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I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics. Because once you set a precedence then people will use that as to push their own polit
by johncena33 6y ago
I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics. Because once you set a precedence then people will use that as to push their own political agendas. I personally don't like the slippery slope argument since it's very lazy and justifies inaction in many cases. But at the same time when I see news like this, I just wonder how long it will take two different subgroups trying push their own conflicting agendas and how the company should react in such a case.
- tsimionescu 6y agoCorporations are most definitely NOT staying out of politics. All of them are actively lobbying the government for numerous different kinds of policies, from immigration and trade to environmental control and taxes. In fact, corporations are the main driving force behind almost all policy decisions in some way or another.
- DudeInBasement 6y agoOne side gets de-humanized and shown the door. I'll let you guess which side that is. This is why I think good people prefer a-political companies. It is sad, that there are people who have commitments/families, and they are taken hostage by this.
- pjc50 6y ago> One side gets de-humanized and shown the door. I'll let you guess which side that is. The immigrants in ICE detention centers?
- PascLeRasc 6y agoSince the context is ICE, I would really think about rephrasing your comment about conservative employees being "taken hostage".
- jasonmp85 6y agoThis must clearly be an oversight, since "good people"—one would hope—think about how their words and actions might impact others, and work to address those impacts in an open and vulnerable way free from judgment. I'm sure they just can't edit the post because it's been too long.
- Klinky 6y agoIf they don't want to be political, then they don't need to be political. That means: - No lobbying. - No campaign or PAC contributions. - No bandwagoning onto political social causes for marketing-only purposes. A lot of corporations fail hard at being apolitical, despite the image they try to project publicly.
- jasonmp85 6y ago"Good people" is a hell of a euphemism for "members of a hateful death cult", but you do you.
- Kinrany 6y agoSlippery slopes are not always a fallacy, roughly the same way appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authority is indeed an expert. Relevant: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-fences-on-slippery-slopes https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Kbm6QnJv9dgWsPHQP/schelling-...
- dominotw 6y ago> when the authority is indeed an expert. can someone be a considered authority without being an expert. edit: I am using authority from the example in wikipedia "One example of the use of the appeal to authority in science dates to 1923,[20] when leading American zoologist Theophilus Painter declared, based on poor data and conflicting observations he had made,[21][22] that humans had 24 pairs of chromosomes. From the 1920s until 1956,[23] scientists propagated this "fact" based on Painter's authority" Painter presumably was an expert. So not sure why you are saying why its ok if the person is an expert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 6y agoSome political appointees could probably be considered an authority by title and not a subject expert. That might hold true for some ambassadors. I guess it really depends on what exact definition of authority you are using.
- jayd16 6y agoYour boss, an elder, a church and lots of others can be authorities without being experts in the topic at hand.
- flyinglizard 6y agoYes; government ministers/secretaries come to mind.
- Klinky 6y ago
- pat2man 6y agoPretty much impossible to stay out of politics these days if you have a platform that can serve public content.
- karpierz 6y agoThis isn't people pushing their own political agenda; this is a consequence of the political stance they took. When a company takes a political stance, they should be held accountable for it.
- maga20yes 6y agoAgreed, playing politics for marketing purposes shouldn't be free.
- johncena33 6y agoHow is protesting against police brutality is same as protesting against ICE? That sounds like partisanship. If you support one issue then you will also have to support other issues.
- couchand 6y agoGP may have been referring to the political stand of taking on ICE as a customer. GitHub brass can pretend they're being apolitical, just as IBM did...
- coolreader18 6y agoIt's really not that different of an issue (black lives matter but Latino lives don't?); I think the word you're looking for is not partisanship but intersectionality.
- karpierz 6y agoSure, and they're welcome to clarify how the police should be held accountable when applying force to citizens but should not be held accountable for applying force to non-citizens. Or how certain human rights can be maintained for one group and not the other.
- vkou 6y agoICE inflicts something that seems an awful lot like police brutality on a large number of people. The Kafkaesque horrorshow that legal asylum seekers are subjected to is one of them. The conditions in which they hold people, in general, is another. The lies and high pressure tactics they use to force people to sign away their rights are also concerning.
- mchanson 6y agoWe are going through a very strange and extreme period in US History. Corporations are a huge part of the political landscape. Of course workers who are powerful will demand things of their workplaces. All corporations are political. By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political. Now by reversing they would be changing sides. They were already in the political fray.
