"What would Picard do?" facing a conflict between the Prime Directive and the First Amendment? What do you do when to honor one value you have to betray another?

The other day I read in the Murky some Google exec seemingly issuing a veiled plea for help from the government. He said something to the effect that the 90-day logic of business and competition, and the mindless pressure from Wall Street to make a profit at any cost leaves them very little discretion in the matter. He felt that only government could take the long view and make it safe for Google and the others to do the right thing, by passing laws that would affect all competitors equally and not disadvantage anybody for not being evil.

It reminds me of the useful role of the government in breaking the HDTV deadlock. Everybody said they wanted HDTV, but nobody wanted to go first. Classic three-sided chicken-and-egg problem: Broadcasters won't upgrade their facilities before consumers bought the receivers, consumers won't buy receivers without signals to receive, and the content providers wouldn't provide highdef content until the other two had worked it out. It finally took Congress stepping in and just ordering everybody to convert to break the stalemate.

So I have this suspicion that Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and the others would actually welcome government regulation that gave them some cover to say no to China. Every business that announces it's entering the Chinese market talks about the potential for reform as Western business introduces Western values and culture, but so far China's been able to have its cake and eat it too. Marx was right: A capitalist will happily sell you the rope to hang him.

Time for that to end. I say the First Amendment trumps the Prime Directive. If China won't straighten up, eff 'em, let 'em develop their own technology base. Which is to say that the First and the Prime aren't actually incompatible: We're already interfering with their cultural development by supplying technology that they're misusing, by our lights, so the proper thing to do is to stop interfering.

Let's see China develop an indigenous rice-based semiconductor industry, or a telecom network based on silk threads.