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Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

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Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#171

Post by m_fayer »

mad_tortoise wrote: post #147
m_fayer wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments are what happen when a group of people live in a community too large and complicated to be governed by an ad-hoc group of elders talking it out. Governments are what happen when humans want to trade in an organized fashion. Governments are what happen when people don't want to be in a constant state of conflict, inter and intra group. Governments are what happen if your community wants to live by the rule…

Government is only inevitable, only if you believe in these sets of prerequisites for constructing a government. These all can be managed without government should the people want it. It's called anarchy, not the neo-modern destructive type, but the real ideology actually sets this out very well, that government is not needed. It is to everyone's own opinion whether or not you need government and what each of us want…

While I haven't read the actual scholarly anarchist stuff, I hung out with some bookish lefty radicals in my college years and early 20s. What I saw then was a lot of attempts at alternative and non-hierarchical forms of organization, all of which seemed to evolve into something that could fairly be called government, if these attempts got far enough before falling apart.

> These all can be managed without government should the people want it

You say this as if the predictions of a social theory are as reliable as those of Newtonian physics. I don't think they are. And because I know of no historical example of an industrialized society functioning sustainably without a government, I tend to doubt a theory that says it's possible. Because if it was, you would think somewhere, somehow, it would have been successful already.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#173

Post by humanrebar »

6t6t6t6 wrote: post #59
jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

Any entity with enough power, may use this power to do evil. It can be a government or a corporation. Al least, in our democracies, you can decide the government with your vote.

> Al least, in our democracies, you can decide the government with your vote.

Though that ability is diluted as we make every little thing a national issue.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#174

Post by newscracker »

I for one am glad that at least some employees of companies like Google and Microsoft are taking ethical stances for the greater good. A job cannot be seen as just something that provides some personal satisfaction and puts food on the table. There are lines that, when crossed, have larger implications for a large population and how we as humankind want the world to be. Where there's more clarity on certain topics, taking a strong stance is the right thing to do!

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#175

Post by TulliusCicero »

jgaa wrote: post #146
TulliusCicero wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps GP is an anarchist and doesn't want governments or corporations.

No, I think both governments and corporations can be a good thing - if they behave ethically and the people all the way from the top to the ones carrying out policies - are accountable for their actions. Example: If a border-patrol officer chose to follow orders and take an infant from her mother - because it's policy, he should be liable to criminal prosecution for breaking domestic and international law. Like any s…

> I think both governments and corporations can be a good thing

> Governments will always do evil.

> they are by nature evil.

Please either make up your mind or use less misleading language in the future. You made a strong, controversial assertion, which then turned out to be a pretty mundane belief upon challenge.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#176

Post by ashleyn »

coliveira wrote: post #21
everdev wrote: post #9

As I get older, it's becoming clear how intertwined our morality is with our politics. And how that bleeds into business, sports, religion, etc. It's nice to think of aspects of life that should be free from politics, but in reality that seems hard to achieve.

The idea that one can live outside of politics comes either from naiveté or from tacit support for the existing status quo. The later option is the most common, people just figure that they don't want to put the effort needed to change the system and at the same time want to deny the morality of such decision.

There's been a sea change in America the past 25 years or so that made politics more important: the importance of nonwhite and nonchristian opinions and the political power to give them teeth.

America is now a majority-minority country in many cities. If this had happened 25 years ago, it wouldn't have made the news, and nobody would really care about who Microsoft worked with unless it affected white christians, who were viewed as the stand-in for a typical "American."

Today, black and hispanic and queer opinions do matter. When their concerns are taken seriously for the first time, those unaffected by it like to mope about how "everything is now political". Everything is now political because you're not allowed to sweep shit under the rug anymore and pretend it doesn't impact "real" Americans.

Most people do not want to see atrocities, and when they are brought to their attention they provoke a visceral reaction that demands justice. This is partly why white populism is now a bigger thing; we've crossed a sort of rubicon where you can't ignore issues anymore: they're real, and you either come out against them or you double-down on being evil. There's no more indifference in a world where everyone now counts and has the political power to make it so.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#177

Post by cr1895 »

sheepmullet wrote: post #107
dagmx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussion involves multiple views not multiple sides. Not every discussion needs to be adversarial or black and white. Discussions can be constructive with all members on the same side talking about ideas . Most development discussions that happen daily are just that, constructive with people throwing ideas around. For example if we are discussing the best design pattern in a c++ API , and someone comes in and says…

> but I think anyone arguing for the detainment of children is not adding anything of value to the discussion or humanity and is worthy of being disregarded with reason. I think it is a sensible policy. Can you articulate why you think it is any worse than child services putting a kid into foster care when the parents go to jail for any other crime? Illegally immigrating to the US is a serious crime but you can't jai…

>Illegally immigrating to the US is a serious crime

In the first instance it is a misdemeanor offence.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#178

Post by deegles »

weiming wrote: post #153
allenz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When ICE violates human rights, it's no longer a free speech issue. Microsoft shouldn't work with ICE in the same way that banks shouldn't work with sanctioned oligarchs.

ELI5 what human rights is ICE violating in this case? Is due process not being followed?

Separating children from parents causes permanent changes to a developing brain due to toxic amounts of stress. It’s torture.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#179

Post by nmeofthestate »

macspoofing wrote: post #12

>part of a backlash against the agency’s policy of separating children from their families at the U.S. border. Is that a policy that ICE can simply drop?

I believe it is a consequence of Trump's push to enforcing border controls with the existing legislation. It requires illegal immigrants to be sent to federal jail until their case is looked at, and kids can't legally go with you to jail (obviously).

If they want to enforce the border they will need to put in place a less inhuman/bad looking system. In the past presumably the way round this was to not enforce the legislation - let people in?

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#180

Post by jobigoud »

jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

There is a typo in the license text at the first instance of "source code", it is written "sorce".
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