We have confused being politically active with being partisan.

Even this article conflates the two. Yet there is a world of difference between taking a policy stance and promoting a candidate or a party.

Companies have a legitimate stake in policy that commercially affects them. Nobody reasonably holds Uber and Lyft and DoorDash’s recent politicking in California against them. One may disagree, but it’s coherent. (Hobby Lobby taking a stance on gay rights, on the other hand, is incoherent.)

Companies must be politically active because nothing is apolitical. But companies shouldn’t be partisan. And when you are doing your work, the partisan affiliations of those around you should not matter.

What? I absolutely hold it against them, given how much of it was pure and unpunished chicanery like tricking drivers into agreeing to 'petitions' then used in published advertising.

It was logical for those companies to take political action in those instances in order to maintain their business models. How they did so may have been unsavoury, but that's orthogonal to the justification.

Abusing the app to force drivers to click "yes, i support this" under fear of a "no" click being recorded and held against them is just one small instance of the overall phenomenon.

Uber therefore qualifies.

What they invented was a business model that empowers capital and disempowers (some classes of) labor.

I hear their microservice architecture employs a lot of SWEs, though, so they've got that going.

If driving for Uber is worse than being a cab driver, why didn’t the vast majority of Uber drivers drive cabs before?

You don’t need to create completely innovative greenfield technologies in order to generate value.

Just as a customer, I hold it against a business when they too aggressively tell me how to vote. Campaign for whatever, but don't make me sit captive to it in order to do business with you.

If nothing was apolitical then we wouldn't have a word for it.

Both unicorns and apolitical actions are unreal fantasies.

The only things that seem apolitical are the things that are so widely agreed on that their true political nature is hard to discern. Once you have disagreement, especially widespread disagreement, the political nature becomes clear. For instance, take the idea of marriage only being between a man and a woman and go back 100 years. Back then, it would have gone without saying, but now it's "political" because many people have other ideas. Nothing changed, except the level of consensus.

The disagreement is what makes things political. There isn't an inherent "political" quality sitting in things. Existentialist's motto was: life is meaningless until you give it meaning. By analogy, most things in the world are apolitical until quarrelsome people with pet issues show up and make them political.

That's true in a sense (e.g. plate tectonics is not political), but it's false you start dealing with things that intersect with human society. For instance: anything to do with power over others, the makeup of society, or the kind of actions people are allowed, encouraged, or forbidden to do is inherently political.

> By analogy, most things in the world are apolitical until quarrelsome people with pet issues show up and make them political.

Not really, and that's just a pretty typical (political!) ad hominem argument made by people who want to maintain the status quo, whatever that is. Stated another way, you're saying the people who want change are troublemakers who should know their place.

First, that's only the case if you assume that by "political" I mean bad. But "political" isn't necessarily bad.

Secondly, and more importantly, to make something political is often to imagine some unjust status quo to be overturned. But imagination has power of reifying fantasies to actual events. In other words, to make something political is often to exercise power at the expense of others and to justify it by portraying your action as serving to overturn a status quo. Even status quo can use this to further their power! Freedom isn't always the net outcome of politics.

>> Stated another way, you're saying the people who want change are troublemakers who should know their place.

> First, that's only the case if you assume that by "political" I mean bad. But "political" isn't necessarily bad.

No, I assume that by "quarrelsome people with pet issues" you mean bad. I thought that was pretty obvious.

> In other words, to make something political is often to exercise power at the expense of others and to justify it by portraying your action as serving to overturn a status quo.

This is "speech is violence" level nonsense.

If someone challenges a status quo that you like ("makes something political" in your parlance), then actually defend that status quo. Don't gripe about how those quarrelsome people ruined your nice "apolitical day."

Incidentally, that right there is a good illustration of how being apolitical is different from supporting the status quo.

Going to a protest to defend the status quo from change is defending the status quo. Not having an opinion about some particular detail of how society operates is being apolitical.

> Incidentally, that right there is a good illustration of how being apolitical is different from supporting the status quo.

> Going to a protest to defend the status quo from change is defending the status quo. Not having an opinion about some particular detail of how society operates is being apolitical.

Not really. You're trying to restrict "doing politics" to certain overt political rituals ("going to a protest"), which I think is false restriction.

However, you missed my point in your incomplete quote: the act of griping that things should be kept "apolitical" is itself a kind of protest for the status quo, just a disguised one.

Now you might have a point that someone's ignorance of an issue could make them in some sense "apolitical" in relation to it. However, once the issue has been articulated to them in a way they understand, they're no longer ignorant and have taken some position, even if that's tacit approval of the status quo.

You've got black and brown lives right there, they're getting screwed. What, are we saving our powder?

Statements like yours are very easy to make and sound fine at a superficial level, but quickly run into problems when you try to actually apply the rule. For instance: does a company that sells drugs that can be used off-label for executions of human beings have a "product [that] is directly related to politics?"

This problem is a lot like writing good requirements. Your rule above is a lot like a requirement of an HR system that states simply "the system will reject the resumes of all unqualified candidates." There's a lot to unpack there, and that requirement, as stated, doesn't even get you 1% of the way there.

It's not that simple. If a gun store owner sells guns to people he knows are planning to commit a robbery, isn't he also guilty of a crime? Likewise, if a company sells materials for lethal injections to groups they know conduct executions, aren't they tacitly supporting a policy of capital punishment?

Also your comment leans very heavily on the definition of "political," which you leave totally undefined. Once you try to get consensus definition of that, you'll get into the same difficulty of unpacking it's meaning that I was referring to.

The kind of extreme "guilt by association" you derive cannot be considered a part of the political in terms of conscious action precisely because "the political" encompasses normal function of the society. Criminal activity, on the other hand, is not considered a part of normal function of a society, hence one can assume that everyone who "knows" a criminal but doesn't turn him in is also a criminal. In other words what you're doing is you are criminalizing normal para-political association---a characteristic of individuals with a totalitarian mindset. As a non-American, I have to say I am stunned to observe this attitude in the US.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's you who doesn't have a very good definition of politics. My sense is that you understand it to basically be whatever's covered in the politics section of a newspaper, and maybe a few hot-button issues besides.

Also, what you're saying is contradictory. For instance, you're treating "legality" and "politics" as different things, when the law is itself a creature of politics.

You also misunderstood my point. You seem to be thinking that commerce is neutral, and the market transactions somehow insulate the participants from each other, but that's just not the case. A market transaction can facilitate an immoral action, which in some cases may be legal and other cases not. This is well understood, and in the case of illegal immoral actions is even punishable. The only thing that I think could be actually insulating in a transaction is a lack of knowledge by one party of what the other party plans.

> The kind of extreme "guilt by association" you derive cannot be considered a part of the political in terms of conscious action precisely because "the political" encompasses normal function of the society.

Society is political, full stop.

> In other words what you're doing is you are criminalizing normal para-political association---a characteristic of individuals with a totalitarian mindset. As a non-American, I have to say I am stunned to observe this attitude in the US.

Oh please, I wasn't talking about criminalizing anything that wasn't already criminal. I'm kinda stunned that you managed to talk yourself into that bizarre conclusion. My second example is literally this: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/14/us/pfizer-execution-drugs....

It's not, because the state isn't allowed to use literally any means to kill someone, so there's actually only a limited number of substances that are actually used.

