Previous Politech message: http://www.politechbot.com/2006/02/02/google-is-right/ -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Google is right on China, by James DeLong [fs] Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 09:23:58 -0800 From: Jon Dugan <dugan@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> I'm not sure if others have made this point, but there is a good side inherent simply in the broad airing of this controversy. There was never any real debate before about the nature of the Chinese government: those who understood, knew it was oppressive, but most people didn't know or care. But now, with so much press on the subject, many more people understand how oppressive that government really is. This is the real power of pervasive communication -- broadening people's context. Keep up the good work! -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Google is right on China, by James DeLong [fs] Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 12:26:15 -0500 (EST) From: Matthew G. Saroff <msaroff@private> Reply-To: Matthew G. Saroff <msaroff@private> Organization: The Dealy Plaza Gun Club To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> On Thu, 2 Feb 2006, Declan McCullagh wrote: > > by James V. DeLong* > > > The Chinese are undertaking simultaneously several of the most difficult > tasks that any nation can attempt. They are loosening the grasp of an > authoritarian regime; fostering rapid economic development; and evolving > the proper form of government for a huge population of widely varying > sophistication and skill in the technological age, bearing in mind the > history and culture of China. I believe that he misses the point. --snip--- And I further believe that this example shows where his theories, while commonly held, do not correspond to reality. > Look at Russia, where the recommended shock treatment approach was a > disaster. The lesson may be that converting to a more capitalistic state > requires economic loosening before political loosening -- perestroika > before glasnost. The rule of law may have to start at the top and then > extend downward, and be followed by a broad voting franchise only after > the basics of industrial development are firmly in place. This was, > after all, the pattern of the Western democracies. Magna Carta was for > barons, not peasants. His basic thesis is that free market economics is democracy. Were that the case, Chile would have returned to Democracy within 18 months of Pinochet taking power, and putting Chicago School economists in charge of the economy. Additionally, we would be talking about Gulags and slave labor camps in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Political freedoms and laissez fair capitalism are largely orthogonal, except in extreme cases on both left and right, where it tends to diminish democracy. The government of the PRC, Like Pinochet, want a "Free Market Economy" in which they have exclusive access to the levers of power. That is what they are attempting now, and what Pinochet attempted in the 1970s. -- Matthew G. Saroff, E.I.T. Owings Mills, MD E-mail: msaroff@private -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Google is right on China, by James DeLong [fs] Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:33:16 -0500 From: Chris Beck <cbeck@private> Organization: None At All To: jdelong@private CC: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Hi Mr. DeLong, A quick response to your article that Declan posted to his Politech list. (Declan, sorry about the multiple copies). Rumour has it Declan McCullagh, on or about 02.Feb.2006 11:17, forwarded: --Original Message-- From: James DeLong <jdelong@private> >About the only tepidly good word came from George Mason >University economist Thomas Hazlett: "the terms of the agreement >struck will push modern communications yet further in a >basically authoritarian society. That triggers an underlying >dynamic that ultimately, will undermine restrictions, allowing >civil liberties -- not Chinese government censors -- to >triumph." >(http://news.ft.com/cms/s/b89f3cd0-8dd6-11da-8fda-0000779e2340.html) This is a truism that assumes that the Chinese government doesn't know what to do. We really don't have many years worth of experience using high tech to undermine authoritarian regimes - a few dozen years at most. We all _hope_ that is will happen, but I see little evidence that it will. Certainly no evidence that it is causative - remember that their economy is liberalizing at the same time which others posit will bring down their authoritarian regime for very similar reasons. Personally, I think it is an attempt at post-facto justification on the part of anyone who wants to make billions in China. It reminds me of the software that someone wrote in Douglas Adams' "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" that given a conclusion produced the logic necessary to justify it. Cheers, Chris -- Chris Beck - http://pacanukeha.blogspot.com Why did the chicken cross the road? I blame society. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Google is right on China, by James DeLong [fs] Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 11:15:31 -0800 From: Brad Templeton <btm@private> Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> CC: politech@private References: <43E23098.5050005@private> On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 08:17:28AM -0800, Declan McCullagh wrote: > [Jim makes some good points. Though I'm not so sure about his swipe at > the 1960s! --Declan] > .. > The U.S. as a democratic model? An interesting case, that's also > full of problems. The nation has an increasing political class He makes his points, good or bad, about democracy, not censorship. While it's true that democracy requires free speech, you can have free speech before you have democracy and it's a good tool for the path to democracy. I find it hard to credit that letting the Chinese look up information about Tibet or Taiwan on the web will cause a disasterous rush to democracy "too early." Free speech is the central ingredient to government accountabilty, and that can even be true in authoritarian regimes. Indeed, authoritarians usually only give up power when they realize that the people know they are abusing it and will not stand for it. In a democracy, you are kicked out of power if a majority of the people will not accept your actions. In an authoritarian regime, this still happens, but it takes a large supermajority, perhaps 90% or more. That's because you must never go so far as to forment revolt, and so you must give the people some of what they want in order to stop the numbers from reaching the level of revolt. Typically you give them economic reform. The other alternative is to be so totalitarian that you clamp down on everything. Even for dictators, some consent of the governed is required, and the consent of the military & police is always required. If there is free speech, then there is more accountability, even in an authoritarian regime. And yes, it might speed the march to democracy a bit. Certainly otherwise it will be too slow -- on which side would you have us err? No, what Google is doing will not help the Chinese people in any way. I'm a bit perturbed to see anybody who would call themselves a defender of liberty think that it would. "Mustn't let the masses learn the truth, or they will get all uppity and that leads too quickly to mob rule" -- that's how I would pejoratively characterize the argument presented. What is commonly misunderstood, and what Google has misjudged, is that the arguments about whether "Free Tibet"-free Google in China is good or bad for the Chinese in the long run are to some degree beside the point. If the case were overwhelming, you might consider such things. What matters when the case of harm/good is more subtle is your message. Google's message is to collaborate rather than oppose. They are are not just doing business in China, they are being the instrument of the censorship. The argument that they are also doing some good things for the Chinese by offering better search pales compared to that. When I was asked to sell information services to South Africa in 1990 (uncensored, mind you) I asked South Africans how they felt about the sanctions the west was placing on the country. "They mostly hurt the ordinary people, not the rich and powerful," I was told. "But please do them anyway. Because then you are doing something, rather than doing nothing." -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Politech] Google is right on China, by James DeLong [fs] Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 13:17:06 -0500 From: Richard W. DeVaul <rich@private> To: declan@private CC: politech@private, "Richard W. DeVaul Ph.D." <rich@private> References: <43E23098.5050005@private> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 For Politech: I read with interest James V. DeLong's essay on Google and China. I agree with his thesis, but not his subtext. I agree that information economic development can only benefit the Chinese people. For this reason I believe that the addition of a locally hosted, voluntarily censored Google.cn is better than the current state of affairs in which Chinese language Google.com is often unavailable and heavily filtered within China. (It is perhaps worth noting that Google.cn site will not replace the Chinese language Google.com. Google is making Google.cn available in addition to the censored Chinese language Google.com. Furthermore, Google.cn will be available outside China, allowing outside observers to more easily track Chinese government censorship.) I strongly disagree with James' subtext, in which he argues that democracy is failing, and perhaps undesirable or at least unnecessary. The ills of cronyism, corruption, and the growth of entrenched interests are serious problems -- but they are the problems. Democracy, the rule of law, a free press, an independent judiciary, and robust protections for individual liberties are the solutions. There is no reason to believe that Chinese or Asian culture is any less compatible with the democratic process than American culture is compatible with authoritarianism and fascism. James makes a shallow and dangerous argument when he implicitly equates democracy with demagoguery. The foundation of Western democracy has always rested on a careful balance between the will of the people, the rule of law, and protections for minorities. A tyranny of the majority is just another form of tyranny. James' implication that a plausible remedy for one form of tyranny (demagoguery) is another (authoritarianism) is a dangerous argument, indeed. Economic freedom and opportunity are good, but they are no substitute for human rights, a democratic process, and the rule of law. Sincerely, Richard W. DeVaul Ph.D. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/> iD8DBQFD4kyRcEzhTv/Qc9oRAs1xAKCFfPZkPuRO/e7JYSdXcJJJ1h0gFwCfQ3b7 a6XA4wfPwwg1YFCTzSrZUQM= =JFFM -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Google is right on China, by James DeLong [fs] Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 14:09:40 -0500 From: David M. Brown <dmb1000@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> References: <43E23098.5050005@private> Obscene that this guy is rationalizing cooperation with vicious Chinese censorship. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Politech] Google is right on China, by James DeLong [fs] Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 15:55:03 -0500 (EST) From: Dean Anderson <dean@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: Google is Right on China > Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 15:02:10 GMT > From: The Progress & Freedom Foundation <mail@private> > To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> > > [..] > > The U.S. is increasingly in thrall to a kind of plebiscitary > democracy, often by public opinion poll,a residue of the > mindless 1960s, where every decision, right down to guilt or > innocence in a criminal case, should be decided by vote. What???? Umm, perhaps he should brush up on his civics. Or serve on a Jury. Juries in fact do _vote_ on guilt or innocence, and have done so since long, long before the 1960's. Does he mean to attack the notion that juries should be larger than 12, and so less susceptible to being "cherry picked" by the lawyers? Well, that is a point of view, and a larger jury would make better decisions by making "cherry picking" harder. However, the contraining factor that limits the size of the jury is mainly the expenses involved in having a larger number of people dedicate themselves to investing the time required to decide the facts of a case. People hate those "jury duty" notices enough as it is now, with only 12 jurors per jury. If the size of a jury were increased to say, 24, there would be many more notices, and it would take much more effort and expense to empanel a jury. Thereby slowing the Wheels of Justice. A tradeoff has to be made. But whether the tradeoff is 12, or 15, or 20, or 24 is a valid debate to have, and doesn't mean that one is "in thrall to a kind of plebiscitary democracy". Back to Google: I don't see what exactly the fuss is about regarding Google and China. China is within its rights as a government to tell Google not to import certain information to China. And I'm within my rights to criticize that, and I agree its a shame that Chinese citizens don't have those rights. If Google conducted its searchs from China, it would be filtered, and the filtered information would not be returned by Google's Chinese version. China is just saying that Google can't import its US-based Search Results Database into China without filtering it first. This is no worse than the filtering itself. China deserves criticism over its policies. But Google doesn't deserve any for following them, any more than say, Cisco deserves criticism for providing China with hardware that implements filters. Dean Anderson CEO Av8 Internet, Inc -- Av8 Internet Prepared to pay a premium for better service? www.av8.net faster, more reliable, better service 617 344 9000 _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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