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Of course. But there's a huge difference between labor disputes - renegotiating your relationship with the company - and folks in the trenches trying to steer t

Of course. But there's a huge difference between labor disputes - renegotiating your relationship with the company - and folks in the trenches trying to steer top level decisions according to their personal world views. Most companies simply are not very good vehicles for bringing about social change. But that's ok, that's not what they are for, and there are much better avenues. It's fine to use the money you earn from a company to fund your efforts to further your cause, but trying to use someone else's company to further your cause directly is almost always a mistake.

UtopiaPunk 2y ago
"Most companies simply are not very good vehicles for bringing about social change." That's just not true. Corporations have been maybe the single biggest driver of social change in the last couple of centuries, short of military overthrows of governments (although, even then such overthrows are often done to benefit corporations). For good and ill, corporations have transformed the world, and they set and maintain the status quo, especially in the Unites States. Just the idea that immense piles of wealth and resources can "belong" solely to one person or a very small group of individuals is a status quo set by capitalists to maintain their own interests. Why are they not allowed to be challenged? Their actions affect the lives of others, and it is right and good to challenge their decisions that cause harm.
- dbrueck 2y ago
  >> "Most companies simply are not very good vehicles for bringing about social change." > That's just not true. Corporations have been maybe the single biggest driver of social change in the last couple of centuries I'd wager that most experts of modern history would vehemently disagree with your assertion, but even if they didn't, what you said and what I said are not contradictory. > right and good to challenge their decisions that cause harm This right here is, in a nutshell, why. Speaking generally, today there is a desire to distill all big, complex issues down to a binary right and wrong. I think that urge has always existed, but in the era of tweets and hot takes and memes, the yearning for everything to fit into a sound bite is overwhelming. And terms like 'harm' have come to mean just about anything. The problem, of course, is that no big, complex issue is that simple - if it were, there wouldn't tend to be much debate about it. Instead there is nuance, there are tradeoffs or different paths to get to a goal, different priorities. Even when there is that occasional something that is unambiguously a question of right vs wrong, there are umpteen options for what to do about it. So you have a company that has tens of thousands of different customers. And then you have some middle-to-bottom employee who decides that one particular customer is anathema, and that it is completely wrong to do any business with that customer at all. There's no room for debate because that employee sees things completely black and white - that customer is evil, period, and they speak of that customer with lots of hyperbole. No company can thrive when it can be steered by a random employee like that (and heaven forbid you get into a situation where you have 2 of them who see issues as black and white but take the exact opposite sides, haha). Yeah, if they are unwilling to be pragmatic, then really the best option for everyone involved is for those types of people to leave the company - if they want to make those big direction decisions, their best bet is to start something of their own.

UtopiaPunk 2y ago

"Most companies simply are not very good vehicles for bringing about social change." That's just not true. Corporations have been maybe the single biggest driver of social change in the last couple of centuries, short of military overthrows of governments (although, even then such overthrows are often done to benefit corporations). For good and ill, corporations have transformed the world, and they set and maintain the status quo, especially in the Unites States. Just the idea that immense piles of wealth and resources can "belong" solely to one person or a very small group of individuals is a status quo set by capitalists to maintain their own interests. Why are they not allowed to be challenged? Their actions affect the lives of others, and it is right and good to challenge their decisions that cause harm.

dbrueck 2y ago
>> "Most companies simply are not very good vehicles for bringing about social change." > That's just not true. Corporations have been maybe the single biggest driver of social change in the last couple of centuries I'd wager that most experts of modern history would vehemently disagree with your assertion, but even if they didn't, what you said and what I said are not contradictory. > right and good to challenge their decisions that cause harm This right here is, in a nutshell, why. Speaking generally, today there is a desire to distill all big, complex issues down to a binary right and wrong. I think that urge has always existed, but in the era of tweets and hot takes and memes, the yearning for everything to fit into a sound bite is overwhelming. And terms like 'harm' have come to mean just about anything. The problem, of course, is that no big, complex issue is that simple - if it were, there wouldn't tend to be much debate about it. Instead there is nuance, there are tradeoffs or different paths to get to a goal, different priorities. Even when there is that occasional something that is unambiguously a question of right vs wrong, there are umpteen options for what to do about it. So you have a company that has tens of thousands of different customers. And then you have some middle-to-bottom employee who decides that one particular customer is anathema, and that it is completely wrong to do any business with that customer at all. There's no room for debate because that employee sees things completely black and white - that customer is evil, period, and they speak of that customer with lots of hyperbole. No company can thrive when it can be steered by a random employee like that (and heaven forbid you get into a situation where you have 2 of them who see issues as black and white but take the exact opposite sides, haha). Yeah, if they are unwilling to be pragmatic, then really the best option for everyone involved is for those types of people to leave the company - if they want to make those big direction decisions, their best bet is to start something of their own.