You make it sound simple, but it’s not.

If you operate a SAAS company, and ICE approaches you to buy your service, you suspect it might be used in the family separation program. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to sell them the service, you are being complacent in the policy that ICE enforces, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics. If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics.

If your workers use open source software and ask if they can contribute back upstream, but you deny them on grounds of intellectual property, you just did politics. The same if you allow them. If you pay your workers above market rate, allow them to unionize, have a liberal vacation policy, or force them to work on-site, you are doing politics. Albeit on a more personal scale then in the previous example.

If most of the other offices in your downtown building where your startup resides put a BLM flag in their window, but you opt not to, you just made a political decision. If an employee puts a prominent Palestinian flag on their desk, and you ask them to take that down, you do so on a political basis.

I hope you get the point. Businesses simply don’t have the option of not doing politics. The power dynamics involved simply prevent that from being a possibility. “Not doing politics” is more often then not simply an excuse for doing highly questionable politics.

Is there a way to go back from your binary opposition:

  - "I support what you are doing and will help you"
  - "I oppose what you are doing and will fight you"

  - "I support what you are doing and will contribute to your cause"
  - "I don't care what you are doing and will sell you the same services as to anyone else (I am only interested in your money)"
  - "I oppose what you are doing and will do what I can to impede your cause"

The American family separation thing the person above you mentioned, for instance, falls into the line of unacceptable for me, but for some people it's an acceptable response to illegal immigration. This is, indeed, very, very hard.

You do know that the very child separation policy you decry was implemented specifically to prevent child trafficking and keeping children away from people that can’t be verified to be related?

Kidnapping doesn't cease to be kidnapping just because it was done by a government official.

Article 16 (3):

> The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

When a government sanctioned agency engages in something that is probably illegal (and definitely immoral) and you still think they are worthy of your business, you are complicit in their actions.

Many would argue, correctly or not, that the policies of not having children housed with whatever adult they cross the border with is in service of avoiding child trafficking.

Didn't the Ninth Circuit federal court order ICE to follow this practice? See the Flores Consent Decree.

> The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

and:

"children and their parents must be housed together when incarcerated"

That clause (perhaps the entire UN declaration of human rights) seems incredibly ambiguous. Reading the whole declaration seems like it, perhaps, means protection of the specific enumerated rights of part 16 sections 1/2 which seems basically like the right for anyone to marry or not anyone they want and for that person to terminate the marriage when they choose.

There is also the issue of why they are incarcerated in the first place. They have committed no crime, migration and seeking refuge is protected under international law.

The UN universal declaration of human rights is written to be easily accessible and understood by the general public. And given that it was written 75 years ago I think they did a good job. I actually recommend everyone to read it entirely in your native language, as it has probably been translated into it and will only take a few minutes. A beautiful document indeed.

The important thing here though is not how rigorously defined these rights are, but the spirit of the law is clearly saying that the family is a fundamental unit of society. Separating the family unit is a failure to uphold that principal.

I must admit it sounds like the stuff of paranoid fantasy.

Update: this from Channel 4 seems reasonably calm and balance. I had to hunt through a lot of clickbaity headlines to find it: https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-were-mass-...

For a country with a documented history of disrespect for bodily autonomy it seems entirely in line with expected behaviour to me.

>Over the six-year period that had followed the passage of the Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970, physicians sterilized perhaps 25% of Native American women of childbearing age, and there is evidence suggesting that the numbers were actually even higher.

https://time.com/5737080/native-american-sterilization-histo...

What is the threat model here? If the adult they are crossing with is trying to sell the child in the US, then having the adult and child detained together still prevents this.

Also, at $250 for a paternity test, wouldn't a cost-benefit analysis make it rational to do that rather than risk the (more expensive) harm of separating a child from their parent?

Until the detention is over and then you release them together?

One threat model is child abuse. Detaining them together enables abuse. Another threat model is deceiving the government about the child trafficking. Separating the child and the adult allows investigators to question them separately without the adult coaching the child when investigators are not present.

> Also, at $250 for a paternity test, wouldn't a cost-benefit analysis make it rational to do that rather than risk the (more expensive) harm of separating a child from their parent?

This is a good point but not all children are biological offspring of their legal parents. When you suspect trafficking and the adult claims the child is adopted what do you do?

So, being political at a company level means defining a morals for companies that transcends de jure laws. Which is, basically, another set of uber-laws but without any real oversight nor finesse.

In the end refusing selling a computer to ICE should be like refusing to sell a soda to a black person: a clear case of discrimination. And companies should be threatened with dissolution if so; moral focused groups can then just create foundations or churches instead.

When you say "political decision", what do you mean? I suppose it is possible to regard every decision one makes (eating at McDonalds, buying a MacBook, driving a car, riding a bike, doing sports, watching news, going to college, etc.) as political. It's almost certainly not how people prefer to think.

Not everything a business does is political, but when a business chooses to remain apolitical on an issue which effect the lives of other people—especially those who work for the business or who’s lives are affected by the customers or the product of that business—they are making a political decision. And more often then not a rather poor one.

I prefer to test principles by inverting the politics and seeing if I still agree: what about the gay wedding cake guy? Was he justified in refusing a commodity average cake to a gay couple?

And you aren't good enough (and never will be).

This kind of ignorant, childlike approach to politics is why the Democrats are going to lose so hard in 2022... and God forbid the Republicans stumble onto their version of Barack Obama... 2024 will be a nightmare.

When I eat at Chick-fil-A, I'm not making a statement that I want gay people to be eradicated, I just like goddamned pressure fried chicken sandwiches. When I buy something from a company that produces their goods in China, I'm not saying I want Uyghurs to be slaughtered en masse.

In fact, in every single one of these instances, I'm not actively giving a shit - or making a statement - about either of those things... I'm doing it because I haven't eaten since 6 a.m., or because I need a USB-C cable, not because I hate gay people and Chinese Muslims.

This is why the did business with == “fully support” equivalence is so dumb.

It’s an extremely common philosophy that if your actions aren’t politically motivated then you’re being apolitical but I don’t think that works in the real world because those actions have real political effects/consequences regardless of whether you considered them or not.

Is there a practical difference between someone choosing to join your cause and your coercing someone to join your cause?

Is there a practical difference between someone choosing to remain uninvolved and someone choosing to join the opponents of your cause?

Yes, in that one involves coercion, which in itself has a moral weight.

> Is there a practical difference between someone choosing to remain uninvolved and someone choosing to join the opponents of your cause?

Yes, in that those are different actions and as such will produce different outcomes.

I assume that those two hypotheticals were intended as counterexamples to the principle that being involved in activity that produces or contributes to harm is wrong even if you don't specifically intend the harm.

It's not as if e.g. buying a kidney on the black market is morally equivalent to kidnapping a person and surgically removing it from them (presuming that that is how the vendor acquired it). But it's more absurd to pretend that you can engage in that transaction, proclaim "I didn't intend and don't condone any harm ensuing from the acquisition of this organ" and thus absolve yourself of any guilt.

That's not how discussions work around here. And, frankly, you sound a bit condescending.

Yes, I know--offering obvious expository answers to obviously rhetorical questions is how discussions work around here. ;)

> I assume that those two hypotheticals were intended as counterexamples to the principle that being involved in activity that produces or contributes to harm is wrong even if you don't specifically intend the harm.

