8 ms·

Whether you agree with it or not, it is /absolutely appropriate/ to pressure corporations to not do business with other companies or organizations or government

Whether you agree with it or not, it is /absolutely appropriate/ to pressure corporations to not do business with other companies or organizations or governments you find morally reprehensible. If it was Boeing providing bombers to the PRC to use against civilian populations, many people inside and outside of Boeing would be pressuring that contract to be cancelled. What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral? The company doesn't have to /care/. The company can go after their almighty dollars for their shareholder if they want. And people can then choose to target that company in different ways, or target other companies that do business with that company, etc. Boycotts, strikes, sabotage, sit-ins, work slowdowns, etc has all been used to pressure companies to take actions because of political reasons.

helen___keller 7y ago
Agreed, but > sabotage Not sure about this one, this sounds a tad illegal
- criddell 7y ago
  It's just civil disobedience, isn't it?
- llamataboot 7y ago
  sure, and github could press charges. People have been getting arrested dismantling US war machinery for decades, etc. I'm not saying it's legal, I'm not even commenting on whether I agree, I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" doesn't hold water.
  - Goladus 7y ago
    > I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" You haven't actually presented a supporting argument for it, though. What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral? You are interfering with their freedom of association. You must weigh the morality of that violation vs what you hope to gain. It's not an obvious answer and is why the example of Boeing selling bombers actively being used to bomb civilians is misleading and why I objected to it.
    - drewbug01 7y ago
      > You are interfering with their freedom of association. A corporation has no inherent "freedom of association." A corporation has exactly what rights we choose to give it, because it is fundamentally a legal fiction - the concept of a "corporate person" is useful for legal reasons, so we create such a thing in our laws. But it only has the rights we ascribe to it, because it isn't an actual being. With that in mind: we've given corporations no "freedom of association." But even if we accepted your claim here - how does "pressuring a company to drop a contract" violate its supposed "freedom of association?" "Freedom of association" is not freedom from consequences. "Freedom of association" means "you may associate with whomever you please and the government may not interfere". It does not mean "you may associate with whomever you please and no one may protest."
      - Goladus 7y ago
        The only question that matters in this argument is whether a corporation's freedom to do business is worth more than stopping the action you consider immoral. Your attempts at refutation are all general and fail to address the critical equation.
        drewbug01 7y ago
        If you will, describe what exactly you think a "corporation's freedom to do business" entails? Where do you find such a definition? Is it in the same place you found a corporation's "freedom of association"? It makes sense that you don't think my refutations are valid: I fundamentally disagree with your underlying premise that a corporation has any rights beyond the limited ones explicitly assigned in various bodies of law. And I specifically disagree that a corporation has a "freedom of association" or a "freedom to do business." So of course I'm not engaging with your question of "is whether a corporation's freedom to do business is worth more than stopping the action you consider immoral". Why would I? I disagree with the whole, underlying, fundamental premise of your question. A company has no freedom of association! It has no freedom to do business! These things do not exist, so refuting your question is impossible! (And, setting aside the whole absurdity of the central question: even if companies had these rights as you claim, how on earth would a letter from concerned developers infringe upon those rights? It's patently absurd to think that a group of customers sending a letter to a company somehow infringes upon its rights, unless you think that these "rights" entail freedom to do business without any criticism or bad press whatsoever)
- adrianN 7y ago
  It's not always the case that illegal things are also morally wrong. Whether sabotaging Github is one of those cases is up for debate of course.
  - zer00eyz 7y ago
    Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King... There is a path that isn't destructive. It does require actual sacrifice on the part of those protesting. If one were to make this level of sacrifice would it be at an ICE office, or the Whitehouse? Where would the protest be more effective?
zer00eyz 7y ago
Github isn't a bomber and ICE isn't the PRC. This is more like CAT refusing to sell road construction equipment to the highway department in the PRC. The only thing the cancelation of this contract will do is make those within GitHub who are dissatisfied feel better that they have "done something". It actually accomplishes very little, and I would argue nothing at all.
- maxwell 7y ago
  > This is more like CAT refusing to sell road construction equipment to the highway department in the PRC. CAT should refuse to do business with organizations that operate concentration camps, including ICE and the CCP.
  - LiNeXT 7y ago
    Shouldn't be an issue then since ICE doesn't operate concentration camps.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      Depends on how you want to split hairs. If your organization (in this case, ICE) is at the point where people are arguing technicalities about whether what you’re doing technically qualifies as a concentration camp, I’d argue you are far from where you should be ethically.
      - jariel 7y ago
