are armed thanks to the U.S. The "military industrial complex" (that Eisenhower warned about) is reaping profits by pitting one nation against another and selling arms to them all. And then there's the blowback -- both Saddam and Osama were products of the U.S.
"According to this article at Wired, Boston Common Asset Management, has filed a shareholders resolution asking Cisco to 'adopt a comprehensive human rights policy for its dealings with the Chinese government, and with other states practicing political censorship of the internet.'"
Translation:
Free market demands company consider human rights; does so without interference or prodding from government.
Told you it could work.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
Well, you can trust thousands of different entities (the companies) to be responsible for human rights and such, or you can trust a single entity (government) to enforce human rights in companies. Furthermore, in one case the shareholders vote on what is responsible in their companies (such that each company could have a different idea of what responsibility is), or you could have the citizens of a country (or their representatives) vote for one responsibility is overall (within the municipality/state/federal system).
I'd go for having the citizen's government wield its power, and let the companies maximize profit. But if the shareholders want to be benevolant too, then let them; however, the fact that they get the opportunity to do so means the government might not be doing its job.
I find it interesting that your libertarian capitalist argument doesn't recognize that this story is about Cisco shareholders demanding a policy from Cisco. Or that the poster to whom you replied is a Cisco shareholder. They own the company. Yet Cisco is not only ignoring their request, which relates to Cisco's major business operations, but asking the SEC to make ignoring their shareholders official.
It's really not your place to question the priorities of Cisco's owners in their governance of their company. Unless perhaps that governance might violate some kind of ethic that supercedes the simple capitalist/libertarian ethic of ownership rights to control. On what basis are you recommending shareholders resort to some kind of puny boycott, easily overwhelmed by Chinese purchases, rather than their rights to set the policies of their company? Do you really think that capitalism or libertarianism is reducible to domination of a product market, by a supplier or customer, without respecting the actual ownership of the company?
--
make install -not war
* Milton Friedman, PhD Nobel Laureate economist: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/dunnweb/rprnts.f riedman.html
7 /do_corporations.html
7 /the_social_resp.html
d =3555212
* Gary Becker, PhD Nobel laureate U. of Chicago economist (still teaching!): http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/0
* Judge Richard Posner, economist and U.S. Federal judge: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/0
* The Economist magazine: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_i
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
See my post.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
Companies are out to make a profit not a political statement.
Companies are out to do what their owners want them to do. Some, such as Patagonia, or Working Assets, do make political statements because their owner(s) want them to. Others, such as Nike have learned (been taught, actually) the economic advantages of corporate responsibility (and disadvantages of a lack thereof).
Investors, i.e., the shareholders, want a monetary return, not a political return on their investment. As an investor in Cisco I would sell immediately if I knew Cisco was going to quit selling to one of the largest markets in existence because they were going to make a political statment
Other investors want many things, some of which you might not care about. The way to find out what percentage of them want a certain thing is to poll them on it. Blocking such a poll based on the opinions of management is ridiculous. Management works for the owners.
Only if all companies did this would that then make an impact. (And yes, I know you have to start somewhere, but why don't you start with the people in China first?)
Because I don't own shares in the people of China.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Maybe because they are decent human beings. I did not realize that becoming a shareholder meant that you had to stop caring about human rights, which are enshrined in the US Constitution, which is what allows the existence of businesses in the US in the first place.
Parsing your statement, if we know that the majority of Americans are actually shareholders, then you must be arguing that the majority of Americans should not care about human rights. Do you see something wrong with this picture?
... and then they built the supercollider.
regulating corporations.
Usually when you allow someone to make a huge mess and leave someone else to clean it up, you have a big problem on your hands.
We're giving billions in consumer dollars, intellectual property and factory construction and product development technology to one of the most undemocratic, misogynistic, anti-reproductive choice, pollution-happy, anti-workers rights nations on Earth.
China is in every way the enemy of America except in war. Their way of life is absolutely opposed to ours.
Would you have given such things to Nazi Germany even if they had not declared war on America? No. Well just about everything the Nazi's did to their people, the Chinese do and worse. All they haven't done is invade other nations. Whoops, I forgot, they invaded Tibet!
By trading with China we are shooting workers' rights, human rights, democracy and even environmental policy reform, in the foot.
Cisco's shareholders aren't going far enough; they should close down their factories in China. I'm tired of hearing all this kowtowing to the free market - China is proving that it can have free market "enterprise zones" without democracy and they have 20 of the world's most polluted cities. That Government is a black hole sucking the world into an endless downward spiral of decay in which absolute greed is trumping human rights.
We're doing way more harm than good to the world by allowing corporations in the US to do business with despotic nations like China who refuse to reform their ways.
As I said, the shareholders aren't going far enough with this.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
That was the most insightful and wise comment by a business owner I've EVER read except my own boss who has said roughly the same thing. He owns this business, too.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
What are they supposed to do, cripple the software so it can't be misused? And would China buy it if they did?
