AR&IO: The News You're Ignoring. (Ep. 001)

at its most philosophical this video is
about the question of is it better to do something good something morally virtuous or is it better to be fair to be fair and consistent because sometimes if we want to be fair it's going to prevent us from doing something we perceive to be virtuous if I help just one student in my classroom when I'm a teacher if I help just a few students that I select out of my hundreds of students can't I be accused of favoritism and I can say back hey I'm doing something virtuous I'm helping this student who needs the help and maybe you didn't ask for help I can't help everyone I have 300 students I just picked these few and I'm helping them yeah but is it more important to do something virtuous or is it more important to be fair my name is ISIL measured that in the background is a very realistic toy representing Socrates I'm making the transition to doing kind of a weekly political analysis show here but this is one story I didn't think would fit into a news of the week style episode the news coming out of Europe at its least philosophical is about the tough talk from French president Emmanuel macron that Europe is no longer naive Europe is no longer Zhijun and its foreign policy towards China and it's economic policy towards China Europe is now talking tough about China as never before and none of the newspaper articles I saw actually quoted analyzed or discussed the 10-point action plan that the European Union has now put forward in its some economic - geopolitical conflict with with China point one of that action plan a plan that is above all else and insult to the meaning of the word action in English end of digression 0.1 says that Europe is going to demand that China live up to some unstated standard of human rights now here's the problem there may be a sort of ethical conflict in my role as a teacher if I reach out to an help some students and not others favoritism uh but Europe is not the world's teacher Europe is not the tutor to the world in human rights or democracy and if it wanted to be it would raise real questions of ethical consistency and fairness at the same time absolutely simultaneously with this sort of toothless and vague demand that Europe has made for China to live up to some standard of human rights is a much harder to resist form of economics weijin being imposed upon cambodia the tiny poverty-stricken powerless country of Cambodia the Cambodia ought to live up to European standards of democracy now my point here is not that it would be immoral for Cambodia to become a democracy no no no not my perspective at all however I'm troubled that in the year 2019 in a transitional period when basically the world has become disaffected with neoliberalism but no particular ideology has replaced neoliberalism neoliberalism is in this long Twilight period especially since the year 2008 when nobody believes in it anymore but there there is nothing else around it's even just a set of pragmatic guiding principles for Western powers nobody knows what the game plan is well without any game plan the game being played seems to consist of bullying small powerless countries like North Korea Cuba and Cambodia while large and economically powerful company countries like Saudi Arabia and China face no consequences for what are fundamentally the same problems and again I've been a school teacher I was teaching English in a university classroom in China and I remember there was one student who was born deaf and I said to her look let's take the time I'll give you some special tutoring you obviously you were born here impaired she had some kind of surgery to improve her hearing or something I'm can meet with you and I can help you with pronouncing these words properly because you're having problems other students are not going to have never did a student stand up and object and say hey this this one student is getting special treatment for no justifiable reason and the reason for that is of course it was justifiable this was a student with special needs and I was making a special effort and everyone there recognized that you are not really going to get the same ethical justification for why the lack of democracy in Cambodia is punishable with these consequences and not the lack of democracy in China or Saudi Arabia now Europe has its own self-interest the economy of Europe is not going to suffer if Europe now takes basically punitive economic measures against Cambodia measures that will definitely make Cambodia a poorer country Cambodia will suffer consequences and Europe will not by contrast if the same sorts of measures were imposed on China if there were punitive economic measures basically obstacles to trade were created between Europe and China there would not only be economic consequences for China there would be very great consequences for Europe we can say the same of Saudi Arabia because of course the value of Saudi Arabia's oil exports the downstream impacts the economy for that are very very great indeed what would happen to Europe if they all decided that for the sake of human rights for the sake of democracy they would stop using cellular phones that were manufactured in China that might be a real and meaningful sacrifice and it might test people's commitment to the ideology of democracy and human rights if it's not worth using a slightly more expensive cellular phone what is it worth on the other hand nobody in Europe will notice if Cambodia rice disappears from the grocery stores or um you know fully manufactured goods export from Cambodia Cambodia actually does have quite a big garment industry there are people right now in Europe who are wearing winter coats that are stitched in factories in Cambodia shoes also you may not even know it if you didn't check the label but yeah some of those goods but those Goods can of course be made all over the world Europe is not gonna go cold in the middle of winter because they no longer have ski jackets that are stitched in the factories of Phnom Penh Cambodia so there's a problem here and people react to the problem as a form of hypocrisy so I have to ask punitive actions taken by Europe taken by the United States of America in the name of human rights and democracy is this moral is this virtuous in and of itself and then if it is if you think yeah you know trade policy and even maybe military intervention trade policy at the least if you think it should be used as a carrot and stick form of incentivization to try to force the whole world to measure up to certain minimum standards of democracy and human rights then the next question becomes why is it only some students in the classroom that the teacher is singling out for whipping why is it only the students who don't have rich parents who can arrange to have the teacher whipped in return yeah I'm stretching the allegory but I think you know what I mean if it is not worth it to Europe to take some risk to face some consequences of its own in imposing economic sanctions on others in the name of democracy and human rights then I would say to you Europe's ideology of democracy and human rights is nothing worth it is apparently not even worth the inconvenience of trying to get a cellular phone manufactured somewhere outside of China maybe somewhere like right here where I am right now in Taiwan