I don't know why people keep expressing surprise at things like this.
Contrary to what the U.S. Supreme Court would have you believe, corporations are not people and do not have morals or values. They are organizations that seek to maximize profit and grow.
Any values a corporation projects are merely reflections of whatever the dominant moral force is in a given time and place.
American corporations in the U.S. in 2022 project values of wokeness because the woke left is presently the dominant cultural force in the U.S. In 1950's America, the dominant cultural force was cultural conservatism and patriotism so naturally corporations projected conservative and patriotic values. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that a large corporation operating in China in 2022 will reflect the values of the CCP.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but expecting a corporation to have meaningful morals in the same way a human does is like expecting your dog to do the dishes. Based on what they are, they're simply not capable of the task.
>corporations are not people and do not have morals or values
The irony of this is that all corporations and all decisions and actions taken by corporations are made by people. If anything corporations are the most clear and unmistakable reflection of what it truly means to be human without the masks we wear in daily life.
> corporations are not people and do not have morals or values. They are organizations that seek to maximize profit and grow.
They are however made up of people who make moral decisions based on their values, including in their businesses. Plenty of corporations choose to do or not do things based on their ethics and morals. And acting as an agent of a corporation doesn't free you from moral peril when making those decisions.
I don't expect Intel the Corporation to have values, but I do expect the people within Intel who choose where they manufacture or purchase manufactured goods to have qualms about using slave labor for it, supporting a genocide in doing so.
Doing the right thing morally and doing the right thing for business are not mutually exclusive. Actually, this case is a good example.
Please see these comments [0]. But essentially, Intel is in a medium and long term losing position in CCP China regardless of whether it glosses over slave concentration camps. It seems to have chosen to value CCP China supply chains. It will face a capricious CCP that will disrupt those supply chains sooner or later. It will face the creation of a CCP China national chip champion with a monopoly on local sales.
This will be bad for business. It is of course still bad to play semantic public relations games with slave concentration camps.
Had it maintained a moral position against Xinjiang slave concentration camps, it would have been pushed to look for alternative supply chains. This in turn would have put Intel in a better position to whether storms created by CCP when using trade policies as foreign policy instruments.
Good business and some basic moral decency go together. It is so sad for humanity to believe otherwise.
> It apologised last month for the "trouble" it had caused, saying that its commitment to avoid supply chains from Xinjiang was an expression of compliance with U.S. law, rather than a statement of its position on the issue.
So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production?
To what extent are Intel chips designed and manufactured in China? Presumably, they are primarily designed in the USA and manufactured in Taiwan. And Intel is opening chip factories to boost production in the USA [0].
Why would Intel not take a position against Xinjiang slave concentration camps if presumably most of the supply chain does not depend on it? Would it be that much "trouble"? Or has some unrelated "trouble" been created for Intel that was not discussed in the article?
Just yesterday someone commented on the google's union efforts with the following:
> Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly weak position.[1]
The discussion whether it's true or not is less important at this point than the fact that Governments is responsible for making sure that there are rules to be followed. The main problem here is that most governments themselves are also run by the same profit-seeking entities/people. The whole situation right now is based on the fact that everyone moved their production to china with complete disregard for everything but short term gain.
Amazons Bezos is in fact not wrong when he says that he's not going to pay tax out of some altruistic ideas, but that it is in fact up to governments to make proper legislation. It's just that governments are busy doing nothing but talking for the most part(or at least have learned to do nothing over the past decades). I actually had a social democrat party member tell me a couple years ago, that the politicians have a really hard job travelling around talking, and having to read consultant written legislation. This is in effect not that different from tech ceo's scheduling 4 hours of meetings every day and calling it work.
Most people don't actually want to change the status quo, they just want to put blame on someone.
