[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by wu_trax

how do you know? 100 years ago, people might have said that its only natural that europeans controll the rest of the world, because we are developed further than anyone else. its a bad word.

I don't believe that it is a "bad" word, but we can disagree on that. And what do you mean "how do you know"? How do I know what? That human's think independently of each other? Well, that's a simple observation. I'm not sure what you mean.

then why cant different societies have diffrent values aswell?

They can. I never suggested they can't. Talking about what societies "want" is strange because it's difficult to tell / measure, but an individual as I say - can choose to live however they wish. Social groups can choose to live in a certain way if they wish, but one individual cannot make that choice for another (which is kind of your point too). I am not saying the Chinese have to have a western style democracy (indeed, I don't want them to) I am saying that a Chinese person who is being prosecuted in China obviously doesn't want to live like that. I very much doubt he is the only one.

i didnt say that we are better than the chinese, we just live in a different society.

Absolutley. But we're all human beings and therefore we share common traits. It's possible that a Chinese society is so different that they all want to work 80 hour weeks (this seems unlikely, but whatever) - but that still doesn't change the fact that China is made up of human beings.

I actually believe that the Chinese Communist Party probably do enjoy the broad support of the majority of the country. However, that is an untestable thesis since that is never verified. If a dictatorship does enjoy such strong support (i.e. they "want" to live in a society without certain civil rights) then this would be easy to test in a vote or whatnot. But China will be remodelled by it's own workers, not by you or I (which is where we agree I suppose).

that bis maybe true for europe in thev last few 100 years.

No, it's true for every period in human history that I am aware of. It's certainly true for the "third world" now.

Thats a bit difficult, isnt it?

Not really. On the level of individuals, if you go out in the street and see someone being attacked - you can intervene (if this seems appropriate / safe). On an international level we cannot go round doing whatever we want for fairly obvious reasons, but what we can try to do is put pressure on companies like Yahoo to not support odious actions abroad. There's a lot more we can do too, but that's a start.

Well, they want to make money in China.[...]but except to stay completly out of china i dont know what else they could have done.

I am aware they want to make money. However, they can't hide behind that as a catch-all for supporting evil wherever. The Yahoo board is made up of human beings and as such they are moral agents with responsibilities to act in a reasonably ethical fashion to other human beings. If the choice is "behaving in a morally reprehensible manner" vs "making money" then that's no choice at all. Similarly, I could go and rob old people of their savings and then say "Well, I want to make money". But I don't. Not because of the law (since I break the law in various other ways regularly) but because it's wrong.

Unfortunately, such a course is not always possible for corporations due to the legal obligation to maximise profit in a public company. As such, we may wish to re-examine the legal and political basis of our own society.