        There is no 'splitting hairs'; to compare migrants in detention seeking to come into the country as 'concentration camps' is not only wrong, it's deeply insulting. ICE detention is just plainly that, and that's all. Some conditions are poor because facilities are overflowing, not because they are designed that way. Most migrants are economic in nature, there's no pressing need for them to try to cross, and they know it's illegal - moreover - all of those economic migrants clog up the system to the detriment of actual refugees. Of course, the migrants can leave any time - there's a policy in place such that they can chose to return home without having any mark on their record with respect to future ability to migrate to the US, and it's processed generally quickly, within several days. There is really no comparison at all between those detained trying to enter a country, and 'concentration camps' - in terms of motivations, lawfulness, conditions, effects, legal recourse, fallout, etc. - they are in every way different. The PRC camps in China could be referred to as 'concentration camps' because people are arbitrary detained on the basis of their culture, for any duration, they don't have legal recourse, they cannot leave, there is no judicial oversight, there is no freedom of information or freedom of press, they are not allowed any contact with the outside world, and they are put through some very aggressive 'thought control' programs that in many ways is worse than physical torture or confinement. To boot, the system itself is corrupt and prisoners organs are being sold through irregular channels.
yters 7y ago
At what point is it appropriate for employees to start sabotaging GitHub b/c they dislike the ICE contract? On the other hand, is it appropriate for GitHub to fire said employees, or perhaps press charges in the case of illegal activity?
- Goladus 7y ago
  At what point is it appropriate for employees to start sabotaging GitHub b/c they dislike the ICE contract? When they have good enough reason to believe that breaking up the contract will achieve a positive end that is worth the violation of freedom of association and precedence for using coercive, destructive and potentially illegal methods. In this case, I don't think any of the activists can really articulate the goal they think would be reasonably achieved, beyond having a vague personal feeling of satisfaction for making ICE's job harder and punishing their employer for doing something they didn't like. In fact, it seems to me as if temporarily crippling ICE's software development workflow is not likely to improve the situation on the ground for migrants at all.
  - yters 7y ago
    That's a good point. If everything we do gets politicized, then that'll pretty much grind productivity to a halt, and our society will devolve into a bunch of warring factions. There's probably good grounds for keeping most domains apolitical.
Goladus 7y ago
> If it was Boeing providing bombers to the PRC to use against civilian populations Of course, it's not... > Boycotts, strikes, sabotage, sit-ins, work slowdowns, etc has all been used to pressure companies to take actions because of political reasons. As long as I'm getting downvotes, I might as well add: These actions are usually done to achieve a realistic goal, not simply to punish a company for doing business with your own government because it's currently controlled by the opposition party.
- dwild 7y ago
  > because it's currently controlled by the opposition party. It's not because it's controlled by the opposition party, it's because it's doing something we believe is immoral. The distinction is important.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - masonic 7y ago
    it's doing something we believe is immoral These deeds and these contract precede this administration, but there were no such efforts then.
    - dwild 7y ago
      > These deeds and these contract precede this administration, but there were no such efforts then. There was no broad knowledge of it too.
      - masonic 7y ago
        There was no broad knowledge of it Now, ask yourself why you were unaware of it, bearing in mind what your choices of news/information were at the time.
pjc50 7y ago
The US has provided weapons to various middle East governments for use against civilians, and hardly anyone protests that.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  The entire US left and even elements of the populist right are in constant protest of these arms sales. This is nonsense.
  - kaibee 7y ago
    > The entire US left Uh, no. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security/obama-administration-arms-sales-offers-to-saudi-top-115-billion-report-idUSKCN11D2JQ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security/obama-... It is the populist left and populist right.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      Yeah, the Obama administration was not on the left by any reasonable, world historical political accounting. His hallmark legislation was a Republican think tank healthcare bill from the 90s.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
commandlinefan 7y ago
> governments you find morally reprehensible. Fair enough. So the goalpost is moved back a bit as to whether or not the U.S. government is morally reprehensible in enforcing border security just as all other governments do.
- SauciestGNU 7y ago
  >just as all other governments do. I take issue with this, as the manner in which other state actors enforce their border security do not all involve similar cruelty to the particular manner in which ICE enforces border security.
  - leereeves 7y ago
    I assume you're referring to the conditions in ICE facilities. I agree, they're in bad shape. But they're in bad shape because Democrats refuse to fund them. What share of the blame do you allocate to the Democrats for that? Edit: Downvote away, if you want to bury the truth, but this is a fact. Democrats are limiting the number of beds in ICE facilities, causing overcrowding, in a misguided attempt to stop immigration enforcement. https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693460861/ice-detention-beds-new-stumbling-block-in-efforts-to-prevent-another-shutdown https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693460861/ice-detention-beds-...
    - SauciestGNU 7y ago
      I absolutely assign lots of blame to Democrats and I was one of the few who were protesting Obama in support of the DREAM Act and against his high rate of deportation.
      - leereeves 7y ago
        That sounds like you blame Democrats who don't entirely agree with you. But how much do you blame the far-left Democrats, who want exactly the same open borders policy you want, for the predicable consequences of their policy of defunding ICE? And if these activists succeed in blocking ICE's contract with GitHub, and that causes even worse conditions, will you also blame these activists for that?
tomp 7y ago
Did you also support boycotting all US companies funding US government (by paying taxes) who was literally bombing civilian populations (and providing rockets to Saudi Arabia for more bombing of civilian populations) during the previous administration, or are you just a hypocrite rationalizing your hate for Trump? At least Trump hasn't started any new wars (yet). Best president of the past 30 years IMO (so far).

