Humiliating Consequences

One of my favorite themes has been that willful ignorance of the subtleties of the social world can lead to consequences that are not only unanticipated but may also be downright unpleasant. This is particularly the case when a technology provides an excuse for "hiding" within the safe confines of the objective world without realizing that this is no more effective than trying to lock out that threat of the Red Death dreamt up by Edgar Allan Poe. However, like Poe's plague, those consequences inevitably penetrate our hiding places and confront us with an ugly wrath. Today that wrath was exercised by Representative (and concentration camp survivor) Tom Lantos, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and it was directed as Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan of Yahoo!, Incorporated. In this case those subtleties of the social world had to do with how Yahoo! handled a request from the Chinese government to provide information about one of their subscribers, Shi Tao, who happened to be using the Internet (accessed through a Yahoo! portal) for pro-democracy activities considered criminal by the Chinese government. Yahoo! provided the information, Shi Tao was sentenced to ten years in prison, and Lantos was mightily offended. In an impassioned voice reminiscent of Joseph Welch asking Senator Joseph McCarthy if he had any "sense of decency," Lantos declared to Yang and Callahan, "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies."

Welch's accusation turned out to be a tipping point that marked the beginning of the end of a reign of terror that McCarthy had imposed from his seat in the Senate. Ultimately, McCarthy was censured by his colleagues and then faded relatively quickly into obscurity and then death. Unfortunately, however high his moral ground may be, Lantos is unlikely to have such a tipping-point effect. The sad truth is that China has become such a dominant power that it will always get what it wants, usually by speaking softly and carrying a big stick (having learned how to pick and choose the most effective American strategies). Whatever moral principles may be at stake, there is probably a broad consensus that Yahoo!'s actions were normative for the way business is conducted today; but those norms are justified by arguments that are restricted to the objective world. In that objective world public humiliation in the House of Representatives may be an acceptable price to pay for a decision that "seemed acceptable at the time." In other words, as powerful as Lantos' rhetoric was, it is likely to have little impact on normative practices in either China or Yahoo!, both of which are institutions for which economic growth is the only legitimate issue. Nevertheless, Lantos at least had an opportunity to wield his own big stick; and I, for one, was glad to see him do so.