I thought this was an amusing call to arms. And a very dangerous indeed call to arms as well:
Chen Guangcheng, the Chinese dissident whose flight to the U.S. in April roiled U.S.-China relations, said iPhone-maker Apple Inc. (AAPL) should take a more outspoken role criticizing China for its one-child policy.
Apple, which hires manufacturers to assemble products such as the iPhone and iPad in China, can help stop forced abortions and other coercive population control measures, Chen said in an interview this week. The blind human-rights activist is betting that Apple’s presence in China and the popularity of its products there will help draw attention to the issue.
“Apple in China should take a very active role,” Chen said. “There’s a huge social responsibility for these international corporations like Apple.”
I am, to say the least, deeply unconvinced here. I am at heart a Friedmanite, the job of a company is to make the maximum legal profit that it can for the benefit of its shareholders. I'm entirely uncomfortable with the very idea of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). But leave aside my prejudices for a moment and think what is actually being urged upon Apple here.
That they should deliberately, with malice aforethought, flout the laws of a country in which they operate. That doesn't sound like a great way to prepare the ground for an expansion of your business really.
But there's more to it than this. I recall, just a few weeks back, a certain uproar in the United States when it turned out that Standard Chartered had been, or at least was accused of having, deliberately flouting the law of the United States on handling banking transfers for Iranian customers. The calls for the bank to lose its New York banking license were deafening.
So why is it OK to urge a multinational to flout the laws of one country while being outraged if a multinational flouts the laws of another? Surely it cannot just be based upon whether you agree or not with the laws being flouted: there is such a thing as the rule of law after all.
And take it even further towards its logical conclusion. Apple is being urged, as a company, a corporate person, to take actions to change the laws of a country. All in the name of that Corporate Social Responsibility. But I have a very strong feeling that there would be outrage if a US corporation were to try and do the same in the US. If, say, an energy trading company like Enron were to try and fix the laws governing energy trading. Or if banks were found to be lobbying to change the laws on how banks were regulated. Indeed, I think there is outrage in certain quarters about such things, isn't there?
Which brings us back to what I consider the real problem with CSR itself. If it's a retailer shipping some free goods to a local charity then there's not much in it either way. But as soon as it morphs into demanding that a corporation campaign against a law you think is a bad one, well, where does this stop? Why cannot another corporation decide to campaign in favour of a law you think a bad one, or against one you think is a good one?
Getting Apple to campaign against the one child policy might seem like a no brainer. But once you've argued for that there is no argument against Phillip Morris campaigning against tobacco controls, is there? For you cannot limit peoples' or organisations' political freedoms only to goals you approve of. That's not what freedom means at all, is it?