helen___keller 7y ago

Agreed, but > sabotage Not sure about this one, this sounds a tad illegal

criddell 7y ago
It's just civil disobedience, isn't it?
llamataboot 7y ago
sure, and github could press charges. People have been getting arrested dismantling US war machinery for decades, etc. I'm not saying it's legal, I'm not even commenting on whether I agree, I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" doesn't hold water.
- Goladus 7y ago
  > I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" You haven't actually presented a supporting argument for it, though. What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral? You are interfering with their freedom of association. You must weigh the morality of that violation vs what you hope to gain. It's not an obvious answer and is why the example of Boeing selling bombers actively being used to bomb civilians is misleading and why I objected to it.
  - drewbug01 7y ago
    > You are interfering with their freedom of association. A corporation has no inherent "freedom of association." A corporation has exactly what rights we choose to give it, because it is fundamentally a legal fiction - the concept of a "corporate person" is useful for legal reasons, so we create such a thing in our laws. But it only has the rights we ascribe to it, because it isn't an actual being. With that in mind: we've given corporations no "freedom of association." But even if we accepted your claim here - how does "pressuring a company to drop a contract" violate its supposed "freedom of association?" "Freedom of association" is not freedom from consequences. "Freedom of association" means "you may associate with whomever you please and the government may not interfere". It does not mean "you may associate with whomever you please and no one may protest."
    - Goladus 7y ago
      The only question that matters in this argument is whether a corporation's freedom to do business is worth more than stopping the action you consider immoral. Your attempts at refutation are all general and fail to address the critical equation.
      - drewbug01 7y ago
        If you will, describe what exactly you think a "corporation's freedom to do business" entails? Where do you find such a definition? Is it in the same place you found a corporation's "freedom of association"? It makes sense that you don't think my refutations are valid: I fundamentally disagree with your underlying premise that a corporation has any rights beyond the limited ones explicitly assigned in various bodies of law. And I specifically disagree that a corporation has a "freedom of association" or a "freedom to do business." So of course I'm not engaging with your question of "is whether a corporation's freedom to do business is worth more than stopping the action you consider immoral". Why would I? I disagree with the whole, underlying, fundamental premise of your question. A company has no freedom of association! It has no freedom to do business! These things do not exist, so refuting your question is impossible! (And, setting aside the whole absurdity of the central question: even if companies had these rights as you claim, how on earth would a letter from concerned developers infringe upon those rights? It's patently absurd to think that a group of customers sending a letter to a company somehow infringes upon its rights, unless you think that these "rights" entail freedom to do business without any criticism or bad press whatsoever)
adrianN 7y ago
It's not always the case that illegal things are also morally wrong. Whether sabotaging Github is one of those cases is up for debate of course.
- zer00eyz 7y ago
  Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King... There is a path that isn't destructive. It does require actual sacrifice on the part of those protesting. If one were to make this level of sacrifice would it be at an ICE office, or the Whitehouse? Where would the protest be more effective?

