Why is refusing service weird ? They are signalling their values with their checkbook, more than 99.9% than everyone else out there that just put up a few ig posts in "solidarity"

Denying service obviously requires discrimination: you normally provide the service, but you intentionally don't provide the service to certain customers you pick out from the rest.

But jim crow laws aren't bad because they are just discriminatory, they are bad because they discriminate based on race. Racism, sexism, and classism aren't bad because they are kinds of discrimination, but because they are inappropriate grounds to discriminate on. A good example of a basis to discriminate on is sexual misconduct: if any of my friends want to ostracize or refuse service to someone who has recently been convicted or accused of sexual misconduct, I won't mind at all. But if instead they want to ostracize or refuse service to someone who is black or latino, I will mind a lot. This is because I don't care whether they are being discriminatory, but what grounds they are discriminating on.

If a company denies products and services to poor people because they can't afford them, and those people are poor as a result of generations of systemic racial oppression, then that company is guilty of racial discrimination. Racial discrimination is a cornerstone of the whole socioeconomic system.

Do you also disagree with musicians refusing their music be used in certain contexts? This seems like a form of 'refusing service'.

For example:

https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/the-history-of-musicians-rej...

Lets not pretend that the profits of Saudi oil et al are going to the people of that country though. If the wealth is consolidated so much, denial of service hurts the ruling class far more than the normal people

Disagree, these companies try to buy credibility by association and not being party to that trade is a very correct and conscientious approach to take. They can just as easily buy North Face or some other tat.

Didn't the supreme court basically rule otherwise, that the 1st amendment rights of the merchant supersede the discrimination of the recipient? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

It does make sense somewhat, as to do otherwise would be compelled speech.

Corporations aren't people for the purposes of discrimination.

Corporations don't wear jackets. People do.

People are free to buy a Patagonia jacket and sew their company logo to it. Patagonia, on the other hand, is free to protect their brand which - if the comments in this thread are any indication - is a big part of their competitive advantage.

The people aren't individually banned from Patagonia. Patagonia just won't sell to the corporation.

What does that even mean? So it’s ok for corporations to discriminate?

Maybe I missed the /sarcasm?

I think they mean: discriminating against corporations is entirely different than discriminating against people.

Except many corporations aren't particularly diverse. Discriminating against the NBA is going end up being pretty racially focused.

Ok, I'll bite. Have you looked at who actually owns NBA teams? It's mostly a bunch of white dudes[1]. So discriminating against the NBA as an organization would be discriminating against a bunch of white guys. Nobody is boycotting the individual employees here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA#...

https://careers.nba.com/employees/ this list might be cherry-picked, but this looks like a pretty (at least racially/phenotypically) diverse list of people. I assume you are actually thinking about NBA teams, but I wanted to bring this up to make the point that the NBA organization is not necessarily controlled by by a group of people representative of the players that you would rightly associate with it.

> Discriminating against the NBA is going end up being pretty racially focused.

To address your example, let's pretend that the NBA announces they no longer recycle. Then my business that sells cardboard boxes to the NBA announces in response that we will no longer sell boxes to the NBA. If you think that has anything to do with racism - I'm open to hearing it.

I think a trouble is that, in this day and age it seems that the outcome is what determines racism, sexism, ageism, etc. We're obsessed with the statistics.

If someone examined your company and found that you now only sold boxes to sports teams that are predominantly white - that would look quite racist would it not? I don't think the details or your intentions would matter much.

I don't think anyone would think that, because my policy is only to sell to teams that recycle. The details and intentions do matter. At a stretch, I can imagine a scenario where recycling companies were for some reason not giving people of color fair access, and that as a result they were being hurt down the chain by my business not supporting them now. Those are the kinds of systems we need to work to identify and change and they do exist.

"In this day and age" we can distinguish between someone being racist and systemic racism.

An oil company ordering Patagonia would be delicious irony, but why banks? Are banks known for serious damage to their environment? Genuine question.

The FratBro culture at a lot of the financial sector was using the Patagonia vests as part of their "dress code". Patagonia decided they did not want to be associated with that culture.

Exactly this, Patagonia did not want to be supportive of a certain business culture.

Banks fund a lot of environmentally harmful projects. For example, here's a list of banks that funded the Dakota Access Pipeline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline#Financi...

Yes because moving oil by truck or rail is safer and environmentally sound? Pipelines are very green relative to the alternatives

As one current example, if you start looking at who is bankrolling and moving money for a lot of the current Amazon Forest destruction you will find the likes of Chase JPM, et. al. To save from picking a source, I'll just say it's a pretty easily duckable.

For banks it was an image problem, not wanting their outdoorsy customers to turn away from their products because they were popular with wall st types.

If you don’t start firing the wrong customers you’ll enevitably start designing your products for them.

Like how trucks have become godawful expensive monstrosities because their primary customers are buying them for the image instead of actually needing to use them on a regular basis.

For added irony much of their clothing and equipment is made from synthetic materials derived from oil.

These are made of recycled materials, exclusively, IIRC. The environmental impact of their synthetic fibers is either 0 or negative. I could be wrong, since it's been a little while since I looked into it, but Patagonia's commitment to sustainable manufacturing is insanely inspiring.

Also: not a Patagonia shill, I just respect the company deeply. I don't even own any Patagonia (unfortunately)

They have a separate store for items made out of old Patagonia garments: https://wornwear.patagonia.com/shop/mens-sweaters

They're much cheaper than regular new items and still work great. I have a Synchilla sweater from there and it's one of my favorite pieces of clothing.

The clothes wear out over time scattering microplastics across the world. Fancy manufacturing doesn't help there

You're right in that they are trying and have a good track record in terms of environmentalism. However, when producing something for comsumption, there is always impact.

As someone from the Coca Cola company said once:

"“When we look at a different material, you look at all of the levers: the carbon footprint, consumer preference, energy, water...There’s a mix, there are some things that are not that desirable, but if you have five good things and one that isn’t, we’ll all have to make decisions.”

“It’ll never be that clean.”

OK so if I follow, you make a false claim above ( >For added irony much of their clothing and equipment is made from synthetic materials derived from oil.), and now you're talking about Coca Cola?

Why don't you stop trying to make weird points, read the mission statements of companies akin to Patagonia, verify they are following their missions, AND THEN join the discussion?

For added cruft here are a list of the most common materials used by Patagucci:

- cotton

- hemp

- recycled* synthetic material

Here is a great place to get started on your research path: https://www.patagonia.com/activism/

Would they refuse co brand clothing with a community bank or a fintech focusing on serving the underserved, or a bank that finances initiatives that help the environment while avoiding financing initiatives that hurt the environment? Its possible to be a socially conscious fintech with net good generated in the world, since financial services isn't tied to something as fundamentally environmentally complicated as the energy sector.

Their ethics correspond with their brand and typical consumer.

And why shouldn’t they? It would be weird if an individual’s or organization’s ethics were generated completely randomly.

For sure - I agree : ).