That's not the principle in question. The claim, AIUI, is that to not participate in a certain political cause--to remain neutral--is equivalent to joining with the opponents of the cause. IOW, "inaction is action," "you're with us or you're against us," etc.

> And, frankly, you sound a bit condescending.

Wow, two thought-provoking questions and a friendly statement, and I've already condescended. How dare I, right?

Keep HN'ing, mate!

That's not the point. It's okay to pose rhetorical questions, and it's okay to address a specific user with genuine questions. It is not okay, however, to ask a specific user rhetorical, leading questions, because that makes it seem like you want to "win" this discussion.

Pretty sure that reading my mind and accusing me of bad faith is a violation of The Guidelines. Maybe you should take a leave of absence from the HN Volunteer Police Department.

Classic HN... "Can't you just let me rake in all this cash without the guilt trip over all the bad things I'm doing?"

Why can't a corporation have a moral imperative that says "I will not participate in acts of cruelty"?

Corporations have a lot of power in our society and it seems having a moral guideline here would be beneficial to society as whole. Yes I know this can but both toward liberal and conservative ideals but overall I think it's a better position to have.

Because it won't be consistent about it.

Lockdowns are the heart of cruelty. Mass, evil incarceration of entire populations without any evidence they work, such that millions of people have had to go without vital life saving cancer screenings, they've been losing their jobs, there have been suicides, etc. Incredibly cruel policies. So surely every corporation is going to be totally anti-lockdown, right?

Oh, what's that? There are tradeoffs, you disagree, etc.

Well, yeah. And that's why institutions of any kind shouldn't adopt such vague, naive, poorly thought out slogans. Even defining "acts of cruelty" is hard. Look at this thread. Some leftist immediately dragged it into the standard tirade against US immigration control. Why is the cruelty there being inflicted by those who enforce the laws rather than the parents who take their children on an adventure of illegal immigration, knowing full well what the consequences may be? You can slice it both ways, depending on perspective.

That's why smart firms stay out of these debates, unless they were specifically founded to take a position on one of them. But it seems Valley tech firms are increasingly not so smart. That's OK, it'll be good to have a free competitive edge over them.

Thus, if it's legal then the company is doing nothing wrong. If they're harming someone then laws should change - which is what the democratic/legislative arm is for - and law suits should be filed.

I'm not against a company having a moral stance but to implicate all those that don't as bad moral actors when they system is set up the way it is seems a tad invidious.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Legislators work to try and capture what is right for now and the future, and in common law jurisdictions a claimant may (sometimes) sue and not have to wait for legislation. As I wrote, I'm not against anyone taking a positive moral stance but since there's no way to know or even agree on what is moral, to say that it's immoral to take no stance other than to work within the law (which is a already a very extensive moral code) would seem invidious.

This is a political problem that can only be solved politically (by voting) not by some tech companies doing small scale boycott

Yet, big companies have had boycotts internally and that lead to the company changing its course. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/google-will-not-renew-a-cont... And, yeah, sometimes the efforts only work for a short period but they still had an effect.

Voting is nice but - most often - you don't get a real choice with voting. You choose one corrupt politician for another because more money == more speech. The uninformed masses who are more concerned with their own daily lives (divorce, family deaths, their children, etc.) are what are making large decisions for the rest of the informed. The cycle perpetuates.

Project Maven continues, now run by Palantir. Google's refusal to continue the project did nothing but slow down the project by a few months.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-14/palantir-...

In fact, considering the goals of Project Maven (roughly making sure you're blowing up what and who you intend and avoiding collateral damage), if you consider Google a leader in AI, you could make the perverse argument that you're actually killing people by reducing the effectiveness and delaying the timeline of the program. I'm not saying I've researched this enough to say that this is a correct or even plausible argument, merely that it is possible.

You're only complicit if you pay taxes.

Refuse to pay or reduce your income below the taxable threshold and you will no longer be complicit.

Politics is a lot more than just voting, especially when you have a two-party system that is vulnerable to ratcheting and deception.

Not really, no. You don't have to make money. You're able to live a life free of income and taxes, live like a vagabond.

You choose to earn enough income that you have to pay taxes on it. If you decide to get a job that pays you enough that you have to pay taxes, you're complicit.

No such conclusion if everyone stops selling software to ICE until they stop their grossly inhumane actions.

Again, you choose to make a taxable income; you choose to pay taxes.

Remember that any time you support the marijuana market (legal or illegal) as a purchaser and indirectly add demand to the curve that feeds the cartels in Mexico.

I hope you support drug legalization, otherwise this attitude is massively hypocritical.

And please explain why buying legal marijuana supports the cartels? Are people buying Mexican brick weed from dispensaries now?

Until people refuse to smoke illegal marijuana en mass, the markets are effectively the same.

> hope you support drug legalization, otherwise this attitude is massively hypocritical.

This is completely orthogonal to legalization. As long as the cartels still get it into the country at a competitive price to local growers (legal or illegal), the cartels are being supported.

Which will only happen when it's legalized, which is exactly my point.

BTW, I'm not misleading you in the other thread. I know no one wants to believe that their own government could do that, but unfortunately they did. It's an "open secret", something like NSA spying was circa 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandar_bin_Sultan_Al_Saud

Bandar helped negotiate the 1985 Al Yamamah deal, a series of massive arms sales by the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia worth GB£40 billion, including the sale of more than 100 warplanes. After the deal was signed, British arms manufacturer British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) allegedly funnelled secret payments of at least GB£1 billion into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington, in yearly instalments of up to GB£120 million over at least 10 years. He allegedly took money for personal use out of the accounts, as the purpose of one of the accounts was to pay the operating expenses of his private Airbus A340. According to investigators, there was "no distinction between the accounts of the embassy, or official government accounts [...], and the accounts of the royal family." The payments were discovered during a Serious Fraud Office investigation, which was stopped in December 2006 by attorney general Lord Goldsmith.[68][69] In 2009, he hired Louis Freeh as his legal representative for the Al-Yamamah arms scandal.[70]

A court affidavit filed on 3 February 2015 claims that Zacarias Moussaoui was a courier between Osama bin Laden and Turki bin Faisal Al Saud in the late 1990s, and that Turki introduced Moussaoui to Bandar.[72] Zacarias Moussaoui stated on oath and wrote to Judge George B. Daniels that Saudi royal family members, including Prince Bandar, donated to Al-Qaeda and helped finance the 11 September attacks. The Saudi government continues to deny any involvement in the 9/11 plot, and claims there is no evidence to support Moussaoui's allegations in spite of numerous previous intense investigations, noting that Moussaoui's own lawyers presented evidence of his mental incompetence during his trial. Leaked information from the redacted portion of the 9/11 Commission Report states that two of the 9/11 hijackers received $US130,000 in payment from Bandar's bank account.

Obeying the law is like that.

As the culture war has become a bigger part of politics, like the grandfather comment suggest, more of these issues fall into that second bucket in which it is tough to accept neutrality.

If he could do that with a female roommate why shouldn't he be allowed do that with his male roommate? It isn't reasonable to object to gay marriage on a technicality like that while also being fine with the laws regarding straight marriage.

Didn't I already give the reason? Because it could be used as a loophole in the tax law, that men and women in temporary relationships didn't exploit, even if divorce is instant and the high earner can keep all the wealth that had been taxed at a lower rate. (Because women generally don't let themselves get used like that.) On the other hand, in a community property state, with no pre-nup, that loophole is closed.

