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Are Web Firms Giving in to China?
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Google and other Internet companies are sending executives to Capitol Hill for a hearing next week seeking to answer the question: Are U.S. companies giving in to China's censorship demands too easily? Chris Smith, New Jersey Republican and chairman of the House human-rights subcommittee that is holding the hearing, tells the Wall Street Journal, 'I was asked the question the other day, do U.S. corporations have the obligation to promote democracy? That's the wrong question. It would be great if they would promote democracy. But they do have a moral imperative and a duty not to promote dictatorship.' The WSJ notes an irony: Google is fighting for 'Internet freedom' in the U.S., by resisting the Justice Department's request for information on user searches."
Total non-sequitur red-herringed cop-out, with a bit of straw man thrown in to keep the crows off.
You describe your question "Don't corporations have an obligation to obey the law in countries they operate in?" as an "interesting" one, when in fact it's rhetorical (which is quite the opposite). Now, for me it's an interesting question, because it brings up pointed questions about civil disobedience, the legitimacy of government, and the importance of the rule of law. For you, the question seems very settled: no.
The question isn't whether Google should be trying to break the law in foreign countries, but whether they should be willing to operate in countries where they have to do something morally repugnant (censoring) in order to stay on the fair side of that country's laws. I'm conflicted on the question. But there is the additional question of what sort of pressure these companies should be trying to put on the Chinese government. Should Google have held out for a better deal, or perhaps used their position to try and persuade the government that censorship is bad?
Like it or not, the government can and does dictate where its citizens do business. We can't trade with Cuba. We can't legally go to Thailand and have sex with eleven year old prostitutes. We have to pay tariffs on goods to and from many countries. The seventh grade civics version of this is that our Constitution empowers the government to decide how this country interacts with foreign countries. The only reason you can leave the country at all is because our government and the other governments of the world agreed on the rules.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
No, the Soviet Union was defeated just by waiting for its massive internal corruption to catch up with it. Their poor industrial techniques meant that they simply had nothing good to offer the consumer markets of other countries, and therefore couldn't sit back and get rich in an export economy. Satter's Age of Delirium is a good look at how it was a dysfunctionality internal situation that brought the country down, not external pressure from the West.
You make it seem as if the USSR was trying to export quality materials and the US refused to import in the name of democracy, but the US really just didn't have much to do with it.