I do not share Brendan's views but he is entitled to have them. People who target individuals because they do not have the sames views as them should be ashamed. Is this not what freedom is all about?
Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
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Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#932Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference is that the people who stuck their neck out for racial equality, gay rights and women's rights were objectively right, but Brendan Eich is objectively wrong. And that matters.
objectively right There is no such thing. I agree with them, and under various moral philosophies I could make convincing arguments that they're right, but you're off the rails. Or, if you've really found an objective measure of right and wrong that isn't based on a subjective positing of objectivity, you've upended an entire field of study, have a very rewarding future and are totally set for life. You'll just have…
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Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#933Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the fallacy that maintains the system you complain about. Voting for a 3rd party supports that party and gains them publicity. Just because they don't win (this time) doesn't mean it's wasted. By your reasoning, any vote for a losing party is wasted, so you should only vote according to the latest poll figures. However all options are guaranteed to produce many of the results you want. The greater of two evil…
How well did third parties do after Nader in 2000, or Perot in the 90's? This seems like a glaring counter-example to your argument, don't you think?
Nader did well following Perot. Eventually one of these might make it and if they also act to weaken the two-party system, the floodgates could open like they have in other countries. But none of that can happen if people who don't like the two-party system keep voting for it anyway just because of petty bipartisan tribalism.
Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#934Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has he ever said anything against gays? Being opposed to gay marriage is not the same as being opposed to gays.
Yes it is. Lets not make useless differences here, it is. To think there isn't is somehow thinking someone having fewer rights than you do is still legally equal to you.
It depends on what you consider the goal of marriage, or what the rights specifically are. Seems to me there are lots of people who can't marry, for example children. Why do they have "fewer rights"?
Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#935I am a strong supporter of gay marriage, but I have to say that I find this very unfortunate and worrying. Apparently many Mozilla supporters seem to think it is okay to bully a qualified person out of his job only for his political views, even if they had absolutely no effect on his qualification or his actions on the job. I can't help but feel like this campaign has done a lot more harm to him than his $1000 donati…
I'm leery of politically-correct thinking, as well, but I feel Eich had to go, and he made the right decision.
The quote by Baker which Swisher highlighted nails it: Eich had become a distraction and his presence at the helm, and as a figurehead for Mozilla, was a distraction.
The fact that Mozilla itself is a symbol for freedom from oppression also doesn't sit well with Eich's political beliefs, and more importantly, activities.
There's also the fact that times and beliefs can change: I'm not a believer in absolutes of ethical and moral values. Often very quickly and disconcertingly for those who live through those changes. I can remember when discrimination and abuse against gays and others was simply part of the landscape and widely accepted (as it still is in too many places). But within the cultural, creative, and intellectual cores of the world, that's no longer the case.
Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#936Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is absolutely reasonable for gay employees to be concerned. As CEO of a company guides company policy about a lot of things that have nothing to do with writing code such as health benefits.
The link between any particular issue and what Eich's day-to-day responsibility would have been can be made as tenuously as we want. I could argue six-degrees-of-separation-style that every belief he held is relevant to his position. The basic point remains: we shouldn't be punishing people for holding beliefs that we disagree with, or coerce them into renouncing their disagreement in order to remain in our good grac…
The real question here is whether democracy (i.e. the vote) is taken after influence games have been played out and resolved, or before.
I think the vote should be taken after influence has been applied, because I think part of what defines a person is their influence (it is perhaps the most important part, especially in questions of politics like this one).
Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#937I am a strong supporter of gay marriage, but I have to say that I find this very unfortunate and worrying. Apparently many Mozilla supporters seem to think it is okay to bully a qualified person out of his job only for his political views, even if they had absolutely no effect on his qualification or his actions on the job. I can't help but feel like this campaign has done a lot more harm to him than his $1000 donati…
I generally agree with you but I think the problem here is that being against gay marriage is more than just a "political view." Being for low taxes is a political view. Being for smaller government is a political view. Believing a certain group of people don't deserve to live their lives like other simply because of who they love is not a political view. It reads as extremely hateful and that makes people uncomforta…
Being for low taxes is a political view. Being for smaller government is a political view.
