Hey guys, welcome to our sixth and last blog already. America is messed up! This is our own opinion, and of course we cannot make this claim unjustified, so let us explain why we feel this way. First off, we do not hate the USA, quite the opposite actually. We have all been in the states a number of times, some of Lukas’ best friends come from the US and we really hope we still get to go over to the US regularly in the future. We watched a TED-talk by Jennifer Granick about the US government spying on its people (Granick, 2017). In her presentation, she starts off at a point of time that she is not used to. She talks about Martin Luther King Jr. and his “I have a dream” speech, which to this day resonates through the minds of countless people, making an impact on their lives, but she points out King was put under surveillance because J. Edgar Hoover thought he was plotting something. We are in no way saying what resulted from this was right or that Hoover had the right to have King under surveillance, but those were different times. People’s mindsets were different. The majority of people were okay with what was going on and that does not change just because someone today thinks what happened was wrong. Is surveillance wrong? No. Is it misused? Yes. Does that bother us? Hell no. Unless it impacts us. We are pretty sure most Americans have no problem with potential ISIS members being surveilled. And most Americans don’t even know about most of the surveillance happening. But because all of a sudden, the government is spying on their own people in their home country, things are different? A study released by CNN in 2018 shows that the US has 57 times more school shootings than other major industrialized nations combined. They’ve had 288 as opposed to 5 in Germany, Canada, France, Japan, Italy and the UK combined (Grabow & Rose, 2018).
These numbers exist and yet some Americans believe there is nothing wrong with it. If these school shootings could be prevented by surveilling troubled youth with access to firearms, then we would say go for it! Obviously there need to be rules for it, and not everything should be surveilled, but 288 shooting is not acceptable. Granick means that surveillance is the collection of private and sensitive data, nobody is supposed to see. She thinks surveillance is a crime but is also essential to fight crime. So basically, aiding surveillance is good but snooping around in her business, considering there is no cause to do so, is wrong. Surveillance doesn’t need to scan your computer every time you upload a dirty picture, Jennifer, it is meant to show potential threats. Looking into our private data, collecting that and using it against us without cause is wrong I get that, but speed cameras have been tracking our license plates for a while now, and if that data shows that someone is a danger to others, I’m happy that it’s been collected. So to conclude, Americans want everything done to prevent bad things from happening, but do not want to be part of this “everything” as it imposes rules to their freedom.
This is basically just a rant about why Americans confuse us more times than we would like, by doing things abnormal to me and then demanding to be exempted when someone shines a light on that abnormal behavior. Our ethics course was also about the Confucian ethical system used in China, and the impact this has on businesses. What we talked about is basically just that because people want to make use of cheap labor and resources in China, they need to expose their company to their values. We think that is a great way to see it. A company should not be able to operate in a country without getting influenced by the value system and culture at least a little bit. The companies should welcome the differences as a means to integrate workers from their headquarters in whatever country it is based, and the people employed in China. Confucianism provides a general principle of love for one’s fellow human beings and therefore emphasizes the good values in human beings and the relationships between them. This can lead to a great company climate as the respect between workers is something highly values under Confucianism and will therefore more likely to be source of motivation rather than monetary values. This goes hand in hand with western value systems, as companies tend to want intrinsic motivation to be dominant over extrinsic motivation for their workers. If companies let other value systems such as Confucianism influence their working ways, they might better their company in itself and learn something for the future. The best part of this is, accepting the different systems and learning from them does not mean fully letting it control the firm or even having to conform to those systems. Nobody forces the companies surrounded by different cultures to adapt, but it can be beneficial.
Watch Jennifer Granick’s TED Talk via the following link: https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_granick_how_the_us_government_spies_on_people_who_protest_including_you#t-847403
Picture retrieved from: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/4855512081960181/
