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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> While I can easily sympathize with your position, rich western corporations don't owe jack shit to third world people.

Wow that is so wrong it is terrible. Rich western corporations are rich western corporations because of the 1400s to date absolute rape of the rest of the world by the west.

We, collectively including our corporations owe third world people in a way that we will likely never be able to make good on.

> I believe that you and other people with the same attitude as you should put your money where your mouth is and lead the way for the rest of us.

And I believe that people with your attitude should go and read a few history books. You can start with 'Guns, Germs and Steel', proceed to the VOC company history (the UK version and the Dutch one) as well as the history of India.

Maybe that will change your mind on this. In case you don't feel like reading I'll give you a short preview of one possible conclusion: The 'West' is where it is today because it is standing on the broken backs and bloody remains of millions of people slaughtered, robbed and raped for profit.

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jacquesm: As a "third world person", I don't think the West owes anything to us. It's actually a very Euro-centric and arguably racist model of the world to believe that only whites have agency and that everything hinges on what whites did or did not do.

Nonwhite people are perfectly capable of killing themselves (and whites!) in huge numbers. Genghis Khan, Shaka Zulu, the Aztecs, and the Arabs conquered lands and put many cities to the sword. Islam radiated out from the Middle East to the Atlantic and the Pacific, with sword.

What do you think Genghis or Shaka Zulu would have done if they invented guns and ships first? They're human. They would have conquered Europe and enslaved Europeans. Indeed, many Europeans were enslaved by North African slave traders.

Europeans do lose battles. It is racist to think otherwise. Didn't the Japanese win the Russo-Japanese war? Wasn't the Muslim world on the offensive when Europeans were in disarray? Weren't China and India the centers of the world economy for hundreds of years?

All civilizations rise and fall. Europeans had a great run from 1492 to 2008. China is currently the top dog, even if many people in the West haven't realized it. And they didn't get rich from Western aid, and they sure didn't benefit from the export of that oh-so-Western ideology of communism, thought up by a dead white guy named Karl Marx.

They created their wealth and are lifting a billion plus people out of poverty.

When they're on top, which they already are, are you going to still claim that the West is the sole driver of history, that everyone is what they are because of Western action or inaction? Or will you agree that China (and India, and all the others) are human too, and can build up their own societies without "help" from the West? Because China doesn't want your aid and it sure doesn't want your pity. But it'd be happy to sell you a chip for $199, as an equal partner in a trade.

> It's actually a very Euro-centric and arguably racist model of the world to believe that only whites have agency and that everything hinges on what whites did or did not do.

Feel free to read into my words whatever you want but don't make it sound like that is what I wrote it makes any kind of discussion impossible.

The world is a lot more complex and involved than you make it seem, the west does have a debt and I highly doubt it even can be repaid, especially because we're still raping and plundering the African continent as we speak.

That dead white guy you're referring to was actually on to something, he just missed on important little detail: the amount of greed and the willingness to commit crimes that is present in the people that he thought would be happy to make the world work in a better way. The fault lies not with Marx but mostly with those that co-opted his ideas in name only to use as a fig leaf to further rob the general population. Note how every communist country was very keen to adopt the stance that they were owned by 'the people'.

Sure China is happy to sell us chips (and Korea as well) but the only reason that trick still works is because of environmental impact denial and low wages make it competitive to do so. That won't last for ever.

China is economically powerful, but morally bankrupt in many ways. India has similar problems, Africa is going from bad to worse reducing its un-replenishable stock of precious resources at bargain basement prices in deals that benefit no locals other than a very select few. With the loot safely stashed in Swiss bank accounts.

Whatever happened in the dark ages is none of my concern, right now a great many fortunes can still be traced directly back to crimes in the past or crimes ongoing today. And that is a debt that is on the books, not lost in the mist of times.

I completely agree that China and India are where the next huge improvements will probably be made. One of the reason the WIPO is so strong in favor of nailing down IP rights globally is to make sure that the west will get its cut, even if it doesn't actually produce anything anymore. Just another chapter in that book.

The dead white guy was responsible for 100 million people dead, most of them non-European. If you want to feel guilty for something, feel guilty for denying that. His great idea was to abolish private property, such that you didn't own the very toothbrush in your hand, the clothes on your back, the house you built with your own hands - or your farm.