This is marching well out into controversial territory, but I don't see any clean division between "political" and "ethical" grounds.
If you look at the founder of modern economic thought (called for a time "political economy", BTW), his other book is The Theory of Moral Sentiments, an explicitly moral work. Much of Wealth of Nations concerns "ought" rather more than "is" (though Smith focuses on both).
As von Clausewitz observed that war is the continuation of politics by other means, politics is the continuation of war by other means. More recently you'll find voices such as John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man) and Smedly Butler (of Business Plot[1] fame) who'd come to realize that as a marine general he was "a racketeer for capitalism":
In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he described and criticized the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those he was a part of, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them. After retiring from service, he became a popular activist, speaking at meetings organized by veterans, pacifists and church groups in the 1930s.
(Wikipedia [2])
Given that taxation and government decisions have social implications, and those, based on the distribution of resources implied, have moral elements, all of the areas you posit are in fact value-laden questions: what is fair, what is appropriate, how should power be allocated, how should wealth be allocated?
The same holds true for technology as well Michael and Joyce Huesemann[3] argue, among other things, that all technologies have implicit value-laden judgements, and that adoption of those technologies includes adopting the values of those technologies. They might be of cars (personal transportation autonomy, pedestrian minimalization, land-use planning, air pollution), television (individual isolation, advertising, mass media), or web browsers (cheap information dissemination, subversion of censorship, voicing of dissident or minority views, cats, free access to pornography, pop-up ads).
Moral and other viewpoints aren't so easily divorced.
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Notes:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
3. http://redd.it/21pc8c https://archive.org/details/scm-33066-michaelhuesemanntechno... http://newtechnologyandsociety.org/
Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#938I am a strong supporter of gay marriage, but I have to say that I find this very unfortunate and worrying. Apparently many Mozilla supporters seem to think it is okay to bully a qualified person out of his job only for his political views, even if they had absolutely no effect on his qualification or his actions on the job. I can't help but feel like this campaign has done a lot more harm to him than his $1000 donati…
He should have just said that he's a devout christian or muslim, and therefore does not condone gay marriage. It would suddenly become adorable in the name of tolerance and diversity.
It can be fairly reliably assumed at this point that someone opposing gay marriage is a devout something-or-other.
Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#939Earlier quoted context omitted.
Support for Prop 8 has a huge age gradient, as does anti-homosexuality in general. Support for Prop 8 falls by about 0.75% per year Ages 18-24 voted overwhelmingly against it. 65+ voted overwhelmingly for it. Old people hate gays. Young people don't. Support for Prop 8 among young people in the SF Bay Area is negligible. These are the people Eich was supposed to lead as CEO of Mozilla. You can't lead people who think…
Old people only know gay people as Elton John and Freddie Mercury. Younger people know normal people as gay, so it's no wonder.
Freddie Mercury was bisexual, at least according to Brian May's account of Mercury having sexual relations with many women. Elton John too was married and in interview said he was bisexual, but yes more recently has stated his behaviour is homosexual.
I wonder why people find it so important to note a person had/have homosexual sex but not mention they had/have heterosexual sex.
Re: Brendan Eich Steps Down as Mozilla CEO
#940Personally I don't know what to think when organizations mix their core business (e.g. making a web browser) and politics (e.g. support for free speech). I'd like to see politics and business as separate as possible. What do you think?
A little difficult to do when part of what made the Mozilla Foundation what it is is supporting equality. It would be hard to see a Skinhead leading a Kosher brand for the same reason.
> A little difficult to do when part of what made the Mozilla Foundation what it is is supporting equality.
Could you elaborate? I'm really not aware of the internals of the company.