Intel and most multinationals' sanitized position is going to be "slave/coerced labour" doesn't exist in their supply chain according to their (lax) audits and oversights. But they're forced to comply with US blanket sanction on the region. Because at the end of the day, a US company operates no differently than a PRC company that is completely beholden to the state security apparatus. Sorry to PRC market for being US SOE and arm of US foreign policy.
> Intel not take a position against Xinjiang
Because PRC position is coerced labour doesn't exist. It's decades old rural labour transfer programs + vocational training that pays multitudes more than regional norms and competitive with national wages is being portrayed as slave labour by US propaganda. If you want to make money in PRC, comport with PRC position or at least figure out messaging to pave over contradictions and save face. Ergo, US companies are forced to comply with US laws and holds no position on which narrative is correct.
To me it sounds less morally consistent. It says they are against slavery on the paper but will not do anything concrete to avoid profiting from slave labour in practice.
> The letter now reads that the company prohibits "any human trafficked or involuntary labour such as forced, debt bonded, prison, indentured, or slave labour throughout your extended supply chains."
> “Intel’s cowardice is yet another predictable consequence of economic reliance on China,” Rubio said in a statement on Monday. “Instead of humiliating apologies and self-censorship, companies should move their supply chains to countries that do not use slave labour or commit genocide.”
So is it known whether any companies in Intel's supply chain uses US prison labor? Certainly Intel operates in a state which uses prison labor to fight its escalating wildfire issues, and is in that sense a beneficiary of prison labor.
I don't mean to create a the appearance of a false equivalence; these are different situations. But if the effect of the rewrite is to call out the broader classes of transgression rather than single out a specific instance, premised on the idea that human rights should in fact be universal and some standards must be consistently upheld everywhere ... then surely we must look at the ongoing practices in our own country.
The revised letter is a good instruction manual on how to maintain standing in both societies, they just should have thought of it initially. Thanks for taking the L, InteL.
We were happy to embrace the philosophy of sociopathic capitalist companies when it meant getting our cheap electronics built in factories with suicide nets. Now that it means giant companies care more about China's opinion than ours we want to posture about loyalty and moral responsibility.
Say what you want about China, but their ability to weaponize capitalism and make multi-billion dollar companies cower and self-censor in ways they would never do for Western governments is remarkable.
"When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract".
In China the government tells companies what to do in the furtherance of state aims. In America and elsewhere companies tell government what to do in furtherance of corporate aims. For instance the overthrow of governments on behalf of banana companies and oil companies. What we see now is China exerting influence and power and we aren’t accustomed to having another country do this toward our companies/interests.
Intel shareholders can now vote to ensure Intel takes a stand against China, if they choose. But it seems those individuals do not want that. So Intel is doing what it is supposed to do -- operate in accordance with wishes of the shareholders.
And this happens when the Chinese economy is still smaller than the US along with their lack of mastery in certain state-of-the-art semiconductor and aerospace tech. When the Chinese economy and tech hopefully match the US, the pressure gonna be enormous. Can't wait to see that day, my newsfeed will be so exciting.
Intel wouldn’t massage the wording of their shareholder report to avoid criticism from the American public? I’m skeptical. They almost certainly have review processes designed to anticipate and prevent that from happening in the first place.
My previous comment got flagged, so I'll rephrase in a way that's less sarcastic.
Intel is doing the exact same thing to help Xinjiang as the government which is absolutely nothing. Yet somehow anti-capitalists will only focus on the former. Governments do tend to virtue signal more, but that's because they don't face any negative repercussions for doing so.
I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Are you blaming capitalism for the moral failures of a communist regime?
Maybe you're just suggesting capitalism isn't capable of "solving" the wrongdoings of communism? If so I would agree. A society that accepts the evils of communism is a difficult thing to solve externally.
> The letter now reads that the company prohibits "any human trafficked or involuntary labour such as forced, debt bonded, prison, indentured, or slave labour throughout your extended supply chains."
Companies receiving US government subsidies should manufacture finished goods domestically (or with its allies where not otherwise possible). Especially companies of strategic national interest.