Why is it that rejecting the ideas of Marx led China (and Vietnam, and Singapore, and Taiwan) to unprecedented wealth? Why is Chile rich and Cuba poor? Why is North Korea dark while South Korea is alight? Why was Eastern Europe impoverished while Western Europe was wealthy? Why was the Comintern established, why did the Soviet Union foment revolution all around the world, why did Pol Pot stack up a million skulls?

And, most importantly, what exactly "colonized" Eastern Europe and China and North Korea within the span of 10 years to drive them so far behind Western Europe, Taiwan, and South Korea respectively?

It's all Marx. Every time. You want to atone for something, atone for that. That is your sin: converting millions of indigenous people to an alien, white, Western ideology that promised heaven and yielded hell.

I think you're confusing Marx with Stalin, Mao and a bunch of other guys.

Marx -> philospher, Stalin, Mao etc -> opressors, mass murderers.

> That is your sin: converting millions of indigenous people to an alien, white, Western ideology that promised heaven and yielded hell.

So sorry, no that is not my sin.

But part of my sin is the fact that the country that I live in exports a lot of weaponry, that the larger portion of the wealth this country was founded on was based on the slave trade and a few other dirty pages in our history.

I didn't say western people don't own our brethren anything. I said that coporations are not the problem. And that our coporations don't own anybody anything, beyond respecting the law and paying taxes that is.

Also one would expect (and that is what I am hinting at) that the rest of the world will smart up and stop acting as if we know what is the best for them. They are independent people and are not our children.

Regarding history, maybe we should demand something from the Scandinavians, since their current welfare is obviously hugely dependent on the Viking's rape and pillage?

p.s.: And I would advise you to read on Eastern hisotry and learn how Eastern people were more than capable of producing mass genocides on their own.

Also I am not denying anything you are saying. However do you somehow believe that if West said today: "We did you wrong, here take everything that is ours and let us pay our debt in blood". It would make the world a better place?

The crux of my argument is that it is upon third world to improve their situation, with or without our help. The biggest help we already gave them is the massive investments into side tracks. If they want to produce medicine they can just rip off our tech. No need to start from square one. etc.

Except corporations dodge tax in ways no individual ever could. Oh, it's all perfectly legal, it is called 'tax avoidance'.

And corporations as a rule are part and parcel of the societies they're engendered in and quite a few can trace their opportunity and starting capital right back to some crime against humanity, or are in the process of committing some of those during their life-cycle.

The countries we plundered are independent people in the same way that the old lady that was just hit over the head and robbed of her capital is independent and knows what's best for her. She's also clearly not our child. But we as the robbers probably carry a good bit of responsibility for how the rest plays out past the point where the business end of our club contacted the back of her head.

I fail to see the link between the Scandinavians and their current state of welfare and the Vikings, as far as I know the Vikings were no better or worse than what the rest of Europe was up to at the time and they definitely did not lay the foundation for the current welfare system there.

All I am saying is that go ahead and do something about it. Stop preaching to the people who don't believe you and don't agree with your outlook.

If your way is truly better then it should give better results. If it gives better results then you will do more good via paying more taxes and helping people out. Lead by an example. Don't lament old ways, make us want to follow in your path.

That is all I am proposing and all my other arguments are just that arguments for the sake of truth as I personally see it.

> If your way is truly better then it should give better results.

How does this logically follow? When speaking of ethics, ideas that are better are not necessarily more profitable. For example, a plantation with slaves would be more profitable than a plantation with unionized workers.

I am not talking about distribution of property. I am talking about the whole sum. If the whole sum of well being doesn't increase then why help people at all?

Thus the ideas that do not increase whole sum of well being are not ethical at all.

> arguments for the sake of truth as I personally see it.

That's called an opinion, not the truth. And in this case it is a misguided opinion.

Attitudes like yours directly result in mass pollution, overfishing, enslavement - direct or indirect and so on.

Profits aren't holy, and the so called efficient market model isn't. It only works for a subset of problems and quite possibly not optimal at that, especially when looking over the longer term. Do we pollute this river and kill all the fish or do we spend an extra half million to scrub the exhaust. That's an easy decision when translated into money, if you're not looking at that river as anything but an exhaust it is an absolute no-brainer.

With shit as this as the result:

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/11/world/europe/netherlands-n...

I'm not preaching to you, I'm trying to make you see that your love affair with corporations isn't the totality of the world and that there is a lot of history - and a lot of stuff happening in the present - that you are wilfully ignoring.

