8 ms·
Making organization membership public would trample on personal privacy quite effectively in some respects, such as with disease support groups or PACs; medical
by msla 7y ago
Making organization membership public would trample on personal privacy quite effectively in some respects, such as with disease support groups or PACs; medical privacy is taken seriously, but is there such a thing as political affiliation being private? Is it a violation of someone's privacy to reveal they give to the ACLU?
- panarky 7y agoThis is where pseudonymous identities make a lot of sense. In a world where organizations are radically transparent and individuals have radical privacy, before you join the disease support group or donate to the ACLU, you already know the organization's records about that transaction will be public information. You can restrict your activities to organizations that do not keep personally identifiable information. Or you could join the support group with a pseudonymous identity or donate cryptocurrency to the ACLU.
- kerkeslager 7y agoThe entire point of organizational transparency is to prevent organizations from trampling the rights of individuals, so in cases where organizational transparency would trample the rights of individuals, the rights of individuals supersedes the need for organizational transparency.
- msla 7y agoSo, should it have become public knowledge that Brendan Eich donated $1,000 to support Proposition 8?
- kerkeslager 7y agoI'm gonna need some context there. To begin with you can't just donate to support a bill. What you probably mean is that he donated to an organization or politician who supported Prop 8, so say that. The important detail is whether the funds were his personal funds, or whether they belonged to his company: i.e. was he acting on his own behalf, or on behalf of an organization? It's an inane question, though, because the inane point you're trying to make is that individual privacy might protect homophobes. That's true, but it would also protect gays and allies who donated to oppose proposition 8. The fact that privacy allows people to secretly donate to political campaigns is the point. Part of the reason gay marriage is legal today is that people donated to people like Harvey Milk, at a time when donating to the campaign of a gay governor was risking your job and social standing. Human rights still apply to humans who do bad things. If you are willing to give up human rights to fight bad people trying to do bad things, then those rights won't be there to protect good people trying to do good things, either.
- msla 7y agoSo a person spends money to support an odious cause, and that person gets money by being associated with an organization. You hate the odious cause, so you want to avoid giving your money to support people who will then give money to promoting that odious cause. How does that work? Do you no longer have the right to not indirectly support things in your ideal system?
- kerkeslager 7y agoSince you're just openly ignoring the post you're "responding to", I'll just copy-paste my response to what you have just said, with some minor changes: > So a person spends money to support an odious cause, and that person gets money by being associated with an organization. You hate the odious cause, so you want to avoid giving your money to support people who will then give money to promoting that odious cause. How does that work? Do you no longer have the right to not indirectly support things in your ideal system? Yes, but it would also protect people who donated to a virtuous cause. The fact that privacy allows people to secretly donate to political campaigns is the point. Part of the reason virtuous causes have had any success at all is that people donated to support them, at a time when donating to those virtuous causes was risking your job and social standing. Human rights still apply to humans who support odious causes. If you are willing to give up human rights to fight bad people trying to support odious causes, then those rights won't be there to protect good people trying to support virtuous causes, either.
- msla 7y ago> Since you're just openly ignoring the post you're "responding to", I'll just copy-paste my response to what you have just said, with some minor changes: I'm attempting to clarify my question by removing irrelevant details, which it looked like you got hung up on last time. > Human rights still apply to humans who support odious causes. If you are willing to give up human rights to fight bad people trying to support odious causes, then those rights won't be there to protect good people trying to support virtuous causes, either. So you are willing to make it impossible for people to boycott organizations as a means of social change, as long as those organizations had an arms-length relationship with anything "political".