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After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

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Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#351
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slippery slopes are not always a fallacy, roughly the same way appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authority is indeed an expert. Relevant: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-...

> appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authority is indeed an expert. Sure it is. The point of the fallacy is that an argument should stand on its own merit, and has nothing to do with the person making it. Guess what - experts can be wrong too (e.g. hand washing).

An expert can be wrong, but a layperson is more likely to be wrong. "Experts are wrong" is sometimes common knowledge, but "I know better than experts" is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

Appealing to an expert should not be an instant win, but an argument can be valid and useful without being sufficient to end the discussion.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#352
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose that I'm highly religious: 1. I make tools (wedding planning software) 2. I believe (in an informed way) that a group intends to act immorally (use my tools to plan a gay wedding) 3. My tools will make the group more effective at acting immorally Do I have any responsibility for what happens? Or (alternatively): 1. I make tools (highly specialized chemicals) 2. I believe (in an informed way) that a group inte…

In both cases, you very clearly have some responsibility. In an incredibly straightforward and unambiguous way. I'm struggling to see how this is intended as a counterexample. Is it because disapproving of homosexuality is wrong? That doesn't at all change the entailment of responsibility by the conjunction of foreknowledge of consequences with uncoerced action. If you walk out into a public street and fire a pistol…

Well, I disagree. I have more of a "live and let live" or "golden rule" type philosophy. I wouldn't want someone denying me service because they disagree with my beliefs (and by extension, actions), so I don't deny service to people who have beliefs (and by extension, actions) I disagree with.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#353
I’m starting to wonder if “politics” in english has a different meaning than in spanish.

“Everything is politic” is meaningless to me, in the same way that “everything is top priority” is. If everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#354
post #14

What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies). But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a pri…

No private company is obligated to accept a contract from a federal agency. To expect them to do so would be the inverse of the supposed freedoms we supposedly value in America. Specifically the first and third amendments to the Bill of Rights, but that's just scratching the surface of how un-American that would be. Worst case, the government can set up its own infrastructure, and that probably wouldn't be a bad thing anyway. Some people talk about privatization of government resources as if it's an inherently good thing that saves taxpayer money, but if anything the last 40 years has shown the opposite, especially WRT to the likes of Blackwater and private prisons. In many cases privatization is more expensive and simply serves to put public money in private hands without oversight to reward corruption.

Also it's misleading to refer to it as a "political reason". There are two different things people mean by the term "political". One is through the lens of party tribalism. Like, if a restaurant owner put up a big sign out front that said "I only serve registered Democrats, the rest of you can GTFO." That's about the shittiest and most indefensible form of "bringing politics into it" that I could possibly think of. Probably wouldn't be illegal but obviously I wouldn't think too highly of the restaurant owner and I would hope he quickly went out of business because everyone (left and right alike) would think he's a douchebag.

That's one meaning of "political". The other meaning is simply, "reacting to current events", independently of tribalism or political parties. If someone is actually acting based on moral convictions rather than party loyalty or tribalism, that's very different. I realize that an anti-ICE POV and pro-immigrant POV is strongly correlated with Democrats and the opposite is strongly correlated with Republicans, but if we start casting every single moral conviction or political belief in terms of party loyalties then we have freaking lost as a nation. Party-based tribalism is always bad, full stop, but people acting on moral convictions are as good as the coherency of their moral convictions.

Like, if the US government started rounding up folks by ethnicity and putting them in camps based on obviously racist motivations, like they did to Japanese-Americans in WW2, and it was based on bills passed by Democratic politicians, and the Republicans, bless their hearts, decided to fight tooth and nail against it because Democrats, I would honestly hope that all businesses, regardless of their owner's or employee's political leanings, would ignore the party politics aspect of it and only make decisions based on moral convictions. The parties fight each other all the time but we can't fall into the trap of thinking that political parties are anything other than an unfortunate reality of our system of government. Many of their conflicts are fights they pick with each other to rally their base, whereas if they were actually interested in responsible governance they would try to find common ground and try to negotiate something that actually helps the country.

Some people just have a tribal mentality though. They can't formulate thoughts on any issue through any lens except that of party politics. They think of themselves as "this type of person, not that type of person", and their first cut at bucketizing the population is lumping them in with one party or another. That's not democracy, that's about the stupidest freaking tribalism imaginable. Keep in mind that it wasn't until 1994 (or 1996?) that "bipartisan" and "compromise" became dirty words in political coverage, specifically to the Republican Party thanks to Newt Gingrich, but to a lesser degree to the Democrats as well as they circled the wagons in response. It's only been the last 26 years that parties themselves have become more important to some Americans than America itself, or Americans as a whole.

