571–580 of 841 posts
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Equating government contracts to service at a bagel shop is naive at best.
You're right - they affect the livelihoods of far more people.
The other is that it usually takes serious labor and negotiation to land a government contract. It's not like ICE went to some Web UI and bought GitHub Enterprise with a company credit card, and now we're asking GitHub/MS to ban them from the e-store.
I'm glad they aren't vetting who can use their platform based on arbitrary ideological whims, but I'm still salty about them caving to demands to change the default branch name to something other than "master". We really need to stop this sort of mob thought policing that has taken over the internet and bullies corporations and individuals into conformance. This is not new, but it seems particularly egregious right n…
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The colloquial definition of the term is different from the technical definition, but they don't even meet the technical definition. According to your definition, a concentration camp is an "internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment.." People of certain minority groups aren't being rounded up. Illega…
Illegal immigrants in the US are most certainly a minority group. It's not hyperbolic and unproductive, it's the plain truth, just like the Japanese concentration camps during WW2.
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Your argument from first-principles makes sense, but I just don't think a lot of us are comfortable living in a world where disabled people have to pay twice as much (or whatever the additional cost would be) for groceries. The fact that there's no movement to repeal the ADA would suggest most people feel that way.
Honestly, the alternative is just absurd. In this version of reality do employment protections still exist for disabled people or do they all magically earn there living in multilevel marketing from the comfort of their living rooms in their bespoke built homes (because most homes aren't build with accessibility in mind because the free market will fix that...).
So disabled people don't get an automatic job, say. But an employer can't just decide not interview someone because "it's inconvenient to interview you due to your disability".
Another: It's not acceptable to say "sorry we can't interview you if you can't climb stairs, because there is a staircase between our interview room and the downstairs offices", because there is a reasonable accomodation possible, namely interviewing in a different room.
A shop is required to make reasonable accomodations, such as provide an entry ramp if that makes sense, and a wheelchair compatible toilet if that makes sense (i.e. it has other toilets).
That prevents shops from saying "we don't care about the 2% so we can't be bothered with a ramp even though the cost is negligable to us".
On the other hand, reasonable is relative. An organisation with no funds would not be required to do the same things as an organisation with plenty of funds. A club open to the public is expected to do more than a private gathering of people where nobody in the group has particular needs. And accomodation doesn't always have to be pre-emptive. For a public facility, anticipating needs of a broad spectrum people is expectecd, but for a small, private workplace it may suffice to react to the particular needs of individual people as needed.
(Note, disability is complicated because there are so many kinds, many of them invisible but cause much difficulty for the persons affected, and people without experience do not recognise the signs. I've used wheelchair here because everyone recognises that, but even with those, a lot of people seem to not understand that if a person can stand up and walk a bit, it doesn't mean they don't need a wheelchair.)
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I'm fine with the questions on immigration. It's a political issue that has been unaddressed for decades, and needs to be faced soon. I'm not fine with hyperbole. It causes unnecessary arguments and deadens people to extreme viewpoints. Reality is bad enough to cause political change as long as attention is brought to it.
How is "ICE is running concentration camps" hyperbole if all parts of the sentence are literally true? If ICE could be trusted to care for those in its care [1] or respect the legal rights of immigrants [2] then, maybe it would be unfair. How many children need to die in custody before "concentration camp" stops being hyperbolic? [1] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2019/12/19/ice... [2] https://www.lati…
> According to your definition, a concentration camp is an "internment centre for political prisoners and members of national or minority groups who are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment.."
> People of certain minority groups aren't being rounded up. Illegal immigrants are being rounded up, regardless of race or nationality.
It saddens me that we collectively rolled over & allowed our software to be politicised, by flagging or cancelling those that see through the narrative & dissented.
Doing cheap PR moves like blacking out logos or posting Twitter "support" posts from CEO accounts or announcing the end of default branches named "master" is, as I said, cheap. The real issue is dealing with the elephants in the room, such as the aforementioned ICE contract of GitHub. It is about time that corporations, with GitHub here as an example, noticed that backing this or that or another minority or "trying"…
To be honest the whole master / slave discussion is laughable because: 1. Most humans have ancestral past as slaves, be it serfdom or thraldom. 2. Etmologically the master branch is associated with the concept of a master copy, not a whip lashing plantation owner. 3. Slavery is pretty much a thing of the past, accept from certain parts of the middle east and africa. And let us not forget, the producers of our consume…
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You are carefully tiptoeing around race & gender here.
Nope - in free societies you should be able to refuse service on any grounds, including those things. Otherwise you're permitting the government to forcibly compel you to allocate your time and resources to ends they define. In free societies, governments should only be able to forcibly compel people not to do things (murder, threaten, steal, etc.) - see the concept of "negative rights."
Well, how about "don't discriminate"?
I am not saying it is the perfect solution, but if you want to refuse a service you can always terminate your commercial venture. I do not necessarily see this a clear cut case of positive/negative right.
Similarly to how the state can compel you to get a driving license to drive. You can just give up on driving.
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In societies that have full respect for private property, I should be able to refuse to do business with you for any reason, including the color of your shoes, the kind of music you listen to, or your marital preferences. Whether it is wise or rationally self-interested to do so is a different question.
If public property (streets, society built around cars, tax incentives) is being used to provide access to your business, for the mutual aid of both your business and the public, then you should not be allowed to deny access to the public for anything other than a business reason.
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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.
Sure, I wouldn't want anyone denying me service because they disagree with how I dress or other actions that are otherwise harmless. That being said, there is an incredibly wide divide between "I casually disapprove of your actions, but I will serve you anyway" and "your actions serve to strategically terrorize, harm, and silence minorities and those without the ability to effectively defend or represent themselves,…
The CCP's position seems to be that anything vaguely resembling disrespect of the CCP or their leader will lead to revolution, and therefore must be suppressed with whatever means necessary.
It's generally possible for people to see small, seemingly-harmless, and sometimes-unintentional actions as being part of / enabling / normalizing some terrible threat, which must therefore be burned down, and anyone who opposes such burning must themselves be burned too. I think this happened with the Inquisitions, for example.
It doesn't solve the issue to say "the different political factions will judge for themselves which infractions against their beliefs are harmless". People are very capable of inflaming their own political passions to cast any issue as being the first step towards the end of the world. It only works if there is some common, overarching framework that the different factions agree on. If the common foundation is democracy, then I think that framework would probably be "that which the law allows is permissible; peacefully advocating your policies is permissible; if you think the law is wrong, advocate to change the law". Civil disobedience is a step outside that framework, but (by design) one of the most harmless.