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In the days following Charlie Kirk's murder, has seen a wave of employers being contacted regarding off-color remarks made by employees on social media about his passing. The debate is, does this constitute cancel culture, but by the right instead of the typical left? Some have argued that it is not the same thing, due to the disparaging comments being immediate, vs old comments dredged up in an attempt to cancel someone. There is a big difference between someone desecrating Charlie Kirk in an overt manner right after his passing, compared to a social media post made 10+ years ago against living targets that could be deemed as racist only under the most uncharitable light.
My take is, contacting an employer with the intent of getting someone fired for something not work-related or fired in the public interest as a 'concerned citizen', by definition, is cancel culture. Sure, one can argue that this is a different degree of cancelation, but it's the same principle. Someone posting a vile comment on his social media celebrating someone's death doesn’t necessarily affect his ability to do his job, like making sandwiches or whatever. Sure, if said individual confessed on social media to spitting in customers' sandwiches or making disparaging remarks about customers, go ahead and get his ass fired to protect the customers if no one else. But this is not like that. Consumers and other employees are not negatively affected by an employee holding a grudge against a dead podcaster.
To turn the tables, imagine if George Soros died and many of those same people wrote "good riddance" on their social media accounts, should this be grounds for cancelation? By the above logic, yes if you want to be morally consistent.
relevant tweet https://x.com/politicalmath/status/1967066826590028174
It's cancel culture and it's bad, and employers should refuse to listen to (all) such complaints in the same way one refuses to negotiate with terrorists.
On principle, a rando calling in to get someone fired should be treated as inadmissable evidence.
There was a book I read years ago and for the life of me I can’t remember who the damn author was or what the title of it was, but it was by a prominent American Jewish lawyer (not Alan Dershowitz).
He was a radical advocate of social and economic laissez-fairism. To such an extent he thought if you were someone who harbored racist beliefs and wanted to hang Neo-Nazi slogans on the window of your business, you should be able to do that. Or if you were a prejudiced business owner who wanted to refuse someone because of their religious beliefs you could turn away anyone you wanted for any reason.
I think there’s a point where unconstained liberty brings you far too close to the breakdown of society and it just becomes unworkable. Large segments of society refuse to cooperate with each other. Everyone is suspicious of their neighbor. People have to travel far out of their way to buy groceries or make a living. Violent retribution is always a looming concern. Corporations may refuse to provide power to your neighborhood’s electric grid. Who knows, police may refuse to help you if you get into trouble; depending on who you are. But at least you have freedom of speech and expression.
But without the metapolitical and social prerequisites that allow a shared community to flourish, it’s ultimately worthless. It’s why when the program of economic “shock therapy” was introduced into Russia under the Yeltsin era, hitmen and assassinations were a readily available service in the Russian free market.
I mean this is just feudalism.
Which is fine, hell I like it, but let's not act like it's some newfangled oddity. A society built out of ad hoc contracts between everyone is one of the most common ways of human organization historically speaking.
Aside from the fact that I've actually met libertarians who are fine with privately own cities operating as if they were corporate fiefdoms and see that as the highest form of social organization, in reality it'd be a world so full of hate that no human being would want to live in it.
Lots of people want to live in Dubai. This place has its own problems, it is not exactly known as land of freedom, but no one described it as "full of hate".
Dubai has Sharia And Civil Law dude, it’s not a socioeconomic laissez-faire society.
In libertarian world, society is as laissez faire as owner of the society (technically, land where the society is) wants it to be. Do not like it? Pull yourself by your bootstraps and build your own society.
And in the real world, don't blame people for not following in lockstep with the libertarian fantasy when they decide to pull themselves up by their bootstraps by pulling out a gun and robbing you of your personal property. Otherwise, have fun homesteading on the eastern plateau of Antarctica. This is why the "libertarian world" will never become what we can the "real world," at any point.
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But like he said, lots of people want to live there. And who wants laissez-faire anyway?
Then why does he keep responding to an argument I’m not making?
“Yeah yeah, I understand what you’re saying but I’m going to ignore it and replace your statement with one you didn’t make and reply to that instead.”
My entire statement was about a socially and economically hands off, laissez-faire society. That is absolutely ‘not’ what Dubai is, and not by a long shot.
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