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I think that people are missing the point of what a companies responsibility to share holders are. When you own a share, you own a piece of that company In owning a piece of that company, a share holder has say over how that company is run. Normally, share holders simply demand a return on investment in cash. However, there are other things that a share holder can value, and share holder is will within his rights to demand these things. For instance, a share holder might very well value long term investments over short term investments. They might care about the image of the company, if for no other reason then that the image might impact sales. They are also well within their right to value non-monetary things, like freedom, morality, and what not. If Cisco share holders demand that Cisco not only make profit, but also uphold a certain basic moral code in the process, that is well within their rights as partial owners of the company.
People act like this is some abnormality. The truth is that it happens all the time. Many companies throw on a layer of ethics that they follow without the government enforcing them. For some companies, this means meeting a higher standard of pollution control then is required. For others it means that they ensure certain labor practices are followed. If the owners of Cisco want to do something similar, I applaud the action and say more power to them. This is capitalism at work. The share holders are demanding added value for their stocks. If the share holders value freedom, it is their prerogative to demand that the company they own offers more. People forget that capitalism isn't all about money. Capitalism is about value. It just so happens that money is the thing people can generally agree to value. If on the other hand people decide that they want to value something else, capitalism is more then happy to accommodate. I say three cheers for Cisco's share holders. I would rather Cisco's share holders regulate their company then the government.
Meaning they are bound to do what their shareholders tell them to. The shareholders aren't required to respect China's wishes, they can decide they'd rather Cisco doesn't sell to China, and Cisco will ahve to do that. Remember: Buying stock in a company is actually buying partial ownership of that company. Now most peopel just buy for investment purposes, and don't buy enough to have any sort of significant stake anyhow. However, if you get together enough people with enough shares to get a majority vote on something, you can change what the company is doing.
Cisco is the Alpha and the Omega of networking. They have such a large peice of the high end market it's just amazing. I suppose if you tried you could find large shops that are 100% non-Cisco, but it'd be hard. They are big to Microsoft porportions.
You'd have to boycott the Internet more or less, hard to ahve a packet go anywhere and not pass through at least one Cisco device.
They own Linksys now too, so they have a singificant small-market share as well.
Capitalism is about value. It just so happens that most people value money. It however does not mean that you can't create an entity within capitalism to that cares about something other then money. Private charities are an excellent example. Charities do not work outside of capitalism. Capitalism has nothing against charities. If people want to shell out money to a charity to receive a warm fuzzy glow in their hearts, more power to them. American charities pump out more money to charitable causes then most governments.
My point is that capitalism is amoral. It doesn't care about money, charity, or anything else. Capitalism is simply a way of using and distributing scarce resources. If everyone valued the environment, social justice, and freedom above all else, companies would find a way to work tirelessly towards those ends. If people bought stock based upon how much it returned in social good, companies would all work towards social good.
Now, clearly this is not the case. People don't buy stock (normally) on how much social good they pump out. They buy stock based upon how much profit they can return the share holders. There is a trend though to incorporate social good into the decision to invest in corporations. There are entire investment firms out there that rate companies based upon the social good or harm that they cause and invest accordingly. The effects are fairly clear. There are companies out there that have altered their business model to be more social responsible. They have written it into their own internal regulations that they will meet certain social standards.
Personally, I think this is a good trend. It simply reinforces what companies already try and do. Companies try and bring value to their share holders. It is important to note the use of the word 'value' over the use of the word 'money'. Money certainly has value, but share holders can choose to value other things. If share holders say that they value social good in addition to money, then corporations will readily alter their business products to give share holders more value.
Governments are a crutch used to overcome people's greed and indifference for one another. If suddenly everyone in the world was altruistic and acted upon altruistic convictions, you could do away with governments and live in a perfect capitalistic and moralistic system. Governments exist to regulate capitalism not because capitalism is greedy or evil, but because people are. People are the problem, not capitalism. If people are acting better, as seen in this instance with Cisco, then you naturally see capitalism act better.
Well, the origins of "freedom of speech" in the US were "freedom of political speech". It just got expanded a bit. However, since political speech is exactly what the PRC is interested in squelching, it's still relevant.
There's a couple assumptions you'll have to go along with me on, though.
(Ass.1) That an organized society is better (more productive, more able to deal with various problems, and so forth) than a collection of unorganized individuals.
(Ass.2) That the cost of collapse of a society is extremely high, and that it is strongly preferable to avoid this.
So now, we can extrapolate a bit:
Given Ass.1, we want a society. Given Ass.2, we want it to be stable. So one of the most important characteristics of a society is that it be stable.
Societies can self-correct out of downward spirals. For example, suppose a military coup results in an unpopular dictator -- he can be ousted as he makes people more and more desperate and angry.
Freedom of speech is a simple and valuable characteristic in a society that allows popular removal of its leaders (such as by vote each four years, as in the US), because it allows awareness of problems someone has identified in a leader to spread. If someone can figure out that George Bush is starting an insane economic plan that will destroy the country in less than ten years, they can spread word about it. The alternative would be to keep the masses, which control the government, unaware of problems coming up, and could allow a leader to cause a country to make actions that would generally disadvantageous, but advantageous to the leaders.
So free speech helps allow society to self-correct and avoid crashing.
