… and business is good?
I’ve never been too much a fan of online auction places like eBay because I always disliked the idea of “the internet” being reduced to just another vast shopping mall – as if there aren’t enough of those out there in the “real world”. However, by now I am a little more encouraged to stick with this attitude, reading that ebay in China, our most favorite growing economy right now, even goes a little further by allowing auctions of live animals, no matter whether used just as “pets” or as cheap suppliers of meat and/or fur:
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This and other atrocities—such as skinning conscious dogs and cats for their fur, which is then exported to the West—is legal and accepted in China because it has no animal protection laws. In the U.S., however, dog and cat fur is prohibited by federal law, as is keeping dogs and cats in conditions such as those shown on the pages of some eBay sellers.
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Feel free to send an online mail to eBay here, even though I think it won’t help too much… By now, I see people in Western europe merrily buying iPods manufactured in Chinese sweatshops, I see a company like Google obeying to censorship demands there, and I know that, no matter what we’re talking about, China probably is likely to dictate the way this world will look like, in the future – because they’re up to be the worlds biggest economies, and because “Western countries” won’t think twice selling all their self-made social, moral, ethical values to commercial success over there.