[slykat]

I find it ironic that the same people protesting the contract would also protest a bakery that refuses to sell a product for say a same sex couple (or if you were in the 60s, restaurants that refused to serve blacks).

You either have a viewpoint that: 1) a business shouldn't make a moral judgement on its customers and be accessible to all 2) A business can make moral judgements on its customers and choose not to do business with customers considered immoral

If you are ok with #2 you are running into a slippery slope in my view. And if you are ok with #2 and you are one of the largest companies in the world, it is a very huge slippery slope.

[rtpg]

This is a false dicothomy

The actual (IMO correct) position most of these people share is the following two points at once:

- businesses should have a moral position, since businesses are just a set of people

- that moral position should be right!

This isn’t rocket science! Stuff like “don’t support a business doing bad stuff” and “support businesses doing good stuff” is just really basic consumer activism.

There’s no need to go deep in metaphysics. It’s literally just “support good things, don’t support bad things”

[Thorentis]

This is not a false dichotomy at all.

Businesses should have a moral position, sure.

That moral position should be right? According to who? The business itself? Then that second point is redundant. Everybody thinks their moral position is right, that's what morals are. It's a tautology otherwise.

GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like.

Replace Github with bakery refusing to serve same-sex couples. Bakery thinks they're right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like.

You only think it's a false dichotomy because you personally disagree with the bakery and (presumably?) agree with Github. By saying "the moral position should be right", is you simply saying "and they should agree with me otherwise they are wrong".

[mattigames]

> GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like.

A lot of music artists in the 50s and 60s refused to play on segregated crowds (where black people is separated from white people, usually blacks in the back), they did it because they though they were right and should be able to boycott doing business with those who disagree (despite their record-label or manager thinking otherwise) you think those artists should have done otherwise?

[Thorentis]

I didn't say they should have done otherwise. I'm actually arguing in favour of private individuals/businesses being able to make the decision on what they sell and who they sell to.

I'm simply pointing out what is almost definitely hypocrisy on the part of these Github employees. Tech companies are usually more progressive, and no doubt these employees would object to a private company, such as a family run bakery, choosing who they sell to. When the Github employees are advocating for their own company to do just that.

[Sophistifunk]

> - that moral position should be right

You do realise that what this actually means is "this person agrees with me"

[rtpg]

How is this a problem? Like.... seriously.

This is the whole point of everything. If you believe strongly in a thing, then you should fight for it. And other people in society will judge you for it (rightly so!)

So yeah, you decide that you care enough about "sanctity of marriage" so you decide to not sell cakes. So everyone who disagrees with you boycotts your business. Others believe that sexual orientation is such an important thing that they make it illegal for you to do this! This is how stuff happens!

There isn't some sort of rules-based pre-judgement for this sort of stuff. It gets played out over time. And you're responsible for your decisions in this front.

[rumanator]

> How is this a problem? Like.... seriously.

It's a colossal problem because it is an authoritarian stance hidden behind incoherent arguments of morality. There is no morality or ethics. There is only pushy people trying to strong-arm everyone around to comply with their personal world view under the threat of being cut off from a product/service.

[leftyted]

You envision society as a battleground for various moral perspectives. I think there's some truth to that. But are there any ground rules? If so, what are they? Are you giving me license to firebomb ICE facilities because I "believe strongly" that ICE is evil? Or is the law a red line that no one can cross? If so, what about "bad laws"? What about civil disobedience?

Another perspective on this is that, for a society to function, people need to be able to agree to disagree about most things. This means that we are all morally compromised and we all must be morally compromised in order to live together. A society in which everyone follows their own moral impulses is a society that will not function.

I find myself wavering between these two perspectives (the first being yours). I don't mind people protesting. But how about blocking roads? How about vandalizing your ideological opponent's office? How about smashing windows? How about preventing your ideological opponents from speaking? It seems to me that your perspective minimizes the danger here. There's no guarantee that things will just work out. We might reach a level of polarization after which we simply won't be able to cooperate.

[sterlind]

right, it's impossible to establish a universal, objective framework for morality. instead, we can only make compromises between majorities and vocal minorities, codify them as laws and ethics, and enforce them.

however, that doesn't absolve you of sticking up for your moral code, depending on what it is. for example, I'm gay. I know that Chik-Fil-A is complying with the law, and that its owners are funding advocacy for conversion therapy and other anti-LGBT issues. I wouldn't want Chik-Fil-A to be dismantled, since it's lawful, but I refuse to eat there, since my personal morals prevent me from giving money to people who want to hurt people like me. I'd also support protests of Chik-Fil-A, since protest is a lawful action (at least, social media campaigns and picket lines.)