Intel wants a multi-billion dollar grant/bailout from Uncle Sam. Make onshoring of manufacturing a condition of receiving such funds.
What I find most dangerous about the United States bending to the will of China via their corporations is that it's affecting our story telling. The stories we tell define how we remember history, who our heroes are and what we think is worth fighting for. In 2012 the script of Red Dawn (a remake) was changed so that it was the North Koreans invading the US rather than the Chinese. This was done to avoid provoking the ire of the Chinese market, a critically important market for our film industry, much like it's a critically important market for Intel. This trend has continued and worsened.
You'll notice there are no courageous well known film makers tackling the humanitarian abuses in China. It's a career killer.
And yet the most popular film in China in 2021 is The Battle at Lake Changjin which depicts the Chinese fighting American soldiers and winning. It's also the highest grossing film in Chinese history and the second highest grossing film world-wide in 2021. It's also the highest grossing non-english film of 2021.
America has lost the narrative and the Chinese have gained it without question. Our free market economy and desire for continued access to the Chinese market is destroying our freedom of expression and has left what used to be a community of courageous filmmakers shining light in important issues cowering in a corner.
And I'm also irritated that in the US many convicts (not just inmates) lose their right to vote, a human right that in Europe you'd only lose for direct attack to the democracy (like the Jan 6 mob, or voting fraud, and even then only for a limited period of time).
> From looking at the downvotes on this post, I believe they are on this thread downvoting posts that no moral people should have business downvoting. Just be aware. voicing an opinion that doesn’t get upvotes doesn’t mean it isn’t agreed with.
If someone looks at this OP, you see most of the flagged and dead posts are from the few people who question the continual US anti-China (anti-Iran, anti-Cuba, anti-Venezuela, anti-Palestinian...) rhetoric. So it is pretty much all posts raging about China, with the few posts questioning this killed off, but the paranoia is about "infiltration" against the US China bashing, when anyone can just look at this whole post and see the opposite is true.
The US military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about sucks away my taxes to do evil on other lands, its propaganda organs saying US workers and taxpayers like me questioning its parasitism and belligerence is alien.
It's amusing how the US's coup de grace in Afghanistan was a massacre of innocent Afghans, and the corporate press and pundits tear their shirts we're still not there killing Afghans, yet their heart bleeds for China dealing with a terrorism problem within China. The US can go around the world and bomb whoever it wants, but China is not allowed to deal with a terrorism problem within its own borders.
The problem is that it is not just paid Wu Maos partaking in mindless burying of China criticism. Often times, you'll get hyper nationalist Chinese people who just want to help their homeland and they're not getting paid to astroturf. It's not limited to the Chinese - I have seen the same pattern for posts that are critical of India/Indians in engineering boards. I believe that trust is largely gone on large forums due to astroturfing and bots.
[+] [-] tharne|4 years ago|reply
Contrary to what the U.S. Supreme Court would have you believe, corporations are not people and do not have morals or values. They are organizations that seek to maximize profit and grow.
Any values a corporation projects are merely reflections of whatever the dominant moral force is in a given time and place.
American corporations in the U.S. in 2022 project values of wokeness because the woke left is presently the dominant cultural force in the U.S. In 1950's America, the dominant cultural force was cultural conservatism and patriotism so naturally corporations projected conservative and patriotic values. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that a large corporation operating in China in 2022 will reflect the values of the CCP.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but expecting a corporation to have meaningful morals in the same way a human does is like expecting your dog to do the dishes. Based on what they are, they're simply not capable of the task.
[+] [-] deltaonefour|4 years ago|reply
The irony of this is that all corporations and all decisions and actions taken by corporations are made by people. If anything corporations are the most clear and unmistakable reflection of what it truly means to be human without the masks we wear in daily life.
Other than that, yeah I get what you're saying.
