Two wrongs don't make a right.
- that doing business is akin to speech.
- that corporations are entitled human rights (freedom of speech).
Also, freedom of speech means nothing for humans if corporations can force their customers not to discuss certain topics in the name of “I don't want to do business with someone who says that”.
If you ran a bookstore, and I could force you to carry a bunch of books that glorified Nazism, you would probably find this objectionable. Why? Because if you walked into a bookstore and there's a bunch of books there full of Nazi propaganda, you would probably wonder if the owner of the store was a Nazi. You don't want to be associated with or seen as promoting it.
This is why it's akin to speech.
Yeah and when that was written the act of paying with a credit card would have looked like magic
Maybe things have changed a bit
And there being only one gas station.
And the guy having not objected to the exact same bumper stickers for the last 15 years.
Visa have said this is because of 'enhanced risk' caused by this content, but they've been fine with it up to now. It's only because of the Australian group's censorious actions that they've decided to act. That's the frustrating thing, at least to me.
Whether they have the legal right to do it or not, it's still a dick move.
(If you'll forgive the pun.)
And in fact, you cannot stop me from putting leaflets on your car, no matter how distasteful you find the content, just because it's your property. In fact, in many jurisdictions, putting stickers is allowed too, the line being drawn at damaging the property of someone else. (I can write stuff on your car with easy to wash water paint, but I can't carve a message on it).
> If you ran a bookstore, and I could force you to carry a bunch of books that glorified Nazism
Welcome to the life of every bookstore clerks in the world. And it turns out they aren't allowed to remove books they disagree with, nor add their own favorite book in the store. If the owner of the store can force that on its clerks I see no reason why the legislator couldn't do the same on the owner. In fact, in countries that aren't hypocritical about freedom of speech, you cannot get fired by your boss if they dislike what you say, but you can definitely be fired if you refuse a customer, which shows doing business has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
So at the end of the day, having refuted your two arguments, my point still stand: Doing business isn't akin to speech, and corporations aren't human beings in the first place so they shouldn't be entitled human rights anyway.
Also, property right isn't some special kind of right that trumps everything else, it's one basic right like any other and have no precedence/superiority over the others.
>We do not make moral judgments on legal purchases made by consumers. Visa does not moderate content sold by merchants, nor do we have visibility into the specific goods or services sold when we process a transaction.
So they are trying to outright lie or they are so disconnected they are ignorant of what other parts of their company are doing. Neither are a good luck.