Don't be lazy. Stand up for what you believe in. The law is the lowest common denominator, and legality doesn't absolve you of your actions.

[admax88q]

So what are you saying then? That there are no moral absolutes? Or just that because people disagree on what is moral business should be allowed to act in interest of profit only?

[malvosenior]

Many, many people feel that enforcing existing immigration laws is morally right and a "good thing".

I think defining what is morally right is harder than rocket science and literally impossible in some cases.

[geofft]

That's fine, that doesn't change anything. If GitHub and their employees disagree so strongly on right and wrong that one side believes doing X is immoral and the other believes not doing X is immoral, GitHub can either attempt to convince their employees that they are in fact right, or let them leave.

(If GitHub does not believe they have a moral obligation to sell to ICE, they can drop the contract and keep their employees. It's a very small contract, less than one engineer's salary, and they committed to donating that money anyway. So I'm assuming that GitHub feels a moral or equivalently strong obligation to keep the contract, possibly of the form of feeling an obligation not to let employees influence moral direction. If not, this is just a story of bad business sense.)

[rtpg]

others think the laws are fundamentally unjust.

Even others (a plurality I think) don't have strong feelings on the laws, but know one of the following: - the executive has selective enforcement rights - (at the time) congress + the WH could change laws! - the laws were written with an understanding of selective enforcement

and so rightly recognized that this was a bad thing that could be made right.

There is an n-sided die about how people see this problem, and people acted in accordance to it. And yeah, it means that some sides don't believe in the legitimacy of other sides. They're incompatible after all.

Besides, it's not the point. The point of the game isn't to make a set of meta-rules for defining what is morally right. It's for, on a case-by-case basis, to say "this thing is good/bad" and then act on that.

I don't need to be able to answer every moral hypothetical to be able to say that _this one specific thing is bad_. To bring it back to HN, it's a P=/=NP problem. I can say one thing is good/bad without providing the full strategy for determining every thing. And then we work from there.

[malvosenior]

I think your entire argument would make a lot more sense if you replaced “right” with “what I think is right”. Your position is just one side of the dice (as you say).

[manigandham]

The whole point of morality is that it is subjective. You can not determine what is right as a rule.

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents. They lead to shallow, predictable discussions. A public internet forum is not, as a medium, capable of addressing such questions. If you really want to discuss something like that, write an essay (or a book) and then post it here, or maybe someone will.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

[istjohn]

That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it.

[throw_m239339]

> That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it.

"evil" is exactly what religious people called homosexuality for centuries, which is ironic considering your statement. Morality is purely an opinion, just like religion.

[rumanator]

> taking a stand against evil when we see it.

Except that "evil" is just a loaded word that tries to pin an absolute take on morality on a personal opinion. There are people who take stances against evil by persecuting others based on religion, gender, race, and even political leanings, and they feel so strongly about the morality of their positions that they feel that even extreme violence is justified.

[manigandham]

Ask what "evil" means in different parts of the world and you will come to vastly different definitions.

[aeturnum]

I do not think the dichotomy you outlined accurately describes how things work

I mean, this is why we have developed the idea of a "protected class."

Because you're correct that, at the end of the day, judgement is judgement and sentiment is sentiment and everyone is the hero of their own story.

But to place the limits of proper action at sentiment is solipsism.

So there is a set of protected classes which we, as a society, have decided are inappropriate reasons to discriminate against people. The quick reasons it is wrong to discriminate: sex, race, age, religion[1]. There are many reasons we allow people to discriminate: lack of money, being violent to employees, being unacceptably rude, setting off explosives, etc. These are all discriminatory practices that often involve moral judgement.

We are always in the process of trying to decide if we should have a new protected class and how that class should be defined. I also suspect we will, at some point, talk about removing protected classes.

Businesses should (and in fact always do) make moral judgements about their clients. The people at Github who chose to work with ICE decided it was morally right for them to do so. You can tell because they did it. They might say they were sad about it and had "moral qualms" but at some point it does seem like it comes down to yes or no.

So do you think we should have a government agency class? Or perhaps a law enforcement class? I personally do not.

[1] Some exceptions here, of course, a mosque does not have to hire a catholic priest who applies to be an imam.

[icelancer]

>> race

Unless you're Asian/Asian-American, of course. Then it is fine to negatively discriminate against you.

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2019/10/03/judge-rules-in-favo...

[aeturnum]

I haven't read enough on the Harvard admission scandal to have an opinion.

