Yahoo Boss Not Sure If He’d Collaborate With Nazis

china is not nazi germany, so it seems like a dumb question to ask. right not it’s the US that seems to have a facist government with a thirst for conquest

fascinating
wall street lecturing anyone else on the ethics of nazi collaboration?
isn’t that the pot calling the kettle brown (shirts)!

read more:
Wall Street - Nazi Collaboration in WWII
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_11.htm

They’re some pretty dumb comments guys. The Chinese regime is a human rights mess and asking the Nazi Germany question is a legitimate hypothetical to pose.

As for the historical perspective - well - you could probably equally say that it was ironic for you to have moral ideas for anything - after all - are you denying that your ancestors were protozoa rapists?!?!?!

He is at least being honest when he says he doesn’t know how he would feel about collaborating with the Nazis. Let’s not forget how late the US was in joining WWII. For a long time the Nazis were tacitly supported by the US government, which would have made it unusual for a US company to stand up and say they shouldn’t be supported. I think ‘I don’t know’ is a legitimate response, although I agree it’s also a fair question and Yahoo’s work in China is a disgrace.

Semel’s comments are about what I’d expect. The attitude on the part of all too many businesses is that they have an obligation only to their shareholders, and that morality or politics shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with business. I’m glad Semel will “feel bad”; he should feel bad enough to choke on every mouthful of the foie gras that his lucrative little tie up with a totalitarian r�ime with an appalling human rights record will buy him. As with Google, the motto appears to be “don’t be evil - just help other people to be”. And yes, he probably WOULD have cooperated with the Nazis; after all, he’d just be abiding by local laws. And yes it is a very valid comparison.

I also criticize companies that behave unethically. But why is it the responsibility of these companies to behave any differently than their own government? If doing business with China is wrong, regulations forbidding it ought to be passed.

There was a time, in America, that doing business with Commies was a was not only considered a no-no by our government, but was a scarlet letter equivalent to your friends and neighbors. Sadly, that time has passed and it has a lot less to do with capitalism than it does socialism.

We have a government that is moving closer and closer to the types of governments we used to oppose (European Socialists). Simultaneously we have a generation of Americans who never experienced the fear of half the world being ruled by the Soviets. Combine these and you have the same limp wristed approach, to dealing with Communists, that the Europeans took for half a century.

Yahoo! and Google are advancing the Communist cause. They need to be stopped.

Everyone Cow-Tow’s To China. It’s a billion people. They are about to rule the planet.

I think what he’s trying to say is….

Just like in Nazi Germany, normally good people did horrible things, because the current governments not only allow it, but demand it. And in order to refuse them, you must become one of those persecuted.

Ideally, people always do what is right, despite the punishments. Then again, ideally, governments exist to ensure that the right thing IS the easy choice. What China requested differs little from what America has recently scene its own government doing openly, and what Germany went through, building up to the atrocities that followed.

While seemingly harmless now, possibly even advantagous to immediate national safty, the current actions of both China and America can easily lead to another incident of unspeakable tragidy.

Luckily it is not too late for either country to correct itself, and return to serving their people’s personal freadom and happiness. We have yet to make the final mistake.

Exactly what has the USA done that is equivalent to gassing its own citizens or jailing them for expressing political opinions?

China’s got the capitalist world by the huevos. Cheap labor, smart people - a capitalist’s heaven. If there is no regime change there in the longer term they are going to kick all our butts while we cowtow to any idiot group that whines. I’ m glad I’m passing thru during the last vestiges of freedom for mankind.

funny how google and yahoo are (rightfully so) being criticized for assisting a totalitarian government in tyrannical actions against its citizens, but we SHOULD be just as critical of common consumers who buy products made in that country and who by doing so assist that government… We should stop buying from Walmart. pay a few extra dollars for that shirt that you really don’t need anyway. Don’t buy it at all, for that matter.
If we all grew an ethical backbone for a year and stopped buying needless cheap crap and made our consumer choices based on criteria a bit more sophisticated than “cheap, cheap, cheap”, maybe the world would begin to change a little bit for the better…

Hi Ed.
re: “…we SHOULD be just as critical of common consumers…”

No doubt about it. Defining your moral and ethical range is tough.

But I do not equate buying a shirt made in China with helping Chinese authorities… or Nazis… imprison people who speak of freedom.

One is commerce, the other is collaboration.

Yahoo could have simply claimed that the person had disguised his network access in some way. They could have deleted the logs themselves and then claimed honestly that they cannot find the appropriate information.

It’s the same behavior that companies do in the US all the time. The police call and the companies simply do their best to comply (sometimes without even asking for warrants). They could easily just say “I don’t know” or even give purposely misleading information.

Heck, maybe they could pick an arbitrary government bureaucrat and say that it was him that did it. Then the government would take him out and we’d have one less oppressor and one more free person at the same time.

well it was a slow build up of systematically killing and rounding up of jews around the year 1938, companies were profiting off of what the nazis were doing and building … as for the jews, no one cared, and now we can watch movies and see the horror reenacted of what occurred and say to ourselves,like we wouldn’t of let that happen , or those horrible people for letting it happen, why didn’t anybody do something….
well, it is all happening again, and all i can say is , where is your money, if you own stock , is your company dealing with china and ignoring what is happening to the chinese people, just like-what was happening with the nazis and the jews,… ” it wasn’t just the jews mind you ” and now it is the chinese and people practicing a religion, tommorrow , who will they go after, and when they go after you and your family, is it then and only then that you will really start to care ….or will you start to do something before then