> That's in part to make sure that companies don't do shady deals that would hurt the party, and partly so that worker protections like these can be overseen very intimately.
First part I'll completely agree with.
The second one is making me skeptical. I'd like that to be true but I am not sure why would it be. A lot of powers just focus on self-preservation and expansion of power and influence and not on the well-being of its denizens. It's one of the reasons why empires fall IMO.
> Authoritarian? Of course, but it's the only really reasonable way of making sure no big companies violate laws.
I am from Eastern Europe / the former socialism bloc and I have zero reservations about authoritarian governments. Some of them were very efficient. If greed and self-interest are not allowed to spiral out of the control the authoritarian regimes can be much more efficient than wild uncontrolled capitalism. Especially when you take into account that big capitalists lobby -- the polite word for "bribe" -- the governments to look the other way while they do egregious human rights violations.
I don't mind authoritarian. If done right, it works well (although let's all agree that historically those examples are rare; human greed is not an easy thing to contain and keep under control).
Plus as programmers I think a lot of us will agree that benevolent dictators are usually the best form of governance. Controversial I know but IMO there are good historical examples for it (like Python's leadership of Guido).
> We've seen the opposite in the US, even with some heavy handed measures things like sexual harassment continue to be prevalent among large tech companies, especially older ones. Wonder if you could strike a nice balance at some point?
IMO a balance without heavy-handed measures is impossible. The recent scandals and the general last few years of tech news in the area show two things:
- The frat boy culture is extremely resilient. The recent information from Activision/Blizzard showed clear implicit consent from the ruling executives at the time. They knew about what was going on but brushed it off as not important. Of course they will! Their huge payments are secured and it's easy to discount something as non-important when it doesn't happen to you. Furthermore, their bias (former frat boys) makes them lenient and they find excuses for the other frat boys easily.
- Companies don't speak any other language except heavy regulation and huge fines. Absolutely everything else is ignored and is written off as an acceptable risk and/or a cost of doing business. Google fined $500M by the EU? Meh, they make like $15 billion a year, that fine is 3.33% of that and plus I bet they don't have to pay it all in one installment. In the meantime their practices net them those huge revenues so again, they write off the $500M as a cost of doing business and continue as if nothing happened. Same goes for Apple's settled class action lawsuits, or Facebook's fines etc.
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My point here mostly is: I'd like to have balance as well but IMO the companies in the West have had a free reign with practically zero repercussions for any shady practices, for way too long, and they are confident they'll do it until forever. Somebody has to rudely rid them of this illusion. A lot of things are at stake, one of the biggest of which is the small detail of how much coastal cities will be underwater in 50-100 years if those huge players aren't hit in the gut sooner rather than later.
In China yes, in the rest of the world -- no. :(
> That's in part to make sure that companies don't do shady deals that would hurt the party, and partly so that worker protections like these can be overseen very intimately.
First part I'll completely agree with.
The second one is making me skeptical. I'd like that to be true but I am not sure why would it be. A lot of powers just focus on self-preservation and expansion of power and influence and not on the well-being of its denizens. It's one of the reasons why empires fall IMO.
> Authoritarian? Of course, but it's the only really reasonable way of making sure no big companies violate laws.
I am from Eastern Europe / the former socialism bloc and I have zero reservations about authoritarian governments. Some of them were very efficient. If greed and self-interest are not allowed to spiral out of the control the authoritarian regimes can be much more efficient than wild uncontrolled capitalism. Especially when you take into account that big capitalists lobby -- the polite word for "bribe" -- the governments to look the other way while they do egregious human rights violations.
I don't mind authoritarian. If done right, it works well (although let's all agree that historically those examples are rare; human greed is not an easy thing to contain and keep under control).
Plus as programmers I think a lot of us will agree that benevolent dictators are usually the best form of governance. Controversial I know but IMO there are good historical examples for it (like Python's leadership of Guido).
> We've seen the opposite in the US, even with some heavy handed measures things like sexual harassment continue to be prevalent among large tech companies, especially older ones. Wonder if you could strike a nice balance at some point?
IMO a balance without heavy-handed measures is impossible. The recent scandals and the general last few years of tech news in the area show two things:
- The frat boy culture is extremely resilient. The recent information from Activision/Blizzard showed clear implicit consent from the ruling executives at the time. They knew about what was going on but brushed it off as not important. Of course they will! Their huge payments are secured and it's easy to discount something as non-important when it doesn't happen to you. Furthermore, their bias (former frat boys) makes them lenient and they find excuses for the other frat boys easily.
- Companies don't speak any other language except heavy regulation and huge fines. Absolutely everything else is ignored and is written off as an acceptable risk and/or a cost of doing business. Google fined $500M by the EU? Meh, they make like $15 billion a year, that fine is 3.33% of that and plus I bet they don't have to pay it all in one installment. In the meantime their practices net them those huge revenues so again, they write off the $500M as a cost of doing business and continue as if nothing happened. Same goes for Apple's settled class action lawsuits, or Facebook's fines etc.
---
My point here mostly is: I'd like to have balance as well but IMO the companies in the West have had a free reign with practically zero repercussions for any shady practices, for way too long, and they are confident they'll do it until forever. Somebody has to rudely rid them of this illusion. A lot of things are at stake, one of the biggest of which is the small detail of how much coastal cities will be underwater in 50-100 years if those huge players aren't hit in the gut sooner rather than later.