> That's called an opinion, not the truth. And in this case it is a misguided opinion.

Excuse my style of expression.

> Attitudes like yours directly result in mass pollution, overfishing, enslavement - direct or indirect and so on.

How so?

> Profits aren't holy, and the so called efficient market model isn't. It only works for a subset of problems and quite possibly not optimal at that, especially when looking over the longer term. Do we pollute this river and kill all the fish or do we spend an extra half million to scrub the exhaust. That's an easy decision when translated into money, if you're not looking at that river as anything but an exhaust it is an absolute no-brainer.

Whoah cowboy. You are accusing me of things I detest, all of them. I assume two concepts in all of my writing in this topic.

1. The institution of Corporation is concerned only with gaining profit for its shareholders. In accordance to the law. Now while I believe that it is in the best interest of the companies and their shareholders to do stuff the right way in the most idealistic sense. However none of that is built into the institution of Corporation.

2. First, that every sovereign nation has institutions that get to say how shit gets done here. And second that every sovereign nation by definition wants to say which institutions it observes and which it doesn't.

Many people do not know how third world works. Mostly people do not care at all. They want their bribe and they want to feel important. That is the way they do business and that is the way they want to do business. Until they wont.

Corporations are not helping, that is true. However megacorps are not the ones called to make third world institutions. The third world people are the ones who are called to do it.

Blaming corporations for everything is not helping out in my opinion. Its people's fault, hiding behind faceless institutions, yes. But still people's fault.

The issue you have with megacorps is that they are extra sovereign and that indeed is a problem. However multi national megacorp is an extremely new phenomena and will probably take a while to get properly solved.

>>I fail to see the link between the Scandinavians and their current state of welfare and the Vikings, as far as I know the Vikings were no better or worse than what the rest of Europe was up to at the time

But according to your previous comment, the West owed the third world an incredibly amount. The Scandinavians are OK because their victims (France farmers, etc) were as bad as themselves. That means the third world was much better than the west from the 14th century forward to modern times...?

As ramanujan noted, most others (Huns etc etc) did at least as bad when they had the capacity.

Your position seems based more in emotions/politics than reason.

(Also, the Scandinavian Viking era had a violent clan society which probably was worse than West Europe even in the "dark" period after Rome's fall.)

Edit: Clarity

The West still owes, not owed the third world an incredible amount. And that's because we still have the books from those days, the stock of some of those companies is still being traded today, there are still vast fortunes that trace their origins directly back to those crimes.

The same does not hold for the Scandinavians and French farmers.

My position is mostly based on bookkeeping.

There are lots of documentation of atrocities made by states.

So, you judge the west with a differently different yard stick because there are corporations here and they are different in quality from e.g. the mass murders of Communist parties (google Great Chinese Hunger etc etc), the Mongol invasion, the Spanish state (South/Latin America), etc...?

Here, in the real world, we consider it bad form to blame e.g. Germans (or the Swedes, or...) for their parents/ancestors misdeeds.

But YOU blame the west for 600 years old crimes -- because some of the countries had partly free corporations at the time!! Wow...

I'll just take one argument here:

The western world started science, partly through corporate research. This has increased peoples' food/health/education for centuries. This effect should be much larger than any corporate atrocities can be. (It would surprise me if you think that is relevant... :-) )

I have a conclusion:

If you're not trolling, I think you "know" that corporations(/the west) are bad -- and really are willing to make any logical sophisms to keep your faith.

No, it's simply because I still benefit from those crimes even today.

OK... So, only crimes done by a corporation -- not a state. And the crimes can be 600 years old, no statute of limitations!!

And there is no bookkeeping for boons the corporation(s) did for victims (industrialization etc etc etc).

Probably billions of identifiable people (Mongols in China, people in Argentina where they slaughtered the locals, etc) enjoy a better life from atrocities the last 600 years. But those that did invasions without corporations has no responsibility!?

Now, after at least three explanations, you still argue something that is completely weird -- compared to every similar case in history/law/morality I have heard of/read about.

That is enough for me.

(If you're e.g. Belgian and rich because of what happened a hundred years ago in Africa, that is unpalatable -- but doesn't reflect more upon you personally than WW II on Germans. And 600 years?! both our ancestors ought to have been on all sides of all atrocities in Europe at that time... I'm not going to beat myself up over that.)

