Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bmitc 1457 days ago
I think it's a spectrum. When adjusting to local culture in a more colloquial manner, e.g., like what McDonald's and KFC do with their food in places like China, I think that is fine. However, when it comes to supporting and enabling ideology and policies that directly conflict with the values of the country that company is headquartered in and actually most of the developed world, then I think it's a national security issue. Because then, customers in the host country and the company itself are directly funding the conflicting ideology.

People not liking to eat cheese or beef or rice porridge is different than human rights issues. In general, I am not a fan of pushing or maintaining an ideology over another when it comes to economic and other such policies, but when it comes to human rights violations, I don't think that's something that should be bowed to.

1 comments

Who dictates "human rights"?
Most human rights seem pretty universal to me and really not that hard to determine, but at the end, it's the country that hosts the company, isn't it?
That's a hand wavy answer that won't hold up to scrutiny. In some cultures, human sacrifice was permitted and seen as normal and acceptable. I think you would consider that a violation of human rights, but based on what?

I agree that companies should be forced to abide by the local laws and norms.

I think the keyword there is “some”. Extreme edge cases matter in things like mathematics, but they rarely make a compelling argument for fringe socioeconomic policies or viewpoints or enumerating human rights.

For my own sentiment, referenced as hand wavy, it is not that hard to let people do what they want with their own life as long as it does not hurt or infringe upon others’ rights. Is that really that difficult of a rubric to follow?

For the original question, I already answered that explicitly.

Let's look at that notion deeper. Are you able to claim that consenting adults engaging in sexual acts together in an uncontrolled manner (i.e. no marriage contract) is not hurting others? What about consenting teens with each other? I think you'll see that widespread STD's, abortions, teen pregnancies, single parent (especially single mother) families, and the emotion baggage that comes with these easy sexual relationships disagrees with you.

Secondly, what or who is your authority that people doing what they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone is a valid generalization to make for all actions?