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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

Pretty sure that's a terrible idea.

Like the law or not, that's who your nation voted for, and the government has the power to make life very difficult for corporations.

Also, let's be real here. The travel ban doesn't affect these SV companies. How many employees are going to be coming from Syria, Iran or Yemen?. Are the positive optics worth the difficulties? The public is already weary of corporations becoming too powerful, this will only feed into that distrust, and possibly alienate ~50% of the population.

Political statements in either direction are almost always a losing proposition for corporations.

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> the government has the power to make life very difficult for corporations

If we're at the point where companies need to fear arbitrary punishment by the government for partisan reasons, the rule of law is dead. I'm not ready to concede that point.

> Also, let's be real here. The travel ban doesn't affect these SV companies. How many employees are going to be coming from Syria, Iran or Yemen?. Are the positive optics worth the difficulties?

You may be interested to learn that a slew of companies signed an amicus brief in Washington v. Trump[1], including:

> Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, eBay, GoPro, Lyft, Spotify, Yelp and Levi Strauss & Co

So, in their estimation, the answer appears to be "yes."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_v._Trump#Amici_curi...

> If we're at the point where companies need to fear arbitrary punishment by the government for partisan reasons, the rule of law is dead. I'm not ready to concede that point.

Trump has already stated his desire to apply tariffs to companies that operate outside the US, assuming he follows through, moving employees outside the US for spite is a losing proposition.

> You may be interested to learn that a slew of companies signed an amicus brief in Washington v. Trump[1], including:

Look up the definition of "amicus curaie".

Anyhow, legal avenues are fair game. But actively hurting the American economy to prove a point will only turn public perception against them. Americans (heck, even those on HN) are already weary of how much power companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, etc... have over them...

> Trump has already stated his desire to apply tariffs to companies that operate outside the US, assuming he follows through

And he'll need lots of luck getting both Republican-controlled bodies of Congress to pass those tariffs.

> moving employees outside the US for spite is a losing proposition

It doesn't have to be spite. Doing so out of practicality (see, e.g., companies' increasing their presence in Vancouver) is a more effective statement, anyway.

> Look up the definition of "amicus curaie".

Is there anything in particular you want me to learn?

Iran produces more engineering graduates than any country other than China, Russia and the US (can't find the China reference but this is similar: http://interestingengineering.com/top-10-countries-with-the-.... The article I read was about electronic engineering though).

Interestingly, 70% of Iranian engineering grads are female https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyguttman/2015/12/09/set-to-ta...

> Interestingly, 70% of Iranian engineering grads are female

Although my experience is with other Gulf states (not Iran but considered relatively progressive), the cause for that might be less noble than some think. Basically while the sons are allowed to study abroad, the daughters are most definitely not. This leads to the national universities having female majorities in pretty much all subjects.

In any case, it would be foolhardy to construe that number as equality (unless e.g. Iran has a huge surplus of women). But it is interesting.

Many tech employees come from Iran; it's a country of engineers and mathematicians. Both my supervising postdocs in my research positions were born there.

> Political statements in either direction are almost always a losing proposition for corporations

Whereas dumping huge amounts of money into PACs is often a winning proposition for companies. :(

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