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There's still plenty of room for nuance. As an example: I strongly oppose oil pipelines, but a couple of years ago I had to assist with emergency network main
by RIMR 6y ago
There's still plenty of room for nuance.
As an example: I strongly oppose oil pipelines, but a couple of years ago I had to assist with emergency network maintenance on a very large, very controversial pipeline that I do not like at all. My job required me to do what I was hired to do, and I didn't let my politics get into the way. The issue was resolved in a couple of hours, and I returned back to the projects I was working on for other customers.
But we still had a conversation at our company about what it means to support customers that we were uncomfortable with, and we ultimately decided that the views of employees should help guide how we conduct ourselves as a business. That if we noticed that our customers are doing harm, and we believe ourselves to be contributing to the harm, we should voice our concern and decide if we are operating morally and ethically.
The pipeline was whitelisted, because we don't actually help build it on native land, and we don't help drill the oil out of the Earth. We only help keep the sensors working, and those ultimately exist to keep the pipeline from failing and doing damage.
But we have preemptively decided that there are certain businesses that could use our services to contribute to harm, and so we have a process for keeping ourselves in check.
I worry about "apolitical" companies, as they have decided that they no longer care about judging the moral or ethical issues surrounding their business decisions, and have instead decided to operate entirely based on what is legal.
And it goes without saying that acting in accordance with the law is not the same as acting morally and ethically.