“Okay, I’m going to go real simple here. Yahoo is not incorporated to fix China. I’m sorry. It wasn’t incorporated to fix China.”
Part of new CEO Carol Bartz’ response in the June 25th annual Yahoo! shareholders meeting to the following two questions presented to her by Amnesty International USA’s Tony Cruz:
1. Since 2006, what concrete steps has Yahoo taken to address the problem of Internet censorship in China?
2. Will you publicly support the Global Online Freedom Act; legislation that would give you the power to fight the Chinese government?
The full reply by Carol Bartz is below:
Okay, I’m going to go real simple here. Yahoo is not incorporated to fix China. I’m sorry. It wasn’t incorporated to fix China. It was incorporated to give people a free flow of information. Ten years ago the company made a mistake but you can’t hold us up as the bad boy forever. We have worked better, harder, faster than most companies to respect human rights and to try and make a difference. But it is not our job to fix the Chinese government. It’s that simple. We will respect human rights, we will do what’s right, but we’re not going to take on every government in the world as our mandate. That’s not the mandate that the shareholders gave us.
Was there ever a major corproation that wasn’t amoral? You can’t make big money for shareholders and battle dragons like a St. George at the same time. Bartz was hired by the Yahoo! board to replace the money-losing founder/CEO. She’s got a huge rep in the tech world as a “straight-shooter” who can put down any challenge. So no one should be shocked or surprised by Bartz’ straight-from-the-hip response to AI. She’s at Yahoo! to repair the damage and loss confidence caused by Yang, and win back the lost market share. Period.
Justified or not in this case, this calls to mind for me the following excerpt from the prescient film Network (1976). The excerpt occurs after a news anchor (Howard Beale), who goes mad with the news he has to report day in and day out, tells his viewers to open their windows and shout that they’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore (in response to an impending buy-out of his already large company by a Saudi-Arabian conglomerate). The following excerpt is spoken to the unhinged anchor by Arthur Jensen, the network’s parent company chairman:
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU…WILL…ATONE!
“Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those *are* the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.” (obtained from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/quotes — some other great quotes there too)
Interesting to me also how, despite this being spoken in sinister environs in the film (a dark board room) and in a satirical fashion, and despite how the collusion or complicity of large corporations with governments is indeed a frightening concern, a few points in this diatribe are, I think, indeed valid and still seen as negative or under-appreciated by the masses (the first is a problem itself often most driven by the masses):
1) The frightening and dangerous nature of rabid nationalism, and the positive effects of true unity-in-diversity for the world
2) The benefits of (even legally mandated) partial employee ownership/profit sharing.
3) The potential benefits of a world currency, free trade, etc., when implemented in due course and with due concerns addressed
Nevertheless, the scene is quite potent in evoking the sense that corporations can do great evil when unrestrained. It’s just sad that large portions of the film which at the time were ironic (not only about corporations’ own greed, but their pandering to the baser nature of the masses), have now become so commonplace that many are now resigned to them.