[quote=“Mindysan33, post:20, topic:87614, full:true”]
I’d guess it’s because it’s only been made public how odious his politics actually are, so they are seeking to avoid embarrassment. I don’t think they actually care…
[/quote]We’re talking about a chap who spoke against suffrage, who supported, funded and defended Ron “Subscribe to my newsletters” Paul. He co-wrote a book called “The Diversity Myth” which was pretty much exactly as you’d imagine from the title, and it was an open secret(insofar that anything so many people knew about could be a secret) he made large donations to the anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA. He’s a vile bastard, and everybody’s known it for a long, long time.
I disagree that they don’t care, but I do think that doing it now is a strategic move more than anything else. They cared before - but when it was less widely known, that good old silicon valley pragmatism allowed them to ignore that he’s a godawful piece of shit, because he had shitloads of money.
I generally agree that freedom of speech requires protection from other citizens as much as from the government, so I’m mostly on board with your line. But I’m not sure I understand this entirely.
Surely Thiel has a right to associate with and do business with whoever he likes, providing that the other party consents to doing business. But to say Project Include must do business with Thiel seems like a substantial violation of the rights of Project Include.
By contrast, Project Include is refusing to do business with Y Combinator on the condition that they terminate their business relationship with Thiel. This doesn’t seem to me to violate any rights. Y Combinator is not confronted with the choice of whether they’d rather remain partnered with Thiel or Project Include. They get to make this decision freely.
While there’s certainly an illiberal black-listy element to Project Include’s position if “every right-thinking person” piles on, it’s not fundamentally different from, say, a divestment campaign in which protesters say: “We’re not doing business with you unless you stop doing business with that company that pollutes/engages in widespread corruption/pays to assassinate union organizers.”
So I’d love to hear you unpack a little more why you think this is a violation of anyone’s rights or what really is the problem.
A yawn? Large conservative run businesses fire people over politics as a matter of course. They also choose to not hire based on race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation all the time, and fire based on sexual orientation disturbingly often.
And in this case we’re talking about a diversity promoting org choosing to disassociate itself from a VC/Startup Incubator because one partner of the firm made the largest single contribution there’s been to an explicitly anti-diversity cause. It would be far more hypocritical of an organization promoting diversity of race and gender in the workplace to work with a firm where a partner’s the largest private funder of a political candidate whose goals and policies run counter to their goal.
McCarthy, as a Senator, had no authority over the House Un-American Activities Committee.
At no point was anyone blacklisted upon the instructions or demands of the government. Senate and House committees had no authority to do so, and the Truman administration was not so inclined.
Do you think Project Include should be forced to do business with Y Combinator? Do you think it’s unethical to base business decisions on ethics?
Sounds a little flip, but I’m asking seriously. It seems like Project Include isn’t doing anything different from someone who refuses to eat in a local restaurant because the owner is a racist or something like that. The notion that this is not so different from McCarthyism after all is an acceptable answer.
Occasionally a high-profile case like the woman fired for the Kerry bumper sticker bubbles up, but since in most of the US there are no laws preventing this behavior, and many states allow employers to fire without cause, it’s not always reported on.
I clarified that this isn’t a firing, but a diversity promoting organization choosing to stop working with a startup incubator because a (limited) partner is funding anti-diversity causes. The turnabout would be if some conservative anti-diversity group were to stop working with a firm because one of the partners of the firm was a top funder of a strongly pro-diversity cause. I don’t see why I would care.
The regime of laws, the laws of the land, the code of laws. More explicitly: “A legal regime is a system of principles and rules governing something, and which is created by law. It is framework of legal rules.”
Not to be confused with a political regime or the international legality of the political regime, though the two regimes interact.
Commerce with everyone in the country.
Commerce with them alone. If I refuse to dance with you, I’m not infringing on your right to dance. Only those running the dance can do that.
I do not, have not and never once said that, nor has anyone else. Either you are profoundly misunderstanding the power Project Include has, or you’re conflating two very different things (and if so, then I choose to assume unintentionally so).
No, I do not, because no one’s rights in this case are being denied, no matter how many times you insist they are.
A partnership either one of you had the prerogative to terminate within the obligations of your contract. Project Include has the same prerogative.
I honestly can’t tell why you can’t understand or won’t acknowledge the difference between the choices of a private company and government fiat, but unless you can or will acknowledge it, we are not going to reach any common ground on this.
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He still has a right to donate money to whoever he wants. Nobody is saying he should be arrested, they’re just voluntarily disassociating themselves with him. More analogous to a boycott than to jailing someone without trial.
Thiel has publicly called for the disenfranchisement of over half of the population, and is the #1 backer of an idiotic fascist attempting to gain control of the most excessively bloated military in the history of the world.
In response, an organisation dedicated to social justice has chosen to end their voluntary association with him.
