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Comment by scardycat | Hacker News Reader

> Sure "it's a business" but does that give it a green card to act how it pleases?

of course, yes! As long as it stays within the boundaries set by the law. Do you not act as you please? Do you not eat a $40 meal while a homeless person is lying outside in the cold? DO you not send your kid to a private school at $100k/year while the kid down the street (down the highway) struggles for school supplies?

> So please, stop telling people how to behave and act and protest. We're not putting in 100 hour weeks because someone before you had the audacity to go say the current system is inhumane.

I am not tell you how to behave, I am tell you to not tell the company how to behave. You are free to leave and go do what you think is right.

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> As long as it stays within the boundaries set by the law. > Stop trying to tell a large corporation to stop doing business and make profits, go change the society in which it operates.

This comment posits that companies act in a closed system. Companies don't just act within the boundaries set by the law, they actively seek to directly change laws by lobbying and to change the interpretation of laws through litigation in order to best suit their interests. They are political agents as are their workers.

It might bring more gray area into your life but like it or not what you do for your day job can have moral implications. You may have taken this post as a personal attack because you work at Google, which may be why you are so vociferously arguing against it. But even if one disagrees with where this person drew the line I think it behooves everybody to at least occasionally reflect on the ethical implications of how they spend their time, especially in tech where what you work on can easily affect millions or billions of people.

I'd hope this discussion would be more about the merit of where this line was drawn in this case rather than whether or not one is even justified in taking a moral stance instead of just putting their head down and shutting up or quitting.

You're telling me to accept the status quo and be fine with it.

That's telling me how to behave. The company is just an entity that needs to follow the set of guidelines set by people living in that society.

Please - quit your overpaid tech job and actually work to change the status quo. No one is saying you have to accept the status quo.

But your lectures while driving past the homeless in a $100K tesla on your way to swank vacations are tiresome - particularly as you build that money off the status quo you are so eager to say is terrible.

There's two ways to change the current system:

1. Work in the current system and try to slowly impact it and change how it behaves.

2. Start a violent revolution and start a civil war which will end in millions dead.

Which one do you prefer I do?

I also HAVE to participate in this system if I want to live. That's one of the reasons I want to change the system.

My participation in this system isn't consensual.

> Please - quit your overpaid tech job and actually work to change the status quo. No one is saying you have to accept the status quo.

False dichotomy. You don't need to quit your job to work to change the status quo. Indeed, you can often effect change much better from inside an important organization than from outside it.

Please - cash your big checks built on the back of misery and then complain to the company about their violent attacks on your "physical security".

You don't need to change your job - but if you are getting paid very well to do a job, then posting long internet postings about how terrible it is to work at an "important organization" risks getting you some eye-rolls.

You're attacking a strawman. The people trying to effect change aren't merely complaining online. There has been substantial real organizing afoot.

Unless you're actually doxxing the parent commenter, you're assuming a lot there. I have no doubt that plenty of HN contributors are actively working to change the status quo. As for $100k Teslas, personally I have no intention of ever buying a car again, let alone a $100k one.

I think you made their point yourself

Go change the guidelines. No need to tell anyone anything at that point.

And that's what posts like this are slowly doing. Changing public opinion towards our way of life.

Are you sure about that?

And we finally make it.

Go change the guidelines. No need to tell anyone anything at that point.

> The company is just an entity that needs to follow the set of guidelines set by people living in that society.

Those guidelines are the laws. We elect congress and a president who passes laws, and what those are comes back to us.

Within those laws, we have capitalism. If company A goes beyond that, