[CreateAccntAgn]

Some of Americas closest allies are authoritarian regimes. Why would anyone expect profit moticated companies like Google or Apple to have higher moral standards than the elected representative US goverment where it operates from itself?

[megabless123]

> Why would anyone expect profit moticated companies like Google or Apple to have higher moral standards than the elected representative US goverment where it operates from itself?

Because elected representatives are not moral authorities

[sehro]

Neither are major corporations.

[2xpress]

Indeed a good point. Had the US elected representatives had better morals none of this would have ever happened. It would have been pre-empted decades ago. But we have no influence over their morals, only an ability to vote for or against them. Those elected by definition are the best people available. So if they don't have good morals that means the whole society does not have good morals. I suppose the best we can do is to try to have better morals ourselves and hope to positively influence the rest of society to make better moral choices...

All that is hard, and that's why evil like Putin prevails...

[a1369209993]

> Those elected by definition are the best people available.

If by "available", you mean political candidates, then yes. If you mean of the society in general, then no, quite the opposite, actually.

> So if they don't have good morals that means the whole society does not have good morals.

No, it means two of the worst people in the society (namely, the 'republican' candidate and the 'democratic' candidate) do not have good morals. This a slightly stronger measure than the society's minimum level of morals, but not by very much, and says nothing about average or about particular non-politician cases.

[jhrmnn]

I think this distrust in democracy as a system to elect representative people to legislate and govern is widespread and to a certain degree based on facts, but also deeply worrying. In a way it signifies a failure of democracy.

[a1369209993]

> In a way it signifies a failure of democracy.

I'd say "demonstrates the", but... yes? Obviously?

Democracy worked well early on because institutions hadn't yet figured out how to exploit it, not because it had any inherent resistance to exploitation; now it's like Merkel-Damgaard hash functions[0]: it was always broken, but now we (and the attackers) know it's broken and are seeing the consequences.

0: eg, MD5, SHA-1

[2xpress]

At least those are "allies" and not existential threats.