This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I mean didn't he literally just get purged for expressing a political opinion?
He doesn't have to read about authoritarian states, he's already living in one!
EDIT: Well that comment didn't last long. Here's the original:
If my employee is on TV and says rude things about a major client of mine, should the government ban me from firing them? From my perspective as a business owner in this hypothetical, it seems more the authoritarian government is the one that forces me to keep shitty and unliked employees around even if they're costing my business reputation.
Could anyone tell who he was working for from the video, and did he said anything at all relating to their business?
If you want to say "a company should be able to fire and hire whoever they want, for any reason" there's entire books of labour law that would need to be abolished to stop the government from being "authoritarian".
Well
We only have his side of the story for the claim so we don't even know if we was fired over the video to begin with
Ok so you're an employer and you see an employee of yours on the internet in front of millions saying things that you view as disgusting and horrible and that you don't want in your business. Are you only allowed to fire them if they mention your company during it?
I never said that, but yes from the perspective of the business owner they do lose some rights from anti discrimination laws. That is just a fact.
Which ones we find as acceptable is a different discussion and if you believe that should extend to anything a person says outside of work (or maybe even things they do inside of work) then that's a coherent viewpoint, but we can acknowledge that this definitely takes away more rights from the business owner.
It is already illegal to do so for at least some categories of things, ie if an employer finds homosexuality or interracial relationships or conservative islam disgusting they can sit and spin and are not allowed to fire you. I just think that saying "I can fire you for violating my values but you cannot fire me for violating yours" is not a sustainable situation.
Why not? There's plenty of expressions around this — like "rank hath its privileges," or "quod licet Jovi non licet bovi". A samurai could cut down a Japanese peasant who insulted him, but if the peasant was insulted by the samurai instead, said peasant had to just take it. Or consider, say, the Ottoman Empire in its heyday, and what would happen if a Christian or Jew publicly proclaimed something Islam considers blasphemous, versus if a Muslim publicly proclaimed something Christianity or Judaism consider blasphemous.
In fact, that latter pretty much describes why the situation actually is sustainable: because really it's "I can fire you for violating my values because my values are aligned with the Official Religion, but you cannot fire me for violating yours because your values are contrary to the Official Religion."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There's an important distinction between a person speaking to masses on behalf of or as a representative of their employer, and someone who merely happens to be an employee speaking their own opinions as a private individual in a context unrelated to their job, and having activists dig up their messages and threaten the company over them.
It is an imposition of government power to prevent an employer from firing an employee for their private speech, but not an authoritarian one. It is also an imposition of government power to prevent an employer from firing an employee for being the wrong race, and yet most of us would agree that is appropriate. It is worth it for the government to intervene and restrict freedoms if those restrictions create more freedoms as a result. In this case protecting the ability of people to speak and not be mindslaves to the megacorps (and the activists who cherry pick people to bring to their attention).
And in a game theoretic way the corporations will actually be better off this way! If corporations were legally prohibited from firing employees for first amendment protected speech when that speech was made outside of the workplace, then no activists would have any incentive to boycott or threaten the company for refusing to fire such individuals. They wouldn't be able to get anything out of it, and if they try to accuse the company of tolerating bad speech, because the company could simply point to the law and use that as an excuse and so their reputation wouldn't suffer and they wouldn't be forced to fire their otherwise competent and well behaved employee. Win-win for everyone except the mob.
From my point of view it’s actually one thing I’d want the government to protect people from, simply because it’s been used — in some cases by the government itself— as a way to back door punish crime-think. It’s for all intents and purposes illegal to say things against homosexuality. Your boss is practically obligated to fire you for saying it, because if he doesn’t, it constitutes a “hostile workplace” that he can be sued for allowing to exist. And the law gives no out for a person to be left alone, because the mere presence of someone who has in any context engaged in crime-think online is creating that hostile work environment. And thus Internet scolds can root out anyone who posts crime think online and make them virtually unemployable, which in modern society makes their lives miserable. The government has learned to censor by using the private sector as its enforcement mechanism thus avoiding breaking the first amendment itself. Facebook or Twitter censors your online presence, not the government. Your boss fires you rather than tge government arresting you. It is still censorship, and most people unless they’re ideological, learn very quickly what sorts of opinions they must never say aloud.
Having a bit of protection where private employers cannot fire non public facing employees for personal opinions on private accounts posted on their own time would remove that chilling effect. It makes sense that I could be fired as a company representative for saying something “evil” online. My job is to represent that company. It also makes sense that if I’m posting from official accounts, the employer has a right to control what I post on those accounts or on internal chats/emails. Those represent official communications. Even posting during office hours might fall under use of company time. But if I’m posting to MY personal account on MY personal phone on MY personal time, it’s not his business. And I think it’s only reasonable that protecting the principle of free speech means that I should be able to say what I want to on my own time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is free speech more or less important than freedom of association?
Not a great question considering free association rights are essentially a form of free speech rights. At least that's how we've traditionally viewed it in the US
That's how Anglo-Americans traditionally (read pre-CRA) viewed it. That's not how continental Europeeans ever viewed it.
I think the question has merit. Otherwise Mill wouldn't have had to invent the Harm Principle to solve it.
Consider a church that a large majority of your society attends (let's call it the catholic church, for "universal"). Let's say this catholic church has formal processes that would impose specific penalties on its members if they associate with people deemed unsavory by the institution. This is not a government institution, and yet it possesses large powers of censorship through this simple application of freedom of association.
How is this possible if there is no tension between keeping political expression unsuppressed and the ability for people to freely exclude anyone they desire from their lives?
Libertarians discard the primacy of political expression and focus on property rights. Liberals discard the primacy of freedom of association and focus on political expression. Hence vastly different reactions to some dudes deciding to setup ethnic enclaves innawoods.
But neither of these approaches realizes the original Liberal promise that both political and social freedoms can be fully realized with no contradiction. Because it was a lie.
Ok well in the case of us (me, and the jubilee guy) being American, the American view is pretty relevant here.
And considering how poorly Europe has been on free speech lately, I'm even less enthused about their philosophy.
If you get large enough it basically becomes a psuedo-government at that point and I would entertain the argument. Throughout much of history, this has been the case so yeah I'd agree we should be cautious.
But America is widely diversified. There is not a single corporate/religious/etc other private entity with that power. In many ways this can beneficial for them because there's a shit ton of powerful rich groups willing to support you. Shiloh Hendricks as an example made almost a million dollars just for being a viral cancel culture focus.
It certainly doesn't seem like there is an all encompassing major institution where dissent = failed life if even the closest thing to that has its victims made millionaires. Maybe it tries, but it's been proven over and over again to be lacking in power outside of a limited subset of society.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link