It's also generally reasonable, as a structural concept, to object to the idea that laws should treat men and women equally, or men/women and men/men pairings, as some kind of universal principle. California's legislature adopts this stance: it outlaws same-sex boards (at least all-male ones) in publicly traded companies.

Similarly, it's reasonable to examine the question of same-sex relationship laws with more nuance than saying everything should be the same as marriage because equality. Maybe the divorce and taxation laws should be different, because the straight ones ought to be written with children and rapidly declining female fertility in mind. Maybe the "next of kin" definition or inheritance laws should be adjusted, when it comes to extended family. Maybe gay marriage should have a fine-grained series of check boxes to opt in to each of the privileges and duties and consequences, because that's just good customer service for gay citizens, but straight marriage should be all or nothing, for good reasons.

I personally think that this is outdated, and that we should incentivize such things in more direct ways if we should at all, but this is a reasonable point of disagreement prima facie.

Straight couples can get married without any plans to have a child. Why is is different for gay couples?

Gay couples can also have a child either through adoption or biologically with a surrogate or sperm donor.

And at the same time, it is true that a gay couple can have children through adoption, or biologically.

It is for both of these reasons that I disagree with the argument.

That being said, at the time when the argument was relevant, the overwhelming majority of married heterosexual couples did have children, and gay adoption as well as IVF were not really a thing.

But nowadays, of course, anyone making this argument would be making it from bias. In the framing of the thread, which was the 1940s, it is more reasonable.

There is also the scientific question of whether sexual orientation is innate or a preference. For a long time, the science was wrong. Key research was done on that in the 1990s and early 2000s, and that filtered into the public conscience over time. Even as late as 2013, only 40% of Americans recognized that sexual orientation was innate. But once that premise became accepted, support for legalizing same-sex marriage quickly followed.

In the context of the US, your arguments are compelling, but they show exactly why the issue isn’t “morally indisputable.” It’s worth reading carefully through Obergefell. It spends a great deal of time establishing several things. First, that sexual orientation is innate and immutable: “Only in more recent years have psychiatrists and others recognized that sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable. See Brief for American Psychological Association et al. as Amici Curiae 7–17.” Second, that the understand of marriage had in fact changed to deemphasize children. Third, that new studies had shown that large numbers of same-sex couples were in fact raising children together. All of these established why same-sex unions should be protected as part of the fundamental constitutional right to marriage. Other approaches were possible and had been advanced. Some on the left wanted a broader rethinking of traditional marriage as a social institution. Obergefell could have treated marriage as just some government tax benefit, which was the libertarian view. Instead, it doubled down on the fundamental importance of traditional marriage, and the government’s legitimate interest in recognizing and promoting that institution, while expanding it to same-sex couples. It was very much the product of political debate and compromise amongst a variety of positions.

And in the end, this debate was ultimately a good thing because the political process fostered understanding and consensus. Same-sex marriage has become accepted quite rapidly. (Abortion rights, by contrast, remain highly contentious and no consensus has ever developed.)

This is rather an argument for a change in taxation laws instead of gay marriage.

Also, what is the scope of what people can “reasonably disagree” about? You mention same-sex marriage, but that’s illegal in most countries, including Switzerland. Are people in Switzerland, and India, and every single Muslim country in the world, for the most part not “reasonable?” And even in countries where it is legal, laws on related issues like surrogacy or religious exemptions vary. I’m talking about very socially liberal countries like France and Germany, where surrogacy is banned.

(1) Yes, bigotry against LGBT people makes Switzerland, India, and Indonesia less reasonable.

(2) The United States is generally underrated when it comes to moral clarity. We get a lot of stuff distinctively right and should pat ourselves on the back more often than we do.

(3) There clearly is a threshold past which we can refer directly to moral clarity, and can't hide behind the ambiguity of politics. It's been 73 years, and a lot of people on this thread don't have to Google "IG Farben", or, for that matter, to consult Wikipedia to know what I mean when I allude to IBM's complicity in the early 20th century. Some issues just are clear.

I agree there are some issues that are beyond politics. But there is an impulse to expand that category beyond what fairly fits in it. The debate and compromise attendant in politics is how societies achieve consensus, and prematurely stifling it creates problems.

But I disagree with you that reasonable countries can debate discriminating against gay people. The countries that do that are, in that way, lesser than the countries that don't. Seems pretty simple to me.

Also I want to point out that I specifically called the argument unreasonable and not the people. I meant "unreasonable" as a synonym to illogical. There is no real logical consistency to any arguments that there should be added legal benefits for straight couples that don't apply for gay couples. All the arguments fundamentally come down to some sort of bias against gay people which can be ideological or spiritual but are never based on reason or logic.

The rational/logical argument for opposing gay marriage has two strands:

1. Marriage != civil unions. You can have equal legal rights without the religious concept of marriage being involved, and many countries already had that, so the effort to go further in many places didn't involve doing anything beyond upsetting religious people. It didn't make the lives of gay people better in any specific legal ways. You seem to be conflating the two.

2. The historical taboo against homosexuality is because such couples don't produce children, and thus must be supported in old age or times of famine etc by the wider community who may not feel any particular loyalty to them. In a world where the family is the primary unit of support, such couples can end up with nobody to support them, and moreover, don't contribute to creating the next generation.

The concerns in (2) may seem parochial given the existence of the welfare state and contemporary concerns about over-population. But although it's a sad and scary prospect, it won't be a huge surprise if homophobia comes back in future generations because the demographic deficit is enormous and nobody's talking about it. The welfare state and pension schemes depends critically on a growing and strong economy to support it, which boils down at some level to having enough people. Yet birth rates are far too low to sustain those systems over the long run. If pension funds start drying up because there aren't enough workers, then gay couples might end up being hit by a doubly whammy of (a) not having children who can support them if the state fails to do so and (b) popular resentment against them for contributing to the problem of a declining population.

Of course, neither problem would be their fault. They didn't choose their orientation. However, people certainly knew that centuries ago and the taboo existed and was propagated because society needed families and a growing population to be stable. If pension funds are in as much trouble as demographers claim, we may see a return to that world, and it won't be entirely irrational.

You can try to be clever by listing ways religion might relate to business, but that doesn't change the fact that businesses generally, and in many ways are legally required to, let people do their jobs regardless of their faith. It works just fine.

Everyone knows it's possible to make things more political. Being apolitical means doing the opposite. It's a very simple concept from kindergarten, "more" and "less".

Drawing some strained connection to politics doesn't magically make it impossible for us to say "try to have less politics at work".

If I followed you around all day complaining that you're not vegan enough, you'd suddenly regain the ability to notice that some things are more political and more related to your job than others.

Yes, it may be hard, or it may be easy, to leave religion out of the workplace. Depending how religious you are, and how pervasive religious practices are in your culture. But it is in a totally different scale as leaving politics out of the workplace, or keeping politics out of the business.

As an example. If you make a strict separation of religion and the workplace, you just made a political decision. An employee who’s religion dictates they prey every morning, and you ask them to do so outside of the workplace, then you are doing politics.

