501–510 of 708 posts
God forbid I have some sort of say in how my labor is used.
But you are also being compensated for them having the right to use the product of your labor as they see fit.
Implicitly, and probably explicitly in any decent work contract, is that they are the sole owners of the product of your labor and get to decide how it is used.
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A bit of Slippery Slope combined with Strawman fallacy here.
It's some great irony that two minutes before you posted this, a man of straw himself appeared and agreed with the statement. I don't think you can call something a strawman if the idea seems to actually have wide support.
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> Why don't the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees? Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to? Why is ICE the only company that they object to? Why do some causes get their favor and not others? Wokeness and the recent trend of trying to cancel anything that doesn't align within a narrow spectrum of p…
You are defending literal slave labor. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/us/immigrant-detention-forced...
The vast majority of 'bad labour practices' in the US stem from employment of illegal aliens.
Consider if those migrants were 'released from detention' they'd be employed illegally somewhere at sub-legal wages, sub-legal conditions, no unions, no complaints, no healthcare etc. etc..
Companies employ illegal labour largely because they can cheat on a variety of labour practices not because 'they can't find the talent'.
This creates a toxic effect whereby those trying to 'play by the rules' can be put out of business by lower margin competitors and are forced into to doing this. There are many jobs that Americans would in fact do if wages and conditions were above bar.
The primary driver of illegal migrant is jobs - when the economy booms, many more people enter illegally. When it's rough, there's a downturn.
It would be much more simple and humane to simply go after the employment of illegal aliens on the basis of humanitarian grounds alone and there's ample ways to do this.
FYI this likely would not affect the migrant of true refugees as much, ergo, you have a border system a little more focused on those in need, and less focused on economic migrants.
GitHub is a large business in a fairly politically secular area (software) - they should be able to support anything the US government does aside from possibly weapon systems or military activities. The place for employees to get upset is at the ballot box, protest etc. etc..
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This is a false dicothomy The actual (IMO correct) position most of these people share is the following two points at once: - businesses should have a moral position, since businesses are just a set of people - that moral position should be right! This isn’t rocket science! Stuff like “don’t support a business doing bad stuff” and “support businesses doing good stuff” is just really basic consumer activism. There’s n…
> - that moral position should be right You do realise that what this actually means is "this person agrees with me"
This is the whole point of everything. If you believe strongly in a thing, then you should fight for it. And other people in society will judge you for it (rightly so!)
So yeah, you decide that you care enough about "sanctity of marriage" so you decide to not sell cakes. So everyone who disagrees with you boycotts your business. Others believe that sexual orientation is such an important thing that they make it illegal for you to do this! This is how stuff happens!
There isn't some sort of rules-based pre-judgement for this sort of stuff. It gets played out over time. And you're responsible for your decisions in this front.
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There's also been a noted change in how people handle things thrown at them that make them uncomfortable. A little over a decade ago universities started to notice that students, when presented with something they didn't agree with, would attack the messenger in an attempt to discredit what they were communicating. There has been a shift in how people interact. Studies have found an increase in narcissism [1] and a d…
People are tired of being treated like garbage. They're tired of seeing their peers murdered for being black/gay/etc. They're tired of stagnant wages. >A little over a decade ago universities started to notice that students, when presented with something they didn't agree with, would attack the messenger in an attempt to discredit what they were communicating. 58% of Americans blamed the students for the shootings at…
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ICE is getting raked over the coals in the court of public opinion because they don't have the funding nor the manpower to deal with 100k people coming over the border each month. Many asylum seekers are just exploiting the asylum system with invalid cases as economic migrants to delay the process so they don't get sent back home. All the while congress hasn't done much at all to fix the obvious problems in the law (…
Prior world war II the illegal immigration from Mexico was a genuine issue for America. DO you want to know how they stopped illegal immigration cold? They simply fined any business or employer who employed them severely. The problem quickly resolved itself without having to lock people up. It is entirely possible to curtail the number of people coming here once there is NO work or services for them. It works, and we…
Trump is kind of a hypocrite on this point: he happily hires illegal labour because it's cheap, but then wants to put up walls politically.
FYI I believe that illegal labour is a major source of economic inequality as well: it hurts the working class the most, and the gains go to capital and middle class.
I question how much an employee should concern him/herself with how a product is used once it's created. You have to let certain control go after a point. Or if your product is open to everyone, you'll have to live with the fact that people may use it in ways you disagree with. Xerox or Canon (or whoever) probably makes copiers that ICE uses to make copies. Lenovo or Apple probably makes hardware that they use also t…
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This is a false dicothomy The actual (IMO correct) position most of these people share is the following two points at once: - businesses should have a moral position, since businesses are just a set of people - that moral position should be right! This isn’t rocket science! Stuff like “don’t support a business doing bad stuff” and “support businesses doing good stuff” is just really basic consumer activism. There’s n…
> - that moral position should be right You do realise that what this actually means is "this person agrees with me"
however, that doesn't absolve you of sticking up for your moral code, depending on what it is. for example, I'm gay. I know that Chik-Fil-A is complying with the law, and that its owners are funding advocacy for conversion therapy and other anti-LGBT issues. I wouldn't want Chik-Fil-A to be dismantled, since it's lawful, but I refuse to eat there, since my personal morals prevent me from giving money to people who want to hurt people like me. I'd also support protests of Chik-Fil-A, since protest is a lawful action (at least, social media campaigns and picket lines.)
Don't be lazy. Stand up for what you believe in. The law is the lowest common denominator, and legality doesn't absolve you of your actions.
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This is a false dicothomy The actual (IMO correct) position most of these people share is the following two points at once: - businesses should have a moral position, since businesses are just a set of people - that moral position should be right! This isn’t rocket science! Stuff like “don’t support a business doing bad stuff” and “support businesses doing good stuff” is just really basic consumer activism. There’s n…
Many, many people feel that enforcing existing immigration laws is morally right and a "good thing". I think defining what is morally right is harder than rocket science and literally impossible in some cases.
Even others (a plurality I think) don't have strong feelings on the laws, but know one of the following: - the executive has selective enforcement rights - (at the time) congress + the WH could change laws! - the laws were written with an understanding of selective enforcement
and so rightly recognized that this was a bad thing that could be made right.
There is an n-sided die about how people see this problem, and people acted in accordance to it. And yeah, it means that some sides don't believe in the legitimacy of other sides. They're incompatible after all.
Besides, it's not the point. The point of the game isn't to make a set of meta-rules for defining what is morally right. It's for, on a case-by-case basis, to say "this thing is good/bad" and then act on that.
I don't need to be able to answer every moral hypothetical to be able to say that _this one specific thing is bad_. To bring it back to HN, it's a P=/=NP problem. I can say one thing is good/bad without providing the full strategy for determining every thing. And then we work from there.
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> I question how much an employee should concern him/herself with how a product is used > Where do we start? Where do we stop? Often when moral question pops up on HN, the top comment is some variation of > But where do we we draw the line? > I wonder whether we should even try. Counterpoint: cynicism is too easy. Actually giving a shit is harder, it's uncomfortable, it involves compromise. Yes, there's ambiguity. Ye…
I think you're misrepresenting the argument of people who don't think developers should interfere with the usages of their product. The most compelling arguments I found is that just because we happen to work in a field that lets us exert our influence over society doesn't make our moral sensibilities any better than the rest of society. What us privileged few who work in technology see as using our position of influ…