This is also why we have the freedom to keep and bear arms in the United States, incidently. It's another mechanism to retain societal stability, though oriented towards more drastic problems. The idea is that no unpopular ruler can seize power because there are many people with guns that would shoot the people supporting him. Since someone knows that their unpopular coup will be put down, they will not engage in it in the first place.
This pretty much covers why freedom of political speech is important.
Pure freedom of speech also has some other benefits -- in general, assuming rational agents (which we aren't, but we try to approximate them), more knowledge is better, and speech allows the spread of knowledge.
If you want a document, try the one on Wikipedia.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Don't you see? It's not that it's "ok" to do anything for a buck. It's that we realize that someone is guaranteed to do anything for a buck. It's not always the same person and it's not always the same reason. People are cynical, well, because, we have every reason to be.
I don't get it.
For some reason, the depths of depravity that humanity is willing to plunge -- in this case, celebrating the death of a young woman and then claiming she "inspired" some terrorist act against the Fullbright scholarship people because she didn't like watching people's homes get buldozed and had some choice words about Bush -- never ceases to disgust me. I don't celebrate the deaths of the Fullbright people, or the Israeli people, or the Palestinian people, or Ms. Corrie. None of them deserved to die.
Secondly, if you really think that bulldozing someone's house is a way to stop terrorism, you aren't thinking too hard. The house isn't strapping dynamite to it's chest and running into a market -- though the newly homeless former residents may well consider it in retaliation. Perhaps I am wrong, but I would think her presence (and subsequent murder) would actually lessen terrorism against U.S. citizens, as she has illustrated that there are people in the States that are willing to go as far as can be gone for other people when we conclude they're getting fucked over -- even if those peoples' religion is Islam, their nationality is Palestinian, and the fucking is taking place with the support of our government and businesses.
Oh, and so long as we're throwing regurgitated, "disconnect brain, engage mouth" ad-hominems in favor of a reasoned debate, if I repeat "bloody wingnut" 5 times, will you step through my mirror and try to kill me?
Finally, this tangent is so rediculously offtopic for a discussion of Cisco, China, censorship, and corporate responsibility as to be laughable.
Can somebody answer me why post above is modded troll? We all know that Fidel is a lil' nuts, but, the post above does have a point.
When you think of it, it's almost 100% sure that there are many Linux systems out there being used for human rights-surpressing purposes by the Chinese government.
Which makes me think what would happen if the community (or Linus himself) got pissed off and revoked licenses to use the kernel (or certain GPL packages, or the OS itself)...
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
The difference is, we actually have jobs and run our own businesses, and because our economy is mature we can buy our freedom, while China's economy is just getting started.
The USA did not gain freedom through economic prosperity; the freedom came first, then the prosperity.
If you want human rights for China then support their economy because freedom and economics are combined as one.
Well, economic importance hasn't done much for personal freedoms in Saudi Arabia; on the contrary, the oil is the reason the Saudi Royal family is being propped up by the west (espec. the USA).
Which, not coincidentally is also where Wahabi Muslim extremism is being bred- not Iraq. I mean, really, anyone paying even the remotest bit of attention to Middle East politics could figure out that Saudi Arabia is a million times more relevant to Al Qaeda than a dictator in a relatively secular country ever was.
Anyway, I'm sorry, I don't buy that economic 'prosperity' automatically implies freedom. It's probably hard to have freedom in an extremely impoverished society, but the converse doesn't always follow. Look how far China's got already without significantly increasing its level of freedom.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Or did you just want to clod him? His statements can be backed up if you actually researched it instead of just throwing around random insults.
If the U.S. government were acting in the interest of the people and the long term health of the U.S. as a nation it would be erecting trade barriers, raising tariffs on Chinese goods, and withdrawing most favored status.
While I don't like it there's one BIG problem in erecting trade barriers to Chinese goods, the government deficit spending and growing debt. China is one of the two biggest owners of US treasury bonds, simply Bush is selling the country to China. Selling" Haha, he's making sure your grandkids will be required to spend half of their income paying China all the interest China collects from all those IOUs Bush handed to them. That is unless trade is tightened but then if so then China can flood the market with all those bonds driving up the interest the US government will have to pay to finance it's mushrooming deficit.
Under Bush's watch the US government went from the biggest budget surplus to it's biggest deficit. Now that he's starving the government of operations funds he needs to reduce the size of the government not increase it's size!!!
FalconShould there be a Law?
They are illegally occupying many thousand sq. km. of our territory (just like Pakistan) and all this happened with the blessings of the US.
In 1959 China also invaded and still occupies another nation, Tibet. But before that invasion some 2 million Chinese Nationalist being driven from China invaded the island of Formosa suppressing 20 million Formosans or Taiwanese. Ooh I see you mention Tibet too.
``28 February 1947''
Taiwan's Holocaust Remembered
Take the worst possible example of rights violation you can think of. I guess you're thinking of the Nazis.
Nope! By the end of WWII during Stalin's reign some 20 million Russians lost their lives because of Stalin.
Falcon
Free Tibet!!!
Should there be a Law?