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Comment by iandanforth | Hacker News Reader

I'm always baffled when these pieces include a line that says "we follow the law." That's carte blanche to any regime. The first rule of law is that you break them when necessary. If you're not willing to defy something you think is evil or wrong why bother with a puff statement? CYA I guess.

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  A man is born gentle and weak.
  At his death he is hard and stiff. 
  Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
  At their death they are withered and dry.

  Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
  The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

  Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
  A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

  The hard and strong will fall.
  The soft and weak will overcome.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 76

And a flag in the wind is soft and gives in. Shall we all thus be flags in the wind?

I think it is instructive to consider the mechanisms by which the soft and weak might overcome.

So you think corporations should be able to cherry pick the regulations they follow? Seems a great idea for consumer rights, environmental protection, etc.

Yes, if you struggle to imagine situations in which corporations could be given orders that violate human rights, you should think back to a dark era of European politics that occurred only some 70 years ago. Or the Jim Crow era in America, with enforced segregation.

Whether bringing the Great Firewall to Hong Kong rises to that degree of a human rights violation is a very reasonable question, but as a blanket rule? You can't say all corporations should always follow all laws. That isn't a just society, that's one full, excuse the parlance, bootlickers to the oppressors.

He said "when necessary," and in the context of evildoing. Not "when convenient" or "when profitable."

Ever heard of civil disobedience ? The metric obviously isn't to just disobey the law, but to disobey it for some larger purpose.

Obeying the law worked so well for IG Farben.

TBF, it sucked for them mostly because Nazis lost the war. I'm sure whoever profited from constructing internment camp of Japanese during the same era went through it just fine.

IG Farben was broken up into Bayer, Monsanto, BASF, etc.

Also many in the NSDAP were brought over to America via Operation Paperclip. Many went to the Soviet Union, Argentina, & remained in West & East Germany.

The Japanese internment in the U.S. is not remotely comparable to the Nazis.

Real easy to say "Defy the Chinese government while in their jurisdiction" from the comfort of your own home.

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