The power dynamics involved in running a business and having workers means that you must make political decisions at some point. It is not like being an atheist because: a) a business is not a person, b) a religious decision usually does not affect people other then you self, and c) often being “apolitical” and not taking a stance, is simply taking a stance with the status quo. Not doing your morning prayer is not this nuanced.

Not that long ago religion WAS public policy (and depending where you live on the globe it still is; it's a spectrum).

We slowly segregated religion out of the business mattering for everyday life, but that just left a void what got filled by the same social and psychological mechanism that underpins religions.

While I believe it's incorrect to state that the current identity based political climate is just religion in disguise, it does share a hell lot of characteristics to dismiss the ties.

Saying "but this other thing is vaguely political" (or religious) is no excuse to insist that your company get involved in your pet causes.

Businesses take political and religious actions all the time.

Hobby Lobby refused to pay for any health insurance plan that covered contraception because they believed them to be abortifacients and contrary to the christian values of the corporation.

The difference today is that now it is employees rather than owners pushing for a certain stance.

This is rather an argument why not the employer, but the employee should pay for the health coverage. As they say in Germany:

"Wer zahlt, schafft an."

("who pays, commands", where the verb "anschaffen" (which I translate with "command" here) has the undertone of "giving sexual orders to a prostitute that she has to follow")

Nobody's claiming that work is completely unrelated to religion or politics. That's just the inverse of the stupid claim that because work sometimes involves those things, we might as well do them as much as we want.

Hobby Lobby filed the lawsuit that they are famous for. And they won the case? What an ignorant reply.

And we can’t really afford not to be involved in politics if that’s what it has devolved into. This isn’t about whether fiscal conservatism works or some foreign policy. We literally just elected people to the House who believe Trump is a savior combatting a Democratic ring of pedophiles who eat children. These people are showing up with assault rifles at places of business (see: Pizza Gate).

I think the most likely scenario here is that people who are pushing for their startups to take a stance are those who believe in science and human rights, and can’t stand to watch as the rest of the country buys into the madness. Because you can be sure that the people peddling this disinformation are absolutely fine with their businesses having a political stance.

See Koch brothers, Hobby Lobby, Chik Fil A, the police with their thin blue line flags and blue lives matter slogan.

If you want to ban talk about political discussion on economic policy from your business, fine, no one cares. But realistically thats not what this is about.

(I'm sure Alito thinks it means something else, but Alito is the only genuine nutbag on the court).

BLM is a cause. It's OK to care about other causes too. Is it racist of my company to buck the norm and put up a flag or fliers supporting an environmental cause like recycling or composting instead?

You're right, though; politics cannot be completely avoided. I just hope my friends don't assume I'm racist because I'm not constantly publicly shepherding racial equality and civil rights. A person should be allowed to have other hobbies and interests. A person should not be required to be vocal and outspoken. Neither should businesses.

As an employee, I'd prefer if my company did its part in hiring diverse candidates and fair pay, but I don't want to work at a place where I feel compelled to join in political discussions and movements that aren't really part of my job description.

One can argue that we can limit our political activism inside US (btw, I'm not an American). Fair enough. But even if we do that, there are a lot of political issues in US. Let's say one employee cares about racism issue, then there is another employee who cares more about environment causes, and finally there is another employee who cares more about censorship. At one point, the resources of the company will be spread too thin to support all of these causes.

In my example I purposely created a situation in which the business is forced into making a decision. And that decision will be made on a political basis.

If you operate a delivery company, and a factory farmer approaches you to deliver to grocery stores nationwide, you suspect it might be used to transport their specialty, veal. If you say: “I’m not doing politics!” and decide to transport their goods, you are being complacent in the torture of sentient baby mammals, and therefor just did some (highly questionable) politics. If you deny them, you also did (morally correct) politics.

-----

Note the above is only partially tongue-in-cheek, but I do it to make two points:

1. To you, your political viewpoints are obviously "morally correct". But the whole point is many people disagree with what you consider morally correct. I used my veal example because I feel it's something a lot of people on HN wouldn't have much of a problem with, but to me it clearly is torture to these animals, and the only reason society at large doesn't have more of a problem with it is because how the animals are treated is mostly hidden from view.

2. My broader point is that virtually every company could sell some product or service that could be used to further an end that equal number of people on both sides could think is morally horrid or morally righteous. It's dangerous to think that your view is the only right one.

Even selling to a general public is nuanced, as selling toothbrushes is not the same as selling automatic rifles. even though both can be used to kill people, one is optimized for keeping your teeth clean, while the other is optimized for causing injuries.

Further, I'd argue selling a service or product with no judgement of the buyer is also nonpolitical, even ICE. I'm not sure what the opposite side of ICE is, if it exists, but as long as you'd be willing to sell to that entity also, it can still be politically 'neutral.' Only when you decide to refuse or discontinue something have you made a stand, which is what many said about Cloudflare's semi recent takedown and why it was murky.

You cannot live your entire life on principle, some hills just aren’t worth dying on. This is really clear for the issue of the climate disaster. There is only so much a person can do, and industry has very much taken advantage of it and sold us the illusion of green consumerism. While people were busy buying energy savings light bulbs, industrial scale polluters simply kept on polluting. If the failure to tackle the climate disaster has taught me anything it is that living by principal is quite often a distraction.

Now back to the office building where all the businesses flag bigoted flags. Here is a hill that for me personally is to much for me to handle, unless my workplace would publicly denounce these bigoted views and at least publicly shame the neighboring offices, I would not want to be seen near there. If they did nothing I would interoperate that as complacency with bigotry and I could not accept that my workplace has those view (even though not directly stated).

(I’m ignoring what you say about terrorists and illegals [sic] as I don’t think I fully understand what you mean there).

---

EDIT: I know this sounds contradictory to my ancestor where I say that selling your service to ICE is a political decision, but it is not. What a person does is not nearly as significant as what a business does, and should not be judged by the same standards.

It’s not that you are wrong when you say “All lives matter”, heck I might find my self saying exactly this when I speak out against death penalty or bomb manufacturers.

But when you say this as a response to BLM you are being an asshole. You are saying that I can’t emphasize the importance of black people’s right to life in a society that seemingly to me treats them as lesser.

No, when one says it in response to BLM, they’re neither being an asshole nor or they saying you can’t emphasize anything. You can say whatever you want obviously. When people say it, they mean it literally, and they believe that the divisive rhetoric is harmful. Which seems to be supported by the evidence.

The slogan itself was born of a lie and a false narrative, which they continue to perpetuate. There’s no reason to continue allowing its use as a political weapon.

It's morally correct in your opinion.

This is the crux of the problem - corporate bodies taking a single stance while being comprised of multiple individuals with differing takes on the (often complicated) issues at hand.

You think you are on the moral high ground here, which is why you are taking such a strong stand.

Also, I think you were looking for "complicit", not complacent. You are also wrong there as well. We are voters, that is how we approve or disapprove of government actions. Not everyone has a high paying job and can afford the luxury of ignoring new clients or stopping business because of some holier-than-thou nonsense. People have bills to pay.

2. Selling hammers to the general public is not the same as catering a service to a single client that engages in human rights abuse.

3. Working for a company is not the same as controlling a company that engages in bad politics.

Maybe this is an extension of cancel culture; you're either with us or against us. If you don't believe what we believe then you're evil and we must do everything we can to drown you out. The statement here even has it. If you work with ICE you're morally incorrect and highly questionable. Never mind that it's legal and supported by ~50% of the population.

