821–830 of 841 posts
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I haven't read that book. Can you provide some examples supporting the claim that the "court of public opinion" doesn't have a good track record?
Lynchings.
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I am bummed that you are making what are in effect, velvet fascist statements. This is literally one of the freedoms we have left, in that the businesses we run don't have to support things that we don't believe in.
Disclaimer: I am jewish, and found that accusation offensive. After Trump took office, I began reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, to be on guard – I was afraid. The ICE camps are evil, scary, cruel, and probably illegal, but not indicative of the sort of fascism we saw under the Nazis. After all, they functioned similarly under the previous US president, who did not seem to have fascist tendencies. As othe…
Saying folks have the freedom to leave their job is ridiculous and only reinforces my point.
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…
You touch on an interesting point on the continuing amassing of power around corporations. ICE was created by people who were voted on by the populace. A corporation refusing to work with a legal entity really shows just how much power corporations now have. Github refuses to work with ICE today and hypothetically tomorrow will only host code for Democrats? I'm certainly no fan of ICE, but I'm also not sure I like ce…
This is a highly debatable opinion.
> A corporation refusing to work with a legal entity really shows just how much power corporations now have.
Not really, everyone has always had a choice. It's just sometimes a choice that they cannot refuse. And, as far as choosing to only host "democrat" code, where would we like that line? At Chinese code? How about NK? What about environmental activists that US oil interests don't like? The scope of this argument is larger and pertains to how we would like to structure our means of production and about what actors we care to dis-incentivize and why. Since ICE systematically abuses its power over vulnerable people, I'd say "stop it by any means necessary, save further harm." If the corporation is a spear, then throw it; if the law is a sword, swing it. If people are being egregiously harmed in it, it is the duty of the people to end it.
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We are going through a very strange and extreme period in US History. Corporations are a huge part of the political landscape. Of course workers who are powerful will demand things of their workplaces. All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.
The idea that all corporations are political is obviously quite true, especially insofar as potentially-everything is political. What's interesting is erosion of the norm that corporations should not be particularly political (picking and choosing customers based on politics, touting allegiance to one specific side). This was once a somewhat stronger (political) norm that has fallen by the wayside as the nation has g…
That's not even true of just tech. IBM put engineers and machines in the hands of the Nazi party in 1930's as they were putting jews into camps.
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I'm having trouble understanding your perspective on what's "anti-democratic". As you note, neither github nor hardly any company has any kind of "democratic decision-making" at all. It's just not how companies work in America. So I don't understand hwo you can be "bypassing" something that doesn't exist. When the executive and other decision makers at a company make decisions with no democratic decision making whats…
I agree with you but what I'm trying to explain is that complaining about a topic instead of trying to implement a democratic system to do so is the same as ignoring other people's opinion because they weren't loud enough. If they want their opinion to be taken seriously, they should setup democratic vote among employees to collect votes anonymously about the issue at hand. Proceeding otherwise is simply trying to co…
Fortunately, in fact, plenty of organized people have been taken seriously, and have effected change, through other means.
> I think if the bar is "don't kill minorities" Take this as my personal possibly wrong opinion, but this kind hyperbolic phrasing is only going to hurt your cause. The same as people defending "punch a nazi" slogans. They will give your tribe influence, but also steadily decrease your chance at long term victory. Honestly I cannot understand how many people (I don't care about sides) can believe in progress via viol…
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents. They're never interesting and they never end well. Even in the context of the current thread, this subthread stands out as off topic. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23529671 .
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In a your version of a free society, what happens when everyone refuses you EVERY single service because random-reason ? They sure as heck aren't murdering, stealing, nor threatening you. They're just refusing to sell you anything because of random-reason , forever. Those services include sales of any food, water, shelter. Taking it further, what if a majority of businesses gradually decide to be racist and refuse al…
> what happens when everyone refuses you EVERY single service If I'll ever find my self in a situation like this - I'll pack my things and run. I'm not going to be happy in a place like this even if government will force those people to tolerate me. > if a majority of businesses gradually decide to be racist and refuse all services just because they can That means anyone entrepreneurial enough will have access to an…
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What protesters? I attended a march in NYC this weekend and the protesters demands included shifting $1 billion of the NYPD budget to community, education, and social welfare programs, and a $500 million investment fund for black businesses. No one was screaming to get rid of all cops everywhere forever. Are you genuinely seeking to understand, or do you hols these protesters in too much disdain to actually listen to…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol... Feel free to try and explain it away but to say no one is calling for this would at this point be willful blindness. I have complete freedom to think that many of the protests demands are dangerous, poorly thought out and outright foolish.
And yes, you have the freedom to think anything you want.
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Right, which also means that not everyone at GitHub agrees with not working on ICE related projects. I'm even betting that it is a small vocal minority that is against it. So, how should GitHub proceed in your opinion?
You realize that not everyone in an organization would have agreed with not working with Nazi Germany either? IBM literally sold them information retrieval technology they used to keep track of concentration camp inmates. So clearly the important decision-makers did not agree. I guess it is like any other question of what an organization should do. Those with the power to make decisions will decide based on some comb…
I think this is an important distinction that needs to be resolved in some legal means. many people have differing opinions on this, so having some systematic process is useful so we don’t end up wasting energy on a very loud minority.
This is a complex issue and it’s something that companies should be good at. In this case, having some systematic way of making this decision public is helpful to me in planning who to purchase services from. Some generic statement that the decision was “based on company values” (that can change at any time) makes it hard to predict future decisions.
This ambiguity over how products are run is a big part of how I struggle to predict what Google products will continue or be, arbitrarily to me, discontinued.
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And who writes the laws of the land? Slavery and Jim Crow were also laws at certain periods of American history. I'd hope it's pretty uncontroversial to say that those laws were also very divisive political issues at the time.
Correct. Not all laws are good or morally acceptable, and they need to be changed. If Github was to pull out, ICE could simply find someone else willing to sign a contract with them, except it will make things worse, as that other provider will not be as diligent or reliable (if it was just as good, it would have been picked in the first place instead of Github). When you see an unjust law, it should be pushed to get…
If you would've spoken out, then you agree with the principle but don't agree that ICE is "bad enough" to warrant this treatment. If you wouldn't have spoken out but wouldn't have worked for them, then you agree that working on these systems is clearly unethical (and thus IBM was acting unethically) but feel that ethics are less important than not disrupting the freedom of a company to sell their services to whoever they like. If you would've worked for them and wouldn't have spoken out, then we have very different views on ethics and I'm not sure we're going to agree on anything.
Yes, laws should be changed but businesses should be held accountable for who they do business with. You'd better believe that the US government wouldn't have the same rosy outlook you do if they discovered that GitHub was selling software to known terrorist groups.