zer00eyz 7y ago

Github isn't a bomber and ICE isn't the PRC. This is more like CAT refusing to sell road construction equipment to the highway department in the PRC. The only thing the cancelation of this contract will do is make those within GitHub who are dissatisfied feel better that they have "done something". It actually accomplishes very little, and I would argue nothing at all.

maxwell 7y ago
> This is more like CAT refusing to sell road construction equipment to the highway department in the PRC. CAT should refuse to do business with organizations that operate concentration camps, including ICE and the CCP.
- LiNeXT 7y ago
  Shouldn't be an issue then since ICE doesn't operate concentration camps.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    Depends on how you want to split hairs. If your organization (in this case, ICE) is at the point where people are arguing technicalities about whether what you’re doing technically qualifies as a concentration camp, I’d argue you are far from where you should be ethically.
    - jariel 7y ago
      There is no 'splitting hairs'; to compare migrants in detention seeking to come into the country as 'concentration camps' is not only wrong, it's deeply insulting. ICE detention is just plainly that, and that's all. Some conditions are poor because facilities are overflowing, not because they are designed that way. Most migrants are economic in nature, there's no pressing need for them to try to cross, and they know it's illegal - moreover - all of those economic migrants clog up the system to the detriment of actual refugees. Of course, the migrants can leave any time - there's a policy in place such that they can chose to return home without having any mark on their record with respect to future ability to migrate to the US, and it's processed generally quickly, within several days. There is really no comparison at all between those detained trying to enter a country, and 'concentration camps' - in terms of motivations, lawfulness, conditions, effects, legal recourse, fallout, etc. - they are in every way different. The PRC camps in China could be referred to as 'concentration camps' because people are arbitrary detained on the basis of their culture, for any duration, they don't have legal recourse, they cannot leave, there is no judicial oversight, there is no freedom of information or freedom of press, they are not allowed any contact with the outside world, and they are put through some very aggressive 'thought control' programs that in many ways is worse than physical torture or confinement. To boot, the system itself is corrupt and prisoners organs are being sold through irregular channels.

yters 7y ago

At what point is it appropriate for employees to start sabotaging GitHub b/c they dislike the ICE contract? On the other hand, is it appropriate for GitHub to fire said employees, or perhaps press charges in the case of illegal activity?