I’m not saying society hasn’t gotten more partisan, but businesses have been doing politics as long as they have been so powerful that their behavior can affect other people significantly. Perhaps there is another reason for this appearance of increased political activity by businesses. Possible explanation include:

- Businesses are doing worse politics now then before.

- News outlets are better at covering when a business is doing politics.

- Public opinion has shifted in what constitutes as bad politics.

- Public opinion is better reflected through better journalism.

But regardless, I don’t buy it when you say that “people were OK about companies not being political a decade ago”. Ten years ago we were in the middle of the great recession, companies were getting unfounded government bailouts and rich CEOs were being payed massive bonuses despite this. The general public was not happy about this. Receiving government bailout in a middle of a recession is very much participating in politics, we would perceive as such today, and people did so a decade ago.

What's the end state of companies being political? There is a huge number of issues at play at any given time. Do companies have to take a stance for every single one of them? Then can companies only appeal to the intersection of all those dimensions where there is a strict match between consumer and company stance? Do we have a list of pro BLM and not pro BLM companies? Then within each of those pro Palestine and not pro Palestine companies? Where does it end?

All kinds of atrocities have been committed with the full force of the law behind them. It doesn't make them any less of an atrocity.

These people are honestly and in good conscience saying “that is legal, but extremely immoral and my conscience refuses to allow me to participate.”

There is currently a case before the SCOTUS regarding whether adoption agencies can discriminate against gays and lesbians.

Again this is by people who have thought deeply about the issue, and decided that public policies is immoral. They are refusing to support it because they honestly believe it’s immoral.

Can’t the government say “you’re entitled to your beliefs, but you’re not entitled to act on them in the public sphere?”

"Is it moral?" is a complex question in many cases and that's partly why the courts exist - to help transform those moral questions with subjective answers into actionable objective ones.

Discussion of that complexity and those obstacles is not helped by simplistic condemnation of those who don't share your (general "your") point of view either on the political topic itself or the more abstract argument of corporate stance generally.

But it doesn’t answer the question of what to do when a company’s actions in the natural course of business will end up taking a stance even if that stance is the status quo.

Lobby groups, human rights associations, charities and polticial groups would gladly take your ICE funded profits and work for your goals.

The requirement for bosses and employees to be personally calling political shots in their personal and professional lives makes me think the corporations would prefer to be divided so they can make the call on their own terms.

We know ICE can get SAAS services elsewhere so what consequence is really being prosecuted here?

Atheism is not a religion.

Bald is not a color of hair.

Not collecting anything is not a hobby.

Not putting the BLM flag out is not politics.

Did you pay any federal taxes this year to support ICE instead if refusing to pay them? You just took a supportive political stance.

This doesn’t mean that companies have to change their tune but it doesn’t mean that they are absolved of the consequences of their decisions.

If there are failings in government, it's best to address the problems there. I'm not saying corporations won't expand its power over government if given the ability to do so, it's absolutely in its best interest to do so. The issue is they shouldn't be able to in the first place. A corporation is in essence an absolute dictatorship, and really shouldn't be given the power to exert an ideology over anything other than the purview of running the organization.

You are confusing a willful engagement of opinion for a contractual or procedural obligation.

Disagree. Family separation for illegal border crossings was an Obama-era policy that only became considered an important issue by the left when when the government changed. This is a matter of optics, not ethics.

if your definition of directly connected to politics extends to having customers who are political entities, then there's not really such thing as a business that isn't directly connected to politics.

The example product could be like Trello, but using the boards to organize their family separation programs. It's not directly a political product, but it's a tool that can be used to further some political policy.

What about a SaaS product that provides facial recognition services for any usecase? It's not Directly political, but could definitely be used that way.

Or please define "political decision".

Source for this claim?

Here’s mine: https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/did-the-obama-administrati...

The whole issue of crossing the border being a "misdemeanor" is idiotic IMO. I grew up in a country where it's a felony, and you'd be lucky to not get shot if you cross the border illegally in either direction. If a country is to maintain its sovereignty, that's how it has to be.

The offense didn't change, it's just that the Trump administration started doing more Section 1325 prosecutions[1]. The original law has been on the books since 1929, and IIRIRA in 1996 added a stronger penalty for reentry.

For decades prior to 2005, this law was hardly used, but under the George W. Bush administration, "Operation Streamline," a DHS/DOJ program still in effect today, began to use it.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

Most people complaining about family separation don’t even seem to be aware of the fact that it doesn’t apply if you’re a legal asylum seeker. It only applies if you’re caught breaking immigration law with some coyote (many of whom routinely traffic and rape children, or worse).

- Doing business with ICE during Biden, but not Trump is a political decision.

- Doing business with ICE during Biden and Trump is a political decision.

- Not doing business with ICE during Biden, but doing business with ICE during Trump is a political decision.

- Neither doing business with ICE during Biden nor Trump is a political decision.

If you are a business there will be a point where you make a political decision. Bailing out with a simple “I am being apolitical” is a cheap excuse for doing bad politics.

When Google employees decided who google should work for THATS political.

Some idiot chooses to try to make it political in nature and a bunch of other equally uninformed idiots believes the original idiot or takes up the cause.

Example 1: SaaS company is breaking no American laws and ICE isn't either. The fact you even think its morally correct to deny them service screams how ideologically possessed you are. Here's a hot fuckin' take for you... don't illegally come to America.

Example 2: I don't know enough about intellectual property and open source contributions to have an opinion.

Example 3: Maybe you're not doing politics, maybe you're just not a shitbag.

Example 4: Maybe you don't give a shit and just want to be left alone.

Example 5: You're just a controlling asshole, not politically against Palestine.

I would say, "I hope you get the point", but you won't... because its clear just from these examples alone you're so politically motivated that you can't see the world from any other vantage point.

That doesn't make it apolitical. Politics is more than just what's legal and what's not. ICE is a political organization, and there are different political stances that support it or don't. A company doing business with ICE supports it in some way, and is therefore political.

> The fact you even think its morally correct to deny them service screams how ideologically possessed you are. Here's a hot fuckin' take for you... don't illegally come to America.

Sounds like you have your own political stance on ICE and the work they do, and whether it's okay for a company to provide services to them. This only proves the parent's point.

> Maybe you're not doing politics, maybe you're just not a shitbag.

These are not mutually exclusive, in fact they are often closely related. The example the parent gave about worker pay, unionization, etc, are political issues - they are associated with political stances, and have been since the beginning.

You may think something is immoral, but we live in a nation with agreed upon processes for setting laws. You can't opt out of that and create your own private immigration law based on your own opinion.

You are free, however, to lobby and convince others to change the immigration laws. That is doing politics. You are free to even advocate for open borders if you want. It's a legitimate view. Reasonable people hold this view, although the same people understand you can't have a welfare state with porous borders. But it's not a view that most people agree with. Most prefer the generous welfare state and border control. Most people are perfectly fine with removing those who enter illegally back to their home countries.

If you think this is the embodiment of evil, then lobby to have the law changed, but don't try to enforce your own private immigration law. That's not doing "politics", that's throwing a tantrum. Politics involves working with the political system to convince a majority coalition to back your views. Throwing a tantrum is saying "ICE bad!! No business with ICE". Decide whether you want businesses to act like adults or like emotional children.

