[coldtea]

>Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job is taking moral stances on things, having political opinions, provoking what others might see as unnecessary conflict, in any form.

Up to a certain point. That answer didn't hold up well at the Nuremberg trials. After a point there's also dignity and morality, not just "keeping the job".

[passing_by_and]

That only happened because they needed some show trials to pacify people. A few were picked to take the fall and the rest were quietly brought to universities and government labs all across western powers. The United States has a proud tradition of totally ignoring all the agreements that came out of those trials.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they needed some show trials to pacify people

Which people? The Europeans were occupied or liberated under effectively caretaker governments. Americans didn't need pacification.

> the agreements that came out of those trials

The trials inspired some agreements. It didn't create any, other than the precedent of holding leaders accountable for crimes against humanity.

[foul]

> Which people? The Europeans were occupied or liberated under effectively caretaker governments.

They were occupied but they weren't entirely busy: while "low" people were happy to kill ex-Nazi collaborators themselves, it's the post-war governments (all of them, USA's included) who needed, with those trials, to manifest a re-establishment of the rule of law once again. 80 years later we can see it's been a hypocrite farce in every part of it, but it saved lives, those that were worth of living, although spared Nazis, fascists and sometimes communists too.

[JumpCrisscross]

> who needed, with those trials, to manifest a re-establishment of the rule of law once again

Do you have a source for this having been the motivation?

I’m admittedly most familiar with the French and American perspectives. Those weren’t concerned with pacification but creating an international sense of the rule of law and legal basis for the occupation and restructuring of those societies.

[refulgentis]

No.

[mistercheph]

What modern corporate employee wouldn't (haven't?) sleepwalk into perpetuating horrors on innocent people and then really and truly believe it when they say "I was just doing my job..." I am not excluding myself, we have not magically solved the social/political circumstances that lead to the second world war, and we are doomed to repeat those mistakes if we take for granted that those structures just fizzled away because we blood sacrificed millions of people and then the victors did a rain dance over the burial mound.

[maeil]

> What modern corporate employee wouldn't (haven't?) sleepwalk into perpetuating horrors on innocent people and then really and truly believe it when they say "I was just doing my job

Plenty? All whistleblowers, and the magnitudes larger group of people who were not able to whistleblow but did instead decided to quit their job for ethical reasons?

[riku_iki]

> That answer didn't hold up well at the Nuremberg trials.

that's just winners were punishing losers.

In alternative reality, those who dropped nukes were facing trial in Nuremberg.

[coldtea]

>that's just winners were punishing losers

Whether it's winners punishing losers, or e.g. the FBI/FDA/DEA/IRS/whatever punishing some company exexutives and employees, the potential for this to be a bad defense remains constant.

[riku_iki]

when it is winners vs losers, your line of defense is irrelevant, since winners decide rules of the game. We can partially tell the same that FBI/FDA/DEA/IRS punishes regular Joe much more harshly, compared to CEOs which almost never goes to jail unless he stole from other rich/in power.

[totetsu]

Not trying to troll here, but, what does something like Nuremberg trails matter in a country where someone who can incite an insurrection and then become president again, or a world where international criminal court orders are ignored?

[JumpCrisscross]

> what does something like Nuremberg trails matter in a country where someone who can incite an insurrection and then become president again, or a world where international criminal court orders are ignored?

Nuremberg had nothing to do with insurrections and revolutions. It also judged the Nazis according to standards that didn't exist when they committed their crimes; the ICC was created after Nuremberg as an imperfect system. Imperfect, however, is still better than nothing.

[yieldcrv]

Given that this highly improbable outcome involves two separate coalitions of countries invading yours from both sides, “read the room” is a safe bet for all parties to make, including last minute flights to Argentina

[coldtea]

If only I had used this outcome only as a highly understood example, as opposed to as the exact sitution that will befall the person I responded to... oh, wait!

[yieldcrv]

That’s cool but it’s something I think about a lot

Like how some well known companies are implicated because of government contracts with that short lived regime in the 1930s

and its like thats not really a deterrent because you don't really know what a government will do, and accountability requires a multi coalition invasion, losing, and subsequent leaking of state records

the threshold for that to occur is so high, like for one, that government has to actually lose, and the one everyone is mad at typically doesn't

makes more sense to contract with all parties in all countries and just collect the checks

I think that specific example is a perfect choice to undermine the specific lesson you were aiming for