Time to speed up my plans to leave the UK

[kentonio]

Forcing companies to list how many of their workers are foreign is ****ing disgusting, and exactly the kind of thing a fascist government would do. It has not a damn thing to do with transparency, its about trying to denegrate foreigners and make a play for the votes of the stupid and bigoted.

[Aeson]

It is about transparency, just a kind you don't like.

[kentonio]

Bull****, its transparency in the same way as making all Jews wear a yellow star was 'transparency'. That kind of pedantry serves only to attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

[Main_Brain]

A working Free Market in an economic sense implies fully informed consumers.
Which don't exist. So 'forcing' companies to release consumer-relevant data (ie Genmods) is arguably correct.

What it does ignore is that outside of hipster/green-groups the price or quality are the deciding factors in foodshopping, not ethical/paranoia ones.
The assumption such labelling would need to substitutions is premise which fails to see consumer realities and has no 'corrective' impact.

[dannubis]

On the contrary, it is indeed the free market. As long as there are no official penalties advocacy and making sure data is available to the public is very much a part of the free market.

Aren't you one of those people that are vehemently opposed to services like steam because they ask you for inormation that is not relevant to the process of you buying and playing a game?

[C0ckney]

the policy, unsurprisingly, has already been dropped.

[C0ckney]

This is somewhat like saying it's reasonable to require big labels on every GMO food. The act of labeling is itself a penalty and attaches stigma in any population accustomed to a modern state.

that is perfectly reasonable, though. consumers should have as much information as possible to make informed choices.

[Elok]

that is perfectly reasonable, though. consumers should have as much information as possible to make informed choices.

That would make sense with a species which always took the trouble to make dispassionate, evidence-based decisions. Our species, however, is not always like that, particularly not in societies which are used to seeing warning labels on dangerous things. If you put a label on a steak that said, "THIS STEAK CONTAINS ADENOSINE TRIPHOSPHATE," roughly an eighth would look up WTF adenosine triphosphate is, decide it was harmless, and buy it anyway. Another eighth would already know that ATP is not dangerous, shake their heads at the stupid label, and buy it just to spite the label *******s. Fully half of them would conclude that ATP was some manner of preservative or some such, but buy it or the steak without the label based on which was cheaper or looked tastier, because **** it. The remaining quarter would decide to play it safe and not buy the steak, because warning labels are usually on things like cigarettes and booze which are bad and scary. That quarter adds up to a lot of lost business.

Likewise the act of saying "THIS COMPANY HIRES A LOT OF FOREIGNERS" implies a moral judgment about said companies, and in this case is obviously designed to shame them. Not start a conversation, or get people digging for information to become better-educated citizens, shame them. It's not right to pretend that they're "just providing information," because (particularly with controversial issues) the very act of providing information is not value-neutral. It's like "teaching the controversy" about evolution.

[C0ckney]

i'm not defending the 'this company hires a lot of foreigners', which is a stupid idea (though of course the whole 'policy' was just a little dog whistling designed to get a few positive headlines in the nasty press and has now been abandoned), but rather the labeling of GM food.

i don't think the analogy you used is a very good one. no one cares about ATP; many people, however, care about GM food. they may be foolish or wrong or whatever, but they should have the right to know. it is for the purveyors of GM food to convince people to buy it. i don't see why consumers should be denied information that they want for the benefit of those companies.

[Elok]

If people like Ben & Jerry's want to put NO GMO in six-inch letters on all their tubs, I'm fine with that. It's requiring people who do use GMOs to advertise that--in the absence of any evidence that it makes a difference--that irks me, because there are plenty of people who don't even know about the controversy but will assume GMOs are something dangerous purely because there is a warning label.

This is distinct from my opinions on the general creepiness of modern agribusiness.

[Bereta_Eder]

Actually I'd like to propose a word change.

Tropopoiimeno amylo means modified wheat and can be found on some cheap ass biscuits.

I propose they use its real name Metalagmeno amylo which means genetically mutated wheat.


Now about how many stars of david a company has, nope that doesn't interest me.

[Egbert]

i don't see why consumers should be denied information that they want for the benefit of those companies.

I couldn't agree more.

[Aeson]

Bull****, its transparency in the same way as making all Jews wear a yellow star was 'transparency'.

Both are transparency. Transparency is making things clear. While making it clear who was a Jew was part of a horrible atrocity ... making it clear which foods are grown which way is not. Making it clear which businesses have specific business practices is more towards the GMO example than the holocaust. Now if your country starts forcing foreigners to wear visible marking, then you're moving towards the other end of the spectrum.

More importantly, you don't defeat bigotry by hiding away from it, acting ashamed of something that isn't shameful. You stand up to it, stand up for what's right.

[Dinner]

Aren't you one of those people that are vehemently opposed to services like steam because they ask you for inormation that is not relevant to the process of you buying and playing a game?

I don't like steam and will always try to find alternatives. That said, wrt tge proposed policy, the government would take no action and instead is only requiring the public be allowed access to information. If the public decides to act on that information then you had better believe that is very much part of the free market.

My whole poibt was that you were completely wrong when you claimed it was not part of the free market.

[dannubis]

I don't like steam and will always try to find alternatives. That said, wrt tge proposed policy, the government would take no action and instead is only requiring the public be allowed access to information. If the public decides to act on that information then you had better believe that is very much part of the free market.

My whole poibt was that you were completely wrong when you claimed it was not part of the free market.

So, are you saying we should release everybody's medical information to the public?
Because, you know, if someone were to have HIV, I would want to know about it, because I use the laptop that he/she helped designing...