Is your defense of IBM’s work in Germany in the 1930s also that they were just following the law and were therefore (as you’re implying) politically neutral?

You do not, however, have to participate in another nation's immigration policies. This lack of understanding of jurisdictions may be why you think IBM cooperating with a foreign nation such as Germany is equivalent to IBM, an American firm, obeying American laws, working with American legal frameworks and participating in the American lawmaking process. If you are in a situation, say IBM Germany, where you think it's immoral to participate in that regime, then your only option is to shut down the business entirely and relocate to a jurisdiction you can work with. Then you will be working in that nation's laws. But in no universe do you get to create your own immigration policies. Why this is so hard to understand for some people is truly baffling. It's like they don't grok what a nation is, which might be why they don't understand the role of borders.

It sure looks that way if you watch american news. Reality is pretty different. Most people leave politics at home, and most companies try to be politically neutral - or at least try to be an "agent for good" while avoiding controversy.

One way is that the government makes decisions. Some of those decisions affect businesses. If the businesses don't give any input, the government still decides - they just decide in a vacuum. That could be sub-optimal for businesses. (I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business.)

The second way politics can be done to you is that someone outside decides that you aren't active enough in supporting their political side, and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left, but that's not universal.) The only thing you can do to avoid that is try to move in lockstep with the most strident voices telling you what you should do... but I've never been a big fan of appeasement. My preferred approach is to ignore them - but then, I don't have to make a payroll, so it's really easy for me to say that.

> I'm not talking about lobbying for special treatment - just sane policy as it affects your business.

I wonder what sort of policies a coal company would view as "sane", as it affects their business.

> and therefore that you deserve to be destroyed. (At the moment, in the US, this seems to come mostly from the left

Are you perhaps limiting the scope of your consideration to just "cancel culture"? I don't want to make a whataboutist response, but it's not good to cherry-pick a single mechanism of political oppression (which is disproportionately used by people with a certain political leaning) and miss out other sorts, such as business owners firing employees, or violence by the state against unarmed civilians, or attacks by politically-motivated armed extremists.

In practice having "no stance" means supporting the status quo

Voting "remain" in Brexit was supporting the status quo. Voting "leave" was opposing it. Having no stance on Brexit means having no stance on it.

We're allowed to not have opinions on everything.

IMO, no, no and no.

Where it becomes politics is when you start trying to force others to follow your preferred behaviours in those areas, over and above what the law requires. If you want to do that then you should vote and/or campaign to get the law changed, via the usual routes, and normally outside the workplace (unless directly related).

Well irs policy doesn’t allow tax free benefits in this fashion. So employees had to pay extra income tax that was “imputed” from these taxable benefits. And google paid the employees extra taxes.

Is this a political position? Would it make sense for google to cheer for sale sex marriage which reduces their own financial burden? Is it the right thing to do?

Or consider immigration... many high tech companies have substantial immigrant work forces. The thin wedge of the “Muslim ban” in 2017 was a threat to their businesses.

So it makes total sense that a company would engage in politics. Since some of the hot button political issues today boil down to “who is human and who gets full rights?”, yeah that’s a fight that one cannot turn a back to, and many companies cannot.

I'm not sure what issues you're referring to in your last para; I don't see any disputes over who's human. (I'm not in the US and am trying not to follow its politics too closely, in case it's contagious.)

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/animal-news/orangutan-granted-l...

same with the other two?

- Employers have a direct role in the social safety net, for example choosing health care and retirement savings options for their employees.

- Related to above, because there are limited gov't protections for things like vacation and childcare leave, and firing in general, employer policies form a bigger part of work/life tradeoffs.

- The US workforce has more diversity than most countries along several axes, including race, age, and immigration status, so employer policies about minority protections impact more employees.

Since stances on the policy areas above form the main battleground for American politics, companies make many decisions that are politically valenced.

And/or did the government decide to push their politics and religion on Hobby Lobby via their healthcare legislation?

(edit: not endorsing either the government's position, just saying that yes, government is exactly where we see politics being forced on things)

I accept, though, that corporations are artificial constructs that exist (ostensibly) to benefit humans, and therefore placing restrictions and duties on corporations is inherently preferable to placing them on humans themselves.

Elsewhere in the thread, you call these "Europe good, USA bad" points. I certainly don't think that's intrinsically true. It's just a different interface that puts more choices in the hands of employers instead of government. A side effect is that employers are going to get judged by employees, investors , customers and the public about how they make those choices.

The issue is that when someone says "let's stay away from politics", it's pedantic and obtuse to start listing things that in some way involve politics.

It's clear what they meant: the more something is related to politics and unrelated to work, the more we should try to avoid it.

Your response does the exact opposite of that, bringing up a bunch of hot-button political issues tenuously related to work, which is a great way to bring more conflict about politics into the workplace.

My list was about how the US has more issues requiring good faith discussion, which certainly opens the door to bad faith as well.

As far as using "let's stay away from politics" as a magic wand to shut down a topic, you are expecting people to agree with you about what belongs at work without discussion or judgement. I think companies and individuals can make things more efficient by clearly articulating a mission, and by proactively taking a stance about how hot-button issues relate to that mission or not. But nothing is going to exempt you from judgement when people disagree, and there's always the chance that you really are the bad guy. That's life with other humans.

> From the outside looking in, American politics has long since ceased being about policy and idea's, it is now a contest of identity where it doesn't matter what someone stands for so long as they are on the team I support.

Yeah I have intentionally avoided the media and political nonsense of the last decade or so, and it just seems increasingly absurd. Everyone is a radical activist these days. And to radicals, there is no neutral position.

No one is joining Coinbase if they're opposed to Coinbase's financial system objectives. It's not a secret.

If someone was actively opposed to Coinbase's primary business objectives, how would they even be a productive employee of Coinbase in the first place?

It's a false equivalency to try to equate the company's core business with completely unrelated political topics.

Lay political discourse (and especially partisan media) does frequently fit the description of identity banners and other tribal + value markers.

But it's also very, very wrong to say that politics has ceased being about policy and ideas. It is definitely true that there are marked differences between policy goals advanced by parties (and sometimes individuals within). And it's not exactly rare that you can find lay participants who have a policy or ideas that are important to them.

This was long the norm in Europe and North America. Western Europe seems to have less of it at the moment, and perhaps for the last 25 years; the US had a ~30 year stretch from the mid 50s. The current situation is quite bad, but has of course been worse.

Trying to remain neutral doesn’t work.

It's like the smartass kid who acts like he doesn't know what "clean" means because there might be a molecule of dirt somewhere.

Everything in the US is political now: face masks, 5G networks, vaccines, mail. Facebook dominates people's lives yet is an endless spam of politics. Google search is facing anti-trust because it is "liberal", while the ISPs and other monopolies are strangely un-molested. Every tech company, apolitical or not, is automatically suspected by half of the country mostly because of their address.

But just for clarity, the major US debate is whether the election was fraudulent or not which is considerably higher stakes than a contest of identity. You can hedge your corporate bets by having no opinion on the mater but necessarily one of those parties is directly subverting the democracy. For anyone ok with that, then silence is undoubtedly a profitable path: why cut your business in half and alienate half of potential customers/employees over mere democracy?

