We really have to stop doing this…

24/06/09

It’s just so depressingly familiar.

While most of the world is desperately hoping for a change of government in Iran, Nokia Siemens Networks have built the most sophisticated dissent-suppression tool ever created for President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Nice one, fellas.

Still, I can’t really get annoyed with NSN – well, I can, but I shouldn’t – because they’re barely even scratching the surface of stupid with that. Never mind where Coltan comes from or what oil companies do in countries we prefer to ignore: the really idiotic moves in this arena are made by governments – who also, one suspects, quietly sponsor and endorse the actions of corporations based on their soil.

Let’s see… Saddam Hussein? Check. Britain trained Dr Germ in the eighties and everyone loved Saddam until he got cocky. Like another recent bad guy, Saddam was someone we did business with when he was against them darned So-vee-ett Rooskies – a short term decision which frankly looks a bit less than splendid now. There are plenty of unpleasant people in the gallery of allies – Pinochet was another good friend.

The thing is, I remember the Cold War well enough to know that we believed it would never end. Those decisions, daft though they are in retrospect, looked sensible because – while in today’s climate Allende looks infinitely preferable to Pinchoet – back then anyone on the Left was basically considered a Soviet stooge.

There are no such excuses now. We know the situation is volatile. We know things can change radically because of some small force applied in one direction or another. We know that what we do defines the next year, the next decade. We are familiar with blowback. (Although have you noticed how little we’ve heard of it since Barack Obama was elected? Apparently, his decisions will not have blowback… Oh, honey. Yes, they will.)

And yet we persist in this nonsense. We like ‘strongmen‘ for other people’s countries. Democracies are so annoyingly flaky – they might at any moment elect someone we don’t approve of.

How about this: we’re quite happy to have a law which governs MPs expenses, so let’s have one which says you can’t do this crap. A law which CEOs and ministers have to pay attention to…

You’re nervous, aren’t you? It’s scary to think of a law powerful enough to do that. You’re probably right.

So let’s have a better class of leader, and some regulation which promotes, rather than disadvantages, ethical behaviour in corporations.

Yeah. Exactly.

But somehow, we really have to stop with this stupid stuff.

4 Comments to “We really have to stop doing this…”

Matt Keefe said on June 24th, 2009:

Isn’t this really just about control freakery of the highest order, and taken to the greatest extremes?

Even for the very noble-minded amongst politicians (who said ‘tooth fairy’? Quiet in the cheap seats!), democracy is often a means to an ends – I don’t mean that cynically, or to suggest they’re using it for just as long as it takes for them to found the next dictatorship, I mean it literally – so convinced are they of the absolute necessity and righteousness of the changes they wish to make that, should democracy temporarily become an impediment to them, they’re willing to renege on even their own principles.

Even relative moderates do it – like the Liberal Democrats effectively kiboshing debate over the Lisbon Treaty by calling a three line whip on an absurd amendment calling for a referendum on the whole issue of EU membership instead. Sometimes the questions get so big that those in office (power/authority – what you term the station depends very much on what you think of it) really don’t dare let them be discussed or decided elsewhere.

Direct democracy becomes ever more appealing to the ordinary person, ever more terrifying for the naturally political. Ultimately – and even without the presence of malign intentions on their part – I think there’s something about those who choose ‘leadership’ or ‘responsibility’, as they would see it, which means that when it really comes down to it they’re just not willing to let us all choose to do something which they think is dangerous. Control freakery. They’re convinced we’re going to elect Allende otherwise.

The thing about freedom is that you live with the consequences. I think most people are perfectly at ease with that. Politicians, diplomats, Whitehall civil servants and all the rest of it, clearly are not.
Nick Harkaway said on June 24th, 2009:

I think it’s stupider than that, actually. I think it’s habit. We just do these things and allow them because we’re used to the world being a mess. No one can imagine saying “no, no, this is unethical and a bit dumb – even if profitable/advantageous in the short term – so we won’t do it.” In some countries, there are actually laws which render executives vulnerable to legal action if they don’t push the law to its limit to make profit. In other words, if you don’t try to find ways around child labour laws, you could get sued…

I’m not a fan of legislating this kind of thing; people ought to do it anyway. However, we’re into control-freaking our representatives at the moment, and there’s not a lot of trust, so maybe we need a rule which says: “Hey, idiot! Not sell munitions to bad guy in exchange for oil! Not outsource labour to child factory! No, no, NO! You do bad thing, you go to prison FOR EVER. Geddit?”

Revolting though it is to imagine that we need to legislate to prevent our governments from behaving like monsters.
Matt Keefe said on June 24th, 2009:

Yes, you’re probably right. Governments have long had the resort position of, “Look, sometimes difficult decisions have to be made…”, which sounds pretty convincing until you realise most so-called “difficult” decisions are actually stupid ones.

I’ve often wondered if a statuatory element would be possible in foreign policy – legal restrictions on the diplomatic/military/trade relations we can have with different countries dependant upon how many, and which, of our criteria for a free state they fulfil. It probably wouldn’t work, of course, but at least the statement that governments (and similarly corporations) can’t arbitrarily apply or dismiss ethical concerns would be a nice one.
Foz Meadows said on June 25th, 2009:

Damn governments and their short-term planning. You’d think we’d have more collective knowledge of human nature by now than to think that installing a rebel dictator against the will of the people or arming a tyrant because the enemy of our enemy is our temporary friend is a good idea, but evidently not.

I think W. H. Auden summed it up best in 1 September, 1939. He wrote:

I and the public know
What all school children learn:
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.