Multinational corporations and censorship

[Murgos]

But to answer your query, yes. Some people running our country believe we have the right, nay, the responsibility, to reshape the world to our liking.

Student of history much?  The Monroe doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary sound familiiar?

[Sky]

Yes. Those that don't learn are doomed to repeat and whatnot.

It's repeating, and the current PNAC is not a history lesson. We can do something about this one.

[Strazos]

Student of history much?  The Monroe doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary sound familiiar?

Yup. They're both bad policy.

Yes. Those that don't learn are doomed to repeat and whatnot.

It's repeating, and the current PNAC is not a history lesson. We can do something about this one.

History doesn't repeat per se, but I know what you mean. How much support does this slop have outside of the Whitehouse cabinet?

Many people insist that the US is not an Imperial power. Ha....

[Sky]

Jumping back to walmart and china for a minute:

http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2006/01/13/71108.html

[HaemishM]

Freedom to the highest bidder. Woot.

I eat your naivete with a side order of bacon and fried Chinese children.

But I also don't know how much business companies have overseas projecting the policy of a local government, particularly when that projection reaches back out of those borders to the world at large. I realize companies need to appease host governments. But it would seem to me folly to provide a community-building and collaberation tool all about speech and expression to a country with so many controls over that, particularly when you're trying to extend a service you first created in a country that allows it.

Microsoft has salivated at the thought of being able to sell in China for years. China has accomodated them a great deal, but really, is it any surprise that Microsoft would alter their stuff to get in bed with a market a billion Chinese strong? Especially when the stuff they have to fuck with (blogs) means jack and shit to what they want to sell to the Chinese? It's an addon. It's nothing to them. It's like telling them to unbundle Media Player and Internet Explorer from the desktop. They don't care so long as you buy the bigger package.

The more important question is why would you blog about that shit from China on MSN?

[HaemishM]

Everyone here who is apologizing for the corporate world has simply denounced our stance as "petty" etc, instead of actually answering the question:

What the fuck do they do to deserve any of that shit? It's a perfectly honest question.

While many times, I will agree that a lot of executives are worthless wastes of space who truly do no work whatsoever, I can say what some of these guys do.

They talk to the people you don't want to, about stuff you don't want to deal with (like the things you and your chucklefuck worker friends fucked up), decide who gets hired and fired, how much money gets spent on healthcare, pension plans, retirement, and how business is going to be generated next year that will keep the employees paid and bitchy.

I certainly think most executives are overpaid and get way too many golden parachutes, but frankly, they do jobs I wouldn't touch with a ten foot fucking pole and talk with people I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire.

[jpark]

And I think business is bullshit, filled with highly-paid executives who don't have any actual skill at anything besides sucking ass and cleaning up the mess with their precious MBAs. But that's just me.

You're a naive fool.

Yes, there are good people in the business world - they are a tiny minority from what I can tell.

There is a joke of sorts that we threw around in my investment days - a small company of 10 guys requires just as many decision makers with as a firm 1000 times its size.

You're only hope in a large firm is to hope that it is decentralized - so that each national subsidiary actually has to think for itself.

[Venkman]

What the fuck do they do to deserve any of that shit? It's a perfectly honest question.

It's not a direct question, so there is no direct answer. Nobody get's plucked off the street and handed six figures. Consider corporate management not unlike organized sports. People don't go from Little League to the Major League without working a fuckton, knowing the right people, doing the right thing, knowing the rules, knowing the pressure points of those rules, knowing how much pressure to apply, and doing so for decades on end. But most importantly: you need people who think those salaries are justified in order for the execs to collect them.

I personally don't think any actor or sports star deserves anywhere the cash they get. Yes, I know it's hard and shit, but call me a bit Puritan throwback or something by thinking a fucking teacher does more work in a week than Harrison Ford does in a year.

An old argument of course, but it's to illustrate the point: people only get paid what others think they're worth.

I eat your naivete with a side order of bacon and fried Chinese children.

Weak. You know me better than that.

[naum]

As I've had some dealings with executive management of Fortune 500 corporations, the one thing that astonished me greatly, that I seemed to be completely ignorant of, was the total interconnectedness of the corporate world. Most directors and board members sit on other boards, and CEOs are chairmen for multiple other companies. So a new marketing/management/manufacturing fad/trend/"paradigm" comes into play, and all these companies begin to act in total unision, inspired by Neutron Jack (yes, I know he's no longer GE head…) or the greatness of GE, or Honeywell, etc.…

For example: Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express is on the board of directors for IBM. Vernon Jordan, a board member, sits on the boards of Xerox, Sara Less, Asbury Automotive Group and J.C. Penney (for many years, Henry Kissinger was a board member of Amex…). Charles Knight, on the board of directors at IBM, also sits on the board at SBC, Anheuser Busch, Morgan Stanley and Emerson Electric.

There's a interactive nice flash presentation of this phenomenon, that seldom gets attention in the mainstream media, at http://www.theyrule.net, albeit incomplete and I believe current as of 2004…

When I was involved in outsourcing efforts (as well as Six Sigma campaigns) at American Express, it was driven by executives who all acted in incestuous fashion, following eachother in a giant circle jerk, no matter what factual data underlings reported from research. Decisions were made on the basis of this "executive club" comprised of top folks in the corporate world, and not from middle level management or even empirical data collected by those "on the line".

[HaemishM]

Naum, the same holds true for mid-level corporations as well. It's a large circle jerk of sycophants following the few real trendsetters, or the latest books written by the trendsetters that totally contradict what their last book said.