I can foresee a near future where this becomes a very pertinent question. Suppose that, due to some underhanded dealings of the Electoral College (and/or SCOTUS), the current President were to be granted a second term. Further suppose that 70% of the country saw this process as illegitimate, but wanted to avoid any direct violent conflict.

My question is: Would big tech companies (or key employees within them) work together to implement a digital General Strike across the country?

This would be an extreme and probably criminal form of civil disobedience, although I imagine the perpetrators could be motivated by an expectation of receiving a presidential pardon if they were successful.

I'm sure that someone in the contingency planning departments of these big companies someone has gamed out what would happen if Apple and Google and Microsoft all pushed software updates to devices and online services which blocked certain activities (e.g. use by fossil fuel companies?) while controlling the media narrative by promoting messages from their side.

Also, what does Brazil have to do with this? I live here. Are you under the impression that Brazil is under the rule of a dictator or something?

On your first paragraph it seems to me a reasonable argument that if all the chemical companies in Germany dragged their feet, obfuscated, and ideally just outright refused to supply the government with poisonous gases, once it became clear they were being used on people, less people would have died.

Both engaged in many of the same drives towards furthering their own personal political agendas during their respective administrations and while Trump says many things more baldly, and certainly lies much more flippantly, I fail to see how either his executive decisions or administrative pushes were or are in any notable way actually more authoritarian than those of Obama.

Just because one leader speaks more blandly than another doesn't mean that their fundamental governing power is much different, or that the more bellicose sounding figure is somehow an authoritarian if he or she is still fully constrained by the rest of a democratic government apparatus.

Furthermore, many if not most of the tendencies towards much broader presidential authority that Trump currently enjoys were established by a whole history of executive expansion which came before his term, and some of those started under much less visibly aggressive presidents. Focusing on what the orange man says more than on the deeper dynamics behind his office seems to me like more an exercise in ideological labeling than sound analysis of what authoritarian leadership means.

Someone showing authoritarian tendencies does not mean the country is under authoritarian rule. I don't like Bolsonaro but he is very far from having any real power in the country. And I would say the same of Trump. I don't know anything about the others.

>On your first paragraph it seems to me a reasonable argument that if all the chemical companies in Germany

Why would they do that? Hitler was popular because he actually fixed a lot of problems in Germany at the time. Either way, my argument is still that businesses shouldn't support or not support any particular politician. They should just move on with their business impartially, even if "democracy" is being threatened or if their product is being used for evil. It's not your job to judge how people use your technology.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Reich_Trilogy

Not sure why reading a censored German press would give you an accurate view of public opinion, either; and the German citizens' writings will vary depending on which citizens you read, and how circumspect they were about writing.

[0]: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/...

Since you recommended me a book, I recommend you this book in return https://www.amazon.com/Human-Smoke-Beginnings-World-Civiliza...

I didn't intend to recommend a book - the link is just a graph of Trump's approval polls over time - but I thank you for yours. I'm not a particularly big fan of 'official narratives', not least because I study issue frames and so many of them are self-serving.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13301372676801863...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13304872462360289...

https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1330186217355350020

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13303679886215946...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13305556452134830...

https://twitter.com/TeamTrump

> If you were a businessman in Germany during WW2 you would not have been a brave warrior fighting to preserve democracy, you'd just have moved on with your life and kept running your business, as would have (and as did) most people.

Different people have different opinions about right and wrong. A different set behaviors by a large number of people would bring about a different outcome. Left unchecked, the luxury of dissent becomes more and more painful for company and individual.

In the modern world with a weaponized/activist media this will not work. If you don't block the wrong-thinkers major media outlets will write article after article about how you platform Nazis or whatever, even though there's no Nazis in sight. If you stand up to them they will go after the advertisers. "Why are you advertising on a site that platforms Nazis?" And there's not really consequences. When Youtube, Paypal, etc. ban these people there's barely a blip in their business.

To me, as a person who doesn't live in America, the US has gone absolutely crazy over this idea that policy doesn't matter so long as a person is on my team. This is an indictment of the media who have failed in their job at keeping the public informed in an unbiased manner, reducing complex macro-economics and geopolitics to catchy headlines and gotcha-questions.

Is my country any better? God no, most of our media is just a budget version of the American model, but it is America who infected the rest of the world with this.

When policy and idea's become the most important part of any election, that's when you can start addressing real social and economic problems like homelessness, LGBT rights, wealth disparity and the loss of jobs to offshoring manufacturing, because you'll have more time to discuss these things like adults now that politicians aren't reducing their job to 140 character hot-takes.

The one person I know that felt put in this position, due to his lifestyle business, felt pressured by competitors to aim his thoughts, not by his customers. He only faced pushback when his thoughts, that his customers hadn’t asked for, came off as selfish and tone deaf. He shot himself in the foot.

Do you remember when Chic-Fil-A was getting boycotted and harassed for the owner's donations to evil homophobic charities? Those charities were The Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Seriously, that's who it was. The Salvation Army and youth sports. Not exactly top of anyone sane's list of "problematic" charities. Chic-Fil-A caved.

Every few weeks I see blue check Twitter going after some nobody to get them banned, but I don't keep track of those things.

It's worth noting that the company's official policy was and is to allow people to stay as long as they like without making a purchase, and that witnesses to the event described white people in the store doing exactly that at the same time the black man was arrested.

Instead they closed 8,000 stores and put their employees through critical race theory inspired implicit bias training.

(Also, they are neither homophobic nor anti-homeless)

My purchasing power says otherwise. I'll take my business to the company that sticks to its job and doesn't preach at me.

With the present-day monopolies/oligopolies it's different. If your financial well-being directly depends on Google listing your site, and Visa/MasterCard processing your payment, they can de-facto decide what is acceptable and what's not. And to force you to pretend that you share their views under a penalty of completely destroying your business.

As opposed to non-American companies who never expose their preferences to leaders?

I think they could manage it by, stick with me here, not lobbying. Especially on issues unrelated to their core business.

I don't know how anyone can say this and be considered a serious person.

One American party denies climate change, downplays COVID19, tries to take healthcare from millions, tries to disenfranchise anyone not voting for them, limits legal immigration and asylum seekers, and refuses to admit there is a problem with systemic racism.

But by all means, remain "apolitical," since apparently this isn't about policy anymore. Wacky stuff man...

Being apathetic to politics is consequential in and of itself.

As to your claim about immigration, I'm not interested in defending any particular policy position. But, there is some research that indicates immigration boosts overall labor participation [1].

http://giovanniperi.ucdavis.edu/uploads/5/6/8/2/56826033/per...

It doesn't help your case when you lump arguable, but sane positions with denying climate change.

They're particular to the modern conservative party.

Many of my liberal friends believe in crazy stuff like russiagate or defending BLM looters/rioters or proudly voting for a political candidate that supported bombings in the middle east that lead to the death of countless civilians (including kids) while simultaneously villainizing Dubya for being a war mongering criminal.

You'll have to excuse me for not seeing your "clear delineation" - whatever that means.

This doesn’t describe either party. Also, there isn’t a problem with systemic racism. And no, I don’t support the party that you think.

You know, you're not allowed to say that in a lot of American offices now. Even in a technical context where it has an established meaning and multiple alternatives are now jockeying for mainstream. It's "exclusionary", which is a new HR code word for "politically incorrect". The battle is over and lost. Everything is politicized now, and all anyone who doesn't like it can do is fall on their sword. Alone.