[+] [-] duped|4 years ago|reply
They are however made up of people who make moral decisions based on their values, including in their businesses. Plenty of corporations choose to do or not do things based on their ethics and morals. And acting as an agent of a corporation doesn't free you from moral peril when making those decisions.
I don't expect Intel the Corporation to have values, but I do expect the people within Intel who choose where they manufacture or purchase manufactured goods to have qualms about using slave labor for it, supporting a genocide in doing so.
[+] [-] network2592|4 years ago|reply
Please see these comments [0]. But essentially, Intel is in a medium and long term losing position in CCP China regardless of whether it glosses over slave concentration camps. It seems to have chosen to value CCP China supply chains. It will face a capricious CCP that will disrupt those supply chains sooner or later. It will face the creation of a CCP China national chip champion with a monopoly on local sales.
This will be bad for business. It is of course still bad to play semantic public relations games with slave concentration camps.
Had it maintained a moral position against Xinjiang slave concentration camps, it would have been pushed to look for alternative supply chains. This in turn would have put Intel in a better position to whether storms created by CCP when using trade policies as foreign policy instruments.
Good business and some basic moral decency go together. It is so sad for humanity to believe otherwise.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29897071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29897791
[+] [-] network2592|4 years ago|reply
So is the position of Intel that slave labour in concentration camps is an acceptable means of production?
To what extent are Intel chips designed and manufactured in China? Presumably, they are primarily designed in the USA and manufactured in Taiwan. And Intel is opening chip factories to boost production in the USA [0].
Why would Intel not take a position against Xinjiang slave concentration camps if presumably most of the supply chain does not depend on it? Would it be that much "trouble"? Or has some unrelated "trouble" been created for Intel that was not discussed in the article?
[0] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...
[+] [-] rjzzleep|4 years ago|reply
> Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly weak position.[1]
The discussion whether it's true or not is less important at this point than the fact that Governments is responsible for making sure that there are rules to be followed. The main problem here is that most governments themselves are also run by the same profit-seeking entities/people. The whole situation right now is based on the fact that everyone moved their production to china with complete disregard for everything but short term gain.
Amazons Bezos is in fact not wrong when he says that he's not going to pay tax out of some altruistic ideas, but that it is in fact up to governments to make proper legislation. It's just that governments are busy doing nothing but talking for the most part(or at least have learned to do nothing over the past decades). I actually had a social democrat party member tell me a couple years ago, that the politicians have a really hard job travelling around talking, and having to read consultant written legislation. This is in effect not that different from tech ceo's scheduling 4 hours of meetings every day and calling it work.
Most people don't actually want to change the status quo, they just want to put blame on someone.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29876934
[+] [-] dirtyid|4 years ago|reply
> Intel not take a position against Xinjiang
Because PRC position is coerced labour doesn't exist. It's decades old rural labour transfer programs + vocational training that pays multitudes more than regional norms and competitive with national wages is being portrayed as slave labour by US propaganda. If you want to make money in PRC, comport with PRC position or at least figure out messaging to pave over contradictions and save face. Ergo, US companies are forced to comply with US laws and holds no position on which narrative is correct.
[+] [-] analyst74|4 years ago|reply
It still means they are against slave labor, including those in Xinjiang, but not blindly banning anything from the region.
[+] [-] dandare|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abeppu|4 years ago|reply
> “Intel’s cowardice is yet another predictable consequence of economic reliance on China,” Rubio said in a statement on Monday. “Instead of humiliating apologies and self-censorship, companies should move their supply chains to countries that do not use slave labour or commit genocide.”
So is it known whether any companies in Intel's supply chain uses US prison labor? Certainly Intel operates in a state which uses prison labor to fight its escalating wildfire issues, and is in that sense a beneficiary of prison labor.
I don't mean to create a the appearance of a false equivalence; these are different situations. But if the effect of the rewrite is to call out the broader classes of transgression rather than single out a specific instance, premised on the idea that human rights should in fact be universal and some standards must be consistently upheld everywhere ... then surely we must look at the ongoing practices in our own country.
