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0 pointsoceanplexian1y ago0 comments

It should if you have some semblance of professionalism. At work I don’t want to know nor want to know about the politics of the people working with me.

If I’m engaged in a business transaction I don’t care about the personal views of the person I’m buying or selling from. Call me old fashioned but the world used to be that way before the rise of social media addictions and the current online echo chambers in our society.

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bigfatkitten1y ago

That was the approach GM's senior management took with Opel during World War II. Opel wasn't nationalised; it continued trading and did business as usual with the German government of the day, just with less direct involvement from Detroit.

While it worked out very well indeed for GM in a commercial sense in that they retained control of the business, it continued to be profitable and the U.S. Government paid for damage to their factories due to Allied bombing, history has a less favourable view of the individual people involved.

zie1y ago

I'm not sure it ever was that way, but it was perhaps less prevalent before the rise of social media, where it's now very easy to see one's views.

> If I’m engaged in a business transaction I don’t care about the personal views of the person I’m buying or selling from.

I mean that's perhaps the ideal in a civilized society, but that's not remotely the norm. I'm guessing you do it subconsciously even if you don't realize it. It's very natural for humans to "other" different humans and shun them. Even if it's not what we strive for.

0cf8612b2e1e1y ago

Pick the “wrong” group you find utterly distasteful (Nazi, anti-Nazi, conservative, liberal, gay, homophobic, etc).

If I find the person’s views abhorrent, not a surprise I would choose not to do business with them if I had alternatives.

tpmoney1y ago

And one should have that right, but whether one should exercise that right is another matter. A thought experiment: If you could pick any point in history and make it so all people expressing socially unpopular views were permanently cast out from society, and all other people never spoke or traded or dealt with them ever again, when would you choose to freeze social opinion? Which modern day group of normal every day people, who we consider unobjectionable now, would be cast into the dustbin of history if societal opinion was frozen at your chosen moment of time?

0cf8612b2e1e1y ago

Really upping the ante if my personal morals lead to banishment of another. This was in the context of choosing business partners when I had the option.

Not all of my beliefs are likely to be perfectly rational such that I could objectively defend them. That still means I can pick and choose my friends without casting the rest to oblivion.

If the question is, “What happens if all of society rejects X group for their beliefs”, well that’s civilization. Part of the implicit agreement is that we can all reasonably agree on some things. If someone rejects that notion, well, there can be consequences (even for the “correct” position (say civil rights)).

tpmoney1y ago

Sure, but my larger point is that I believe people should strive for free speech maximalism even in their private dealings, and even within the private dealings, we should strive to make the consequences we impose minimally "dangerous". There's no bright lines to be had, and everyone will have different limits, and every situation will have different criteria applied to them. But overall I'd rather err (and see other people err) on the side of being too permissive rather than not permissive enough. On the scale of less to more permissive, I'd probably argue that the order would be something like "friends", "business partners", "employees", "contractors". The less likely you are to be inviting someone over for dinner, the more permissive you should probably be over how their outside speech impacts your business dealings with them.

People only change by exposure to new ideas, and if all the "bad people" and all the "good people" never mix, then what hope do the "good people" have that any "bad people" will learn to think differently?

Basically, I really don't want to live in a world where it's normal for my boss to go trolling through my HN comment history before deciding whether I get a promotion or not, no matter how much of a right they have to do that. I'm not ashamed of the things I've said here (to the best of my knowledge), I just don't think that having a discussion with other people, about topics that don't directly bear on my work should be used when determining how to treat me at work. I am not so conceited as to think I am right all the time or that my bosses would agree with every thought I have. Which is why I have these discussions here, with other people engaged in the topic and not at work, with my bosses who weren't talking about the topic in the first place.

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bigfatkitten1y ago

zie1y ago

I'm not sure it ever was that way, but it was perhaps less prevalent before the rise of social media, where it's now very easy to see one's views.

> If I’m engaged in a business transaction I don’t care about the personal views of the person I’m buying or selling from.

0cf8612b2e1e1y ago

Pick the “wrong” group you find utterly distasteful (Nazi, anti-Nazi, conservative, liberal, gay, homophobic, etc).

If I find the person’s views abhorrent, not a surprise I would choose not to do business with them if I had alternatives.

tpmoney1y ago

0cf8612b2e1e1y ago

Really upping the ante if my personal morals lead to banishment of another. This was in the context of choosing business partners when I had the option.

Not all of my beliefs are likely to be perfectly rational such that I could objectively defend them. That still means I can pick and choose my friends without casting the rest to oblivion.

tpmoney1y ago

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