That is clearly true for China. It seems to be true for Google as well.
This is (as I understand it) a deontological, rather than a consequential, argument. So that cannot really be a 'counterargument' because it has a disjoint set of premises. You can argue that the premise for GP's argument (something along the lines of `The decision of whether to operate Google in China should depend on the aforementioned having better outcomes for chinese citizens than otherwise`) is incorrect or you can argue on the basis of his premise, but giving a different argument on a different premise (something like `the rule "don't censor political speech" should never be broken`) does not make a counterargument.
The counterargument is that suppressing truth and speech is indecent, regardless of intent. That is, the lesser wrong is still wrong. Boiling people down to utilitarian guesswork is part of the problem. It is fair to point out that the alleged decency is premised on skipping past established ethical and moral frameworks.
So let's avoid arguing over the definition of "decent" by being more specific. I claim:
It's possible for someone to endorse the position taken by Google management on this even though that person is highly intelligent, is far from indifferent to others' suffering and oppression, and habitually goes out of their way to treat others well, including others who are unlike them and far away.
I do, of course, agree that if you get to define what "decent" means then you can make it so that no decent person disagrees with you. In this case, I think that requires a definition that has built into it either an answer to the specific object-level question at hand, or else a specific position on a subtle philosophical question (consequentialism versus deontology versus virtue ethics versus whatever else) on which smart people who spend their whole lives thinking about this stuff are far from all agreeing.
There's a case to be made for providing more net information while being less than 100 percent morally pure in the process.
The choice we're confronted with isn't "uncensored vs censored". It's "more information and access vs less information and access".
It's a practical call. Chinese people are very practical, they'll figure it out.
Everyone is equal on some level just by being human. They are inherently worth treating well. That includes freedom from death and harm. But that also includes freedom of thought, conscience, and expression.
Docs, Hangouts, YouTube. All very difficult to censor. Its whack a mole, complicated by https. Information wants to be free.
Standing on principle here denies them that 99%. Are you going to make that call for them, or should they make it for themselves?
https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/
As is deliberately killing pedestrians after accidentally injuring them in order to pay a lessor death benefit instead of expensive care.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2...
Im not worried about their practicality but rather that they are culturally morally bankrupt and revealing how morally bankrupt people like Google are.
Moreover, if you post another national or racial slur, like you did here and confirmed below, we will ban you.
The government is, for sure. However, it's the legal system's fault for letting the punishment of injury outweigh the punishment of manslaughter.
Furthermore, it's not as if Google has gone out of its way get into a position of censoring search results in China. Those search results are going to be censored no matter what. What Google does, whether they operate in China or not, doesn't effect that. All that changes is how much search-engine-generated money goes to Google or doesn't.
Ban me for calling it.
At the time I posted, the comment explicitly calling all chinese people "morally bankrupt" was 6 hours old and it was not gray.
Apologies for my overheated response.
That is called ideology
"Ideology is the practice of augmenting reality."
http://mitp.nautil.us/feature/271/ideology-is-the-original-a...
I'm not familiar with this case, but if e.g. the reason is "Whatever we do, the Chinese government is going to ensure that any search results its population can see are censored. So our choice is whether they get censored Google search results or censored someone-else search results, and it's hard to see how the first of those can be worse either for us or for them" ... then I don't know whether it's actually a good reason, but it does seem like a reason that some decent and intelligent people might find convincing, even if they have a normally functioning sense of guilt.
For the avoidance of doubt, the opposite position -- "if you do this you're an accomplice to oppression, and 'if we don't do it someone else will' is a lousy response" -- also seems to me one that some decent and intelligent people might find convincing. No one on either side of this needs to be an idiot or a scoundrel. (Though I bet some people on both sides are both, because that's always true.)