- ancorevard 6y ago"By accepting the ICE contract previously it was political." Just a reminder that government entities like ICE are executing the current laws of the land.
- e40 6y agoThat's a stretch. Many think what they are doing is not legal. And I doubt that everything they do is spelled out in law. There is a lot of policy to what happens in ICE.
- klyrs 6y agoI think that a large part of the issue is that ICE is violating human rights on a massive scale. Where they might be executing some laws, they're violating others. And just a reminder, "just following orders" brings up some scary historical context that a lot of people don't want to help recreate.
- drunkpotato 6y agoDemonstrably and rather obviously untrue. They're violating the law in many instances, including but not limited to the cases of asylum seekers and current green card holders; it's just they're following the evil, xenophobic whims of the current political leadership, who are failing to hold themselves or ICE accountable to the rule of law, so they are, for the moment, getting away with their lawlessness. I hope we can change this with voting in new leadership, but I fear it may be too late. Aside and personal observation: it's interesting how the same people so vigorously crying for "law and order" are rather particular about which laws they care about enforcing, and which they're willing to overlook. Of course I'm not the first to make this observation.
- jimbob45 6y agoUsually token action is taken ahead of time in the form of donations and community service work instead of hurting bottom-line profit. IMHO this is an irresponsible rookie CEO not knowing that he’ll have to fold to future political movements if he folds to this one.
- otikik 6y agoI do in fact agree with you, but I'm coming from the opposite side of the spectrum. Companies do in fact involve themselves with politics quite a bit. It's called lobbying. I do think that lobbying is the single most important threat to Democracy, in the US and everywhere else. I do wish that companies stayed out of politics in that way. I also think that when one side is literally putting children in cages it's not a "slippery slope".
- thescriptkiddie 6y agoAll corporations engage in politics. They just usually do a better job of hiding it.
- BrainInAJar 6y agoThere is no such thing as "staying out of politics". Everything involving people is a political act, and if you don't notice it it's because you have status quo politics. > I just wonder how long it will take two different subgroups trying push their own conflicting agendas and how the company should react in such a case. Probably side with the one arguing that we should not commit atrocities.
- malandrew 6y ago> then people will use that as to push their own political agendas It's always a very small number of very loud people too. Worse yet, these people have mastered the art of silencing dissent from their colleagues by using kafkatraps. There are tons of republicans and libertarians in tech, but in the average office, you wouldn't know that given how effectively such people have been silenced for fear of being accused of thoughtcrime and heresy.
- jasonmp85 6y ago> There are tons of republicans and libertarians in tech, but in the average office, you wouldn't know that given how effectively such people have been silenced for fear of being accused of thoughtcrime and heresy Have they tried growing as people to not be so horrid that people would recoil if they knew what was really inside their heads? We have no obligation to tolerate the intolerant.
- Izkata 6y agoAaand that is exactly what GP is talking about: Massive assumptions about what people believe, without even an attempt to understand.
- moolcool 6y ago> I guess this is the reason lot of corporates try to stay out of politics Literally everything a corporation does is politics. Every hiring decision, every office they open or close, every client they take on, every vendor they ditch, every ad they publish. It literally all has political implications and messaging. Why is there an expectation on companies to "not be political" whenever one of those inherently political decisions intersects with something that happens to be a hot-button issue? Like wtf does that even mean?
- koheripbal 6y agoSo "You're either with us or against us"? Is that the message?
- moolcool 6y agoThere's obviously grey area, but a lot of comments in this thread come really close to the definition of complacency
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI think many of the commenters would openly embrace the label of complacency. That's part of living in a country with a diversity of views; sometimes, when you see people doing something terrible, you have to accept that they don't see it that way rather than going on a warpath to exclude them from polite society.
- moolcool 6y agoThe only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
- koheripbal 6y ago"You either with us or against us" is the hallmark call of extremists. It was first used politically by Vladimir Lenin, then Benito Mussolini, and more recently by George W Bush after 9/11. It's not surprising that modern liberals are so keen on its use.
- afiori 6y agoI think the slippery slope argument is actually quite relevant here. In my opinion it is about how you argue things. If the CEO or who has power just says "I decided to drop this client because of my personal advocacy" then there is no slippery slope, if they say "this client is too immoral we cannot support them" then you are very easily open to direct comparisons.