Edit: On the other hand... I have played with the thought of keeping track of people whose family fortunes were gotten in an inhuman way (corruption, part of a tyrant regime, etc). The perpetrators should lose motivation when their future rich relatives will be badly shamed. I might agree with that setup, but not only for corporations -- and hardly 600 years back(!).

I'm not beating myself up over it. I just notice that there is a debt, and a substantial one and that it is unlikely to be paid back.

And these things are still happening today, for instance this man that decided to speak out against the royal Dutch Shell oil company and got murdered for that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa

You just ignored 90+% of what I wrote as answers to your strange opinions. Sigh... OK.

Wiki page says "outspoken critic of the Nigerian government ... hanged in 1995 by the military government"

1995 is not "today" -- and the whole execution might even have been done by the military dictatorship, without Shell even directly asking them to do it. (From what I've read about Nigeria, this doesn't seem unlikely.)

If Shell was involved (why would they murder internationally known critics -- the resulting sh-t storm is obvious) -- was any higher up Shell people involved?

It is ridiculous how you limit your criticism to corporations. Any of the tyrants worth his own weight in human ears have done worse than most any corporation since 1995.

I think I'm being trolled.

"Initially as spokesperson, and then as President, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of the land and waters of Ogoniland by the operations of the multinational petroleum industry, especially the Royal Dutch Shell company. He was also an outspoken critic of the Nigerian government, which he viewed as reluctant to enforce environmental regulations on the foreign petroleum companies operating in the area."

And there was an international shitstorm regarding this which is how I came to know about it. Shell was implicated as having leaned on the Nigerian government to get rid of this troublemaker which they promptly did.

Bits like "At least two witnesses who testified that Saro-Wiwa was involved in the murders of the Ogoni elders later recanted, stating that they had been bribed with money and offers of jobs with Shell to give false testimony – in the presence of Shell’s lawyer." in the wikipedia article should hopefully convince you of that.

Really, I feel a bit insulted by your references to being trolled, it's not as if I'm the new guy around here. Feel free to disagree with me but calling names is really bad form.

Shell did what they did because they thought they could get away with it.

1995 is today enough that I remember clearly reading about this in the papers, and about many other big oil crimes since then. I purposefully selected something that should clearly register as an outrage on your spectrum and the only thing you bring up to defend it is that it wasn't 'today'. There are many more recent crimes by large corporations but this one stood out for me.

And no, I don't limit my criticism to corporations but if you look back a bit then you'll notice that this thread started about corporations so that is the topic.

>>Shell was implicated as having leaned on the Nigerian government to get rid of this troublemaker which they promptly did.

I can't find that in the Wikipedia article? Can you?

I wrote: "If Shell was involved (why would they murder internationally known critics -- the resulting sh-t storm is obvious) -- was any higher up Shell people involved?"

That was just not enough to condemn Shell in a court of justice.

Two witnesses much later claimed Shell people helped buy their perjury. They could have lied or where it really Shell layers. E.g. did they get the promised jobs?

>>I purposefully selected something that should clearly register as an outrage on your spectrum and the only thing you bring up to defend it is that it wasn't 'today'.

Where did I write it wasn't an outrage?! I wrote that I couldn't see proof in the WP article that Shell was in on it. (See above.)

I wrote "Any of the tyrants worth his own weight in human ears have done worse than most any corporation since 1995." So I have not denied company misbehaviour, which of course is rampant where companies can get away with it, same as with all human organisations.

  -------

I've mostly quoted what you commented on as answer to what you claimed. That do say something.

>>And no, I don't limit my criticism to corporations but if you look back a bit then you'll notice that this thread started about corporations so that is the topic.

I started my previous comment "You just ignored 90+% of what I wrote as answers to your strange opinions. Sigh... OK."

Enough, you lack defense for what I brought up -- your strange positions of judging (just) western society over the last 600 years by the present moral code.

If you insist on changing the subject to the exact content of wikipedia re an irrelevant old killing in Nigeria and claim I don't think corporate murder is an outrage -- don't complain if it is called trolling.

Edit: If you have a coherent point in what you wrote re western society's unique guilt over the last 600 years because we have corporations, please tell me. (It seems you went from (1) a general point to (2) your personal history to (3) that corporations can do bad stuff (which no one will argue against.))

Edit 2: Clarity

http://reddit.com/r/askhistorians is very good, btw (although I don't think they would like people taking normative positions)

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