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Thursday, January 05, 2006Microsoft: It's as bad as we are!When Microsoft found itself in the dock in the U.S., its lawyers fought long and hard. The organization waged a p.r. campaign including e-mail updates to its supporter with implied suggestions that we should write our representatives. In the end, it was the better for it, I think. In China, Microsoft is not being so combative. In fact, it's downright subservient. That says something about China, something about America and something about Microsoft. 1. China is a big market controlled by totalitarians who might well eject you and kill your supporters if you take too strong a stand. 2. The United States is a big market but in which consumers have a large voice and a society in which individual voters and campaign donors still hold a lot of sway. 3. Microsoft stands on principle in those regions where principles are respected, but shuts up in places where freedom, rule of law, etc, are non-existent or seriously curtailed. Conclusion: Microsoft makes products that, pace the critics, expand the individual's and business's abilility to move freely in free society. It also makes products that expand the government's ability to move arbitrarily in closed and controlled societies. The synthesis of this is that Microsoft's information products increase the power of those who control the individual's destiny. It's just a question of who has that power. Sophisticates might say that what is morally neutral is, ipso facto, morally neutral. I think, however, that a paraphrase of Burnham is in order here. Said James Burnham, institutions that are not explicitly on the right move to the left over time. I would suggest: Organizations that are not explicitly moral will eventually become complicit in immorality. Is Microsoft itself now part of the dark side? No. But is it on the side of the angels, then? Nope. Not that either. Microsoft at one point seem poised to change the world. With the latest news, it appears that its real effect is to make the world what it is only moreso. This is disappointing. But not surprising. What is surprising is the blindness that we, as a free people, often show. Many are quick to condemn Microsoft for taking down a web page. But how many are putting back any and all consumer goods with "MADE IN CHINA" stamped on them? In the first case, one voice is silenced. In the second case, we blithely take the gamble that we're making it worth the Chinese military-industrial complex's while to conscript thousands of thousands in near slavery to finance the expansion of a state that intimidates its neighbors and silences its critics. Can Microsoft possibly have done as much damage as the collective of consumers who purchase low-end electronics, toys and clothing? The actions of China's government furnish adequate evidence to suppose that it is evil. Those whose actions vis-à-vis China are not explicitly oriented toward the collapse of that evil have shown themselves willing to live with a certain amount of evil in an imperfect world. The self-justifications come quickly, but the facts are as they are. I know that I'm complicit. So is most of American consumer society. And so is Microsoft. If you want to make a stink about it, write a letter to the editor about Microsoft. But if you actually want to do something, better put down your $10 shoes and your $.25 pens and prepare for the added cost that comes with only buying goods from places where the people are free. 
posted by gbarto at 10:03 AM |
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Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
