[chr1]

When you have several groups of people who distrust and dislike each other, and you start using your business as a means to support the fight of one group against the other, you only increase the enmity between the groups and harm all businesses by starting a process that forces everyone to choose which group to support.

It does not matter whether the reason for initial distrust is religion, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation or political beliefs. You should not start such "economic war" unless your goal is complete elimination of the other group, which, i think, is a rather stupid goal to have.

[edmundsauto]

You’re going to be really upset then to think about the business organizations that receive tax breaks in order to influence politics. Many non-profits exist only for this purpose.

The only reason abortion is a political issue, for example, is because of the outsized influence that tax exempt organizations have.

[chr1]

Are you implying that existence of these tax-exempt organizations and politicization of issues is a good thing?

I don't see anything positive in tax breaks and tax code complexity in general as it is a method to obfuscate spendings and evade taxes, which creates all kinds of unintended consequences.

[edmundsauto]

No, I am not implying that. Just noting its systemic and may as well be an intended feature of the system. At the very least, it's an intended consequence.

I can see positives in having the flexibility to tax things to discourage them, or to encourage behaviors. That's one of the best tools the government has to influence the public's behavior! (EG cigarette taxes). No assessment of the net-net benefit, merely pointing out the complexity of taxes does enable some good things as well.

[8note]

This is not to say that businesses should not do this, only that they have to position themselves to profit from this change in the market.

Selling to both sides can be a profitable venture, which encourages neutrality, but so is locking in customers by something other than the quality or price of your product

[chr1]

I am saying that if we condemn such behavior in all cases (even when neutrality is violated in our favour) we'll reduce the situations when that second strategy becomes profitable, and that will benefit everyone. We don't even need a very large percentage of people for this, even a relatively small group that always supports neutrality will be enough to keep the market neutral.