[+] [-] design-material|4 years ago|reply
That logic makes no sense
[+] [-] vmception|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|4 years ago|reply
"Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence" - Ovid
[+] [-] causality0|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] system16|4 years ago|reply
"When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract".
[+] [-] syki|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bravo22|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eunos|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SpicyLemonZest|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sorethescore|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aunche|4 years ago|reply
Intel is doing the exact same thing to help Xinjiang as the government which is absolutely nothing. Yet somehow anti-capitalists will only focus on the former. Governments do tend to virtue signal more, but that's because they don't face any negative repercussions for doing so.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] f00b4r_|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] toolz|4 years ago|reply
Maybe you're just suggesting capitalism isn't capable of "solving" the wrongdoings of communism? If so I would agree. A society that accepts the evils of communism is a difficult thing to solve externally.
[+] [-] vmception|4 years ago|reply
Designed by Intel in California™
[+] [-] nimbius|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...
[+] [-] echelon|4 years ago|reply
Intel wants a multi-billion dollar grant/bailout from Uncle Sam. Make onshoring of manufacturing a condition of receiving such funds.
Furthermore, I posted a tax advantage system in a sibling thread that would help encourage other companies to do the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29892031
Remove taxes from positive externalities. Attach conditions to bailouts/grants. Use money to force the outcomes you want.
[+] [-] 323|4 years ago|reply
Soon even that will be outsourced to China. It will be replaced by:
Financed by Intel in California™ or Marketed by Intel in California™
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tomrod|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|4 years ago|reply
Expecting moral courage from a big corporation is probably an exercise in inevitable disappointment though.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mmaunder|4 years ago|reply
You'll notice there are no courageous well known film makers tackling the humanitarian abuses in China. It's a career killer.
And yet the most popular film in China in 2021 is The Battle at Lake Changjin which depicts the Chinese fighting American soldiers and winning. It's also the highest grossing film in Chinese history and the second highest grossing film world-wide in 2021. It's also the highest grossing non-english film of 2021.
America has lost the narrative and the Chinese have gained it without question. Our free market economy and desire for continued access to the Chinese market is destroying our freedom of expression and has left what used to be a community of courageous filmmakers shining light in important issues cowering in a corner.
[+] [-] amerikkkan|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] temptemptemp111|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] synergy20|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l1vZ11G2l|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] l1vZ11G2l|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] AlexTWithBeard|4 years ago|reply
How comes it's not cancelled by the Twitter mob yet?
[+] [-] photochemsyn|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] froh|4 years ago|reply
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/884989263?t=1641920153339
And I'm also irritated that in the US many convicts (not just inmates) lose their right to vote, a human right that in Europe you'd only lose for direct attack to the democracy (like the Jan 6 mob, or voting fraud, and even then only for a limited period of time).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement#Europe
[+] [-] halpert|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ei8htyfi5e|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] VictorPath|4 years ago|reply
If someone looks at this OP, you see most of the flagged and dead posts are from the few people who question the continual US anti-China (anti-Iran, anti-Cuba, anti-Venezuela, anti-Palestinian...) rhetoric. So it is pretty much all posts raging about China, with the few posts questioning this killed off, but the paranoia is about "infiltration" against the US China bashing, when anyone can just look at this whole post and see the opposite is true.
The US military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about sucks away my taxes to do evil on other lands, its propaganda organs saying US workers and taxpayers like me questioning its parasitism and belligerence is alien.
It's amusing how the US's coup de grace in Afghanistan was a massacre of innocent Afghans, and the corporate press and pundits tear their shirts we're still not there killing Afghans, yet their heart bleeds for China dealing with a terrorism problem within China. The US can go around the world and bomb whoever it wants, but China is not allowed to deal with a terrorism problem within its own borders.
[+] [-] president|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amerikkkan|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] network2592|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]