Because really, when there’s a profit to be made, American companies are there to fill a “need”, right?
I hope every HN reader has the awareness and moral strength to resist, where the corporations are unable, the next time such à job comes.
I have literally never seen anyone here argue that "murder and genocide isn't morally wrong if it is legally right".
Are you sure you aren't equivocating "I don't support $FOO political position" with "I support murder and genocide"?
Because I have seen a number of people argue that some aspect of their personal moral code, which isn't currently written into law, should be written into law and enforced on the rest of the people who don't have that moral code.
I was discussing the trolley problem with a lawyer a few years ago, and her conclusion to the dilemma, no joke, was literally "It depends if I would be legally culpable in the country I'm in." Which is a very legalistic, and utterly amoral answer.
> Another user believed that they should base the decisions of who to save on the cultural mores, history, and laws of the region where they are sold.
This brings up a different issue: the product will then be considered amoral in the particular region that it is deployed in. That's the problem with using "morals" as a yardstick - it's too subjective because every culture has their own set of morals, and these morals change over time anyway.
For a product sold in multiple regions, it makes sense to follow the cultural mores of that region. If you don't like their morals, don't do business with them.
Also that quote from the article, from IMB's spokesman:
"We are a technology company, we are not historians."
That's fucking rich. Imagine Bayer saying the same when questioned if their company used to make Zyklon B.
The fascinating part of the deal of IBM with Nazi Germany is that it boils down to _tracking_of_individuals_. Their personal profile, location, capabilities, health status.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
I don’t really see what’s surprising about any of this. The implication seems to be that the US directors of IBM were supposed to do something about it, but I’m not sure what.
Of course if some of these contracts for the concentration camps and such were tendered during peacetime, and this was known and it was possible for the US operation to exercise oversight, that would be incredibly damning.
We can argue about the scale of involvement and its meaning, but if you're not just speculating you should mention a source.
I don’t think anyone is disputing that — but every thing Google is doing is the result of fallible humans acting in pursuit of profit.
It doesn’t matter who or when. What matters is that people put aside their ethics in pursuit of profits. I think that needs to end.
</soapbox>