Besides, what possible negative consequence could GitHub suffer from this? Besides losing the ICE contract? Does anyone seriously think that other government agencies or companies would be so butthurt about GitHub's position on ICE, that they wouldn't want to do business with them? That only makes sense through the lens of the two political parties defining the totality of what it means to be an American, and if that's where people are at, America deserves to crash and burn because it's lost whatever soul it may have once had that elevated it. George Washington's farewell address was on this very topic. He thought the poison pill of the Constitution was that it set up a system whereby people would naturally form voting blocs, and before too long voting blocs would coalesce into two diametrically opposed political parties, and then the system (and America) is screwed. Which is exactly what happened. But it doesn't have to be that way. But the election process itself would have to be reformed into a less antiquated, non-FPTP-based system.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you disagree with the actions of a family member - is your solution to cut them off immediately without talking to them? I don't think your employer is like "a family member", this analogy is too absurd to counter. > family, employer, HoA, neighborhood, city council, state/province, and country? one of these is not like the other. you get to participate in decision making process via voting in HOA, country ect.…

It's not absurd at all for many people as their very identity is quite entangled with their employer and the work they do as they spend the majority of their waking hours doing something work related. Since employment-as-family was not relatable for you, how about: if you disagree with your HOA/neighborhood watch/city council, is your first instinct to sell your house and move away? Wouldn't canvassing support for yo…

employment is not consensus like HOA, yes you can get your voice heard in HOA by participating, its by design.

Correct analogy in this case would be HOA where all the decisions are made by chairman of HOA. In that case yes, packup and move.

you don't choose your family members by interviewing with them.

> Since employment-as-family was not relatable for you,

In my family we(adults) are all equals and make decisions that are agreeable to everyone.

In you family you have "head" who makes all the important decisions without checking with family members first?

I don't want to think of myself as a child family member at my employer who gets no say in anything major. I can't relate to that at all.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true – businesses are legally allowed to refuse service to anyone (apart from protected classes like race or political affiliation, but that probably does not apply here). It's an important right, and probably many businesses would be more profitable and happy if they exercised that right more often. It's still politically dangerous, and would earn a company a lot of enemies and mistrust (as well as some alli…

How would businesses be more profitable if they exercised the right to refuse service more? You also realize the people who exercise this right the most do it for reasons you likely don't agree with.

Simple: some customers are more expensive to serve than others.

Maybe they use a lot of a free service you provide that costs you money. Maybe they require too much customer support. Maybe they return most of the products they buy from you. I've looked at a few datasets where profitability by customer varied pretty widely, including many that were clearly in the red. Most companies just don't break out their costs by customer enough to see it.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#357
post #161
post #14

What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies). But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a pri…

My problem with this argument is that it (if applied uniformly) means that you couldn't hold IBM culpable for their role in the Holocaust. After all, "all they did" was help create a computerised census system for the democratically elected German government[1]. In reality, their computerisation of the census allowed the Nazis to far more efficiently catalogue and track Jewish people throughout the Third Reich. And b…

Calling ICE nazis is idiotic.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, but also companies exist literally only to make money. False.

Shareholders don't want to make money? That's not their primary goal?

Yes but they understand that in free market, they have to spend money on quality employees to make money. Hence, people still invest in companies where employees are treated better than their competitors.

Unhappy employees is not good for business over long term. That is why you see in news that racist, sexiest, or other bad actors getting fired even when they were top performers.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It really isn't. Private institutions are under no obligation to collaborate with public agencies unless explicitly required by the Defense Production Act[0]. Please remember that the government is meant to serve us, not the other way around. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

I don't think OP meant it's lunacy because of any legal obligations private companies have to a federal organization, but rather due to the message it would send to current and future customers.

I think that message could be extremely productive, if refusing a government contract means not assisting questionable or immoral or even unsupported actions by _any_ agency.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#360
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a direct reply to your comment, but more of an adjacent one. > Guess what? Politics are interwoven in every aspect of our lives. You cannot choose to “avoid” them; But I do choose to avoid them in my personal life. A private company can do whatever the hell they want, whether I approve or not, it's their right. I also believe it is my right to not care about politics and continue moving forward with my own life.…

You don't avoid them, you ignore them, and being able to ignore them is a political privilege. A child in an ICE internment camp does not have that privilege.

A child in an ICE internment camp doesn't have to worry about local property tax rates though. As GP said, there are very few pieces of politics that affect them personally, that doesn't mean none. Just as it also means that no bit of politics affects every single person meaningfully.
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