Goladus 7y ago
At what point is it appropriate for employees to start sabotaging GitHub b/c they dislike the ICE contract? When they have good enough reason to believe that breaking up the contract will achieve a positive end that is worth the violation of freedom of association and precedence for using coercive, destructive and potentially illegal methods. In this case, I don't think any of the activists can really articulate the goal they think would be reasonably achieved, beyond having a vague personal feeling of satisfaction for making ICE's job harder and punishing their employer for doing something they didn't like. In fact, it seems to me as if temporarily crippling ICE's software development workflow is not likely to improve the situation on the ground for migrants at all.
- yters 7y ago
  That's a good point. If everything we do gets politicized, then that'll pretty much grind productivity to a halt, and our society will devolve into a bunch of warring factions. There's probably good grounds for keeping most domains apolitical.

Goladus 7y ago

> If it was Boeing providing bombers to the PRC to use against civilian populations Of course, it's not... > Boycotts, strikes, sabotage, sit-ins, work slowdowns, etc has all been used to pressure companies to take actions because of political reasons. As long as I'm getting downvotes, I might as well add: These actions are usually done to achieve a realistic goal, not simply to punish a company for doing business with your own government because it's currently controlled by the opposition party.

dwild 7y ago
> because it's currently controlled by the opposition party. It's not because it's controlled by the opposition party, it's because it's doing something we believe is immoral. The distinction is important.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- masonic 7y ago
  it's doing something we believe is immoral These deeds and these contract precede this administration, but there were no such efforts then.
  - dwild 7y ago
    > These deeds and these contract precede this administration, but there were no such efforts then. There was no broad knowledge of it too.
    - masonic 7y ago
      There was no broad knowledge of it Now, ask yourself why you were unaware of it, bearing in mind what your choices of news/information were at the time.

pjc50 7y ago

The US has provided weapons to various middle East governments for use against civilians, and hardly anyone protests that.

claudeganon 7y ago
The entire US left and even elements of the populist right are in constant protest of these arms sales. This is nonsense.
- kaibee 7y ago
  > The entire US left Uh, no. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security/obama-administration-arms-sales-offers-to-saudi-top-115-billion-report-idUSKCN11D2JQ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security/obama-... It is the populist left and populist right.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    Yeah, the Obama administration was not on the left by any reasonable, world historical political accounting. His hallmark legislation was a Republican think tank healthcare bill from the 90s.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]

commandlinefan 7y ago

> governments you find morally reprehensible. Fair enough. So the goalpost is moved back a bit as to whether or not the U.S. government is morally reprehensible in enforcing border security just as all other governments do.

SauciestGNU 7y ago
>just as all other governments do. I take issue with this, as the manner in which other state actors enforce their border security do not all involve similar cruelty to the particular manner in which ICE enforces border security.
- leereeves 7y ago
  I assume you're referring to the conditions in ICE facilities. I agree, they're in bad shape. But they're in bad shape because Democrats refuse to fund them. What share of the blame do you allocate to the Democrats for that? Edit: Downvote away, if you want to bury the truth, but this is a fact. Democrats are limiting the number of beds in ICE facilities, causing overcrowding, in a misguided attempt to stop immigration enforcement. https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693460861/ice-detention-beds-new-stumbling-block-in-efforts-to-prevent-another-shutdown https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693460861/ice-detention-beds-...
  - SauciestGNU 7y ago
    I absolutely assign lots of blame to Democrats and I was one of the few who were protesting Obama in support of the DREAM Act and against his high rate of deportation.
    - leereeves 7y ago
      That sounds like you blame Democrats who don't entirely agree with you. But how much do you blame the far-left Democrats, who want exactly the same open borders policy you want, for the predicable consequences of their policy of defunding ICE? And if these activists succeed in blocking ICE's contract with GitHub, and that causes even worse conditions, will you also blame these activists for that?

tomp 7y ago

Did you also support boycotting all US companies funding US government (by paying taxes) who was literally bombing civilian populations (and providing rockets to Saudi Arabia for more bombing of civilian populations) during the previous administration, or are you just a hypocrite rationalizing your hate for Trump? At least Trump hasn't started any new wars (yet). Best president of the past 30 years IMO (so far).