That said, there are lots of services that consider protected class in ways that aren't currently considered discriminatory. Ladies nights, for instance, are not illegal. Giving discounts to senior citizens is not considered discriminating against others.

All that said - those corner cases are always being considered and questioned. There are instances where I think the official decision is right and ones where I think it's wrong, but I'm no more perfect than anyone else.

[icelancer]

>> Ladies nights

>> Senior citizens

These discriminate against advantaged parts of the protected classes, which is generally seen as reasonable. Men and young people, respectively.

Including Asians/Asian-Americans in the "advantaged group" is... something of a stretch.

[dragonwriter]

That's not at all what that decision says. Finding that it did not happen is not the same as finding that it is legal for it to happen.

[icelancer]

No, it happens.

>> She rejected the argument that “tips,” or admissions advantages, received by some black and Hispanic students were unfair. While some racial groups did receive tips...

They get them, and Asian/Asian-Americans are excluded from this, placing them in the "advantaged group" as I stated above (usually reserved for white people).

That they ruled this was "not unfair" doesn't make it "not discrimination." They admit as such that it happens to the detriment to Asian/Asian-Americans.

[_7bxa]

The difference is not serving black or queer people isn't a moral judgement -- it's just discrimination (there isn't anything inherently wrong with being Black the same way there isn't anything wrong with being queer or Asian or Indian, those things aren't a choice unlike being a Nazi). At best, not serving minorities is a shitty moral judgement.

Not serving ICE is a more legitimate moral judgement because ICE has the option to change their behavior and ICE is genuinely bad.

Slippery slope is one of those silly things I see from free speech advocates. I tend not to see the bad impacts in real life because if the government isgoing to restrict free speech, they will do it regardless of what anti-hate speech laws currently exist.

[ljm]

There is nothing inherently wrong with serving ICE. You might not like it, but many of your compatriots do.

I don't like what they do at all, I think it's reprehensible, backwards, and purely uncivilised. But people you utterly hate have friends too, and they see something different than you do, and we do not have a singular moral world-view.

This situation with ICE should totally change, but that change is a function of your vote, not a function of protesting against Gitlab.

I very strongly argue that there should never be a single perspective on morality, in the way that these posts suggest there should.

[rtpg]

Lots of people support ICE, maybe, but that doesn’t prevent a lot of people from thinking it’s inherently wrong.

The more clear cute example is weapons research. Loads of researchers and institutions outright rule out weapons research, because they find it wrong.

Besides, “inherently wrong” is a subjective thing anyways, if only by the fact some people agree to your statement and some people don’t, despite everyone having the same set of facts

[drjesusphd]

> But people you utterly hate have friends too, and they see something different than you do, and we do not have a singular moral world-view.

So because shitty people have friends, we should throw in the towel and refrain from enforcing moral codes in our own lives, behavior, and economic decisions? That's pretty weak stuff.

[refurb]

People who have different views than you are “shitty”?

[drjesusphd]

Some views, yes.

We're talking about concentration camps for children, not monetary policy.

[sjg007]

queue IBM and the holocaust.. I mean... wtf ???

[cscurmudgeon]

So can a business refuse to serve democrats?

[claudiulodro]

They absolutely can; political affiliation is not a protected class. Probably not good for their bottom line, though.

[root_axis]

Yes, they can, and should have that right.

[slykat]

Do you not see the negative repercussions for businesses serving the public to be allowed to make a moral judgement on who they do business with?

[drjesusphd]

If that's the case then there's no room whatsoever for capitalism to be anything other than an amoral system we should be ashamed of.

Vote with your dollar. You're allowed to make your own moral choices and refuse to contribute to evil.

[manigandham]

Capitalism is nothing but an economic system where you own the means to production. There is no inherent morality.

Nobody has an issue with you making choices and voting with your dollars. The issue is forcing those choices on everyone else (as in a business, especially as a non-owner) through your own interpretation of morality.

[drjesusphd]

> There is no inherent morality.

Not inherent; we have to make it so.

Capitalism dominates, what, 80% of our waking lives? The idea that morality should only be relegated to the other 20% is madness.

[manigandham]

Dominates? I don’t even know what means. It’s an economic system. What is the other 20% exactly?

[chipotle_coyote]

I'm not an economist, but I'm pretty sure the system where workers own the means of production isn't capitalism.

[manigandham]

It refers to "you" vs the state. You create a factory or a business or a new patent and you're responsible. You gain the profits or suffer the losses and nobody else can take it from you.

Workers are obviously not business owners, but they do own their own labor and are free to take whatever job they want, not be assigned to it from some central authority.

[chillwaves]

If racists had self awareness, they wouldn't be racists.