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Should an American company be charged for utilizing a military dictatorship in a Third World country to further its own ends? Recently it has been reported that Shell Oil "aided and abetted" militant groups in Nigeria to violently suppress non-violent opposition to oil drilling activities in Nigeria. Do Objectivists believe that Shell has a moral right to drill oil there? If so, does that morally justify funding armed gangs to murder civilians who peacefully oppose Shell's oil drilling activities?
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Objectivists view all rights violations the same: they're evil. Rand laid out the principle in "Galt's Speech":
Please see the rest of the passage at the link above for an excellent discussion. This is a central idea in Objectivism -- for example, she reiterated it in her seminal article "The Objectivist Ethics":
And she explained the connection of initiating physical force to violating rights in several places, like "The Nature of Government":
Please follow the links above for further discussion and references. I think we are agreed on the evil nature of violating the rights of others. That said, how should we view, and more importantly punish these violations when they are perpetrated by a corporation, not upon fellow citizens of a developed country but upon the natives of, say a 3rd world country? This is what I believe the questioner was asking. Simply accepting that it is evil and not doing anything seems morally puzzling. I don't think it matters whether the victim is 1st-world or 20th-world. If someone is violating rights in our jurisdiction (which includes from in the case of cross-jurisdictional crime), then a proper government should prosecute them here. (So this is prosecuting a crime, not a war. Our government should not be sending soldiers and bombs or whatever into other jurisdictions unless we're at war with that place.) So, for clarity, when USA-based corporations violate rights in say, Mozambique, would anyone be punished if the Mozambique government is corrupt and turns a blind eye to violations? This is not some fanciful example, it is taken from reality. Your answer seems to indicate that they should be prosecuted here ? If so, under what statutes would we do so? If the statutes do not exist, we certainly can add them. I said what I thought a proper government should do. What our government can/will do is an entirely different question... ;^) If you believe what Shell is doing is wrong--and it is--don't buy gas from them. Don't support them. In fact, try to make as many people aware of what they're doing, so as to spread the news over to the media, who would and should report on it. Mass attention of an activity like that committed by a corporation is bad news for them. Remember that a corporation is not a person, and so criminal punishment of the corporation itself is problematic. Fines can be levied against the corporation, but if we are talking about prosecution for murder, then it is the actual people responsible for the murder who need to be prosecuted. This could include, of course, more than just those who pulled the trigger---perhaps also those who authorized or knowingly facilitated the murder, which could include, for example, certain corporate executives. Culpability, however, would have to be proven individually.
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I asked a question that somewhat reads on this one here: http://bit.ly/RATAEt There is also another news item here on this topic: http://bit.ly/OXdMRu I do think the question of how an advanced industrial culture deals with undeveloped cultures is important and while I got some very good answers, This is still an open question for me. Who could/should/would enforce law against a corporation hailing from an advanced culture like the UK when it violates the rights of people in say Mozambique? Clearly short-term profits are to be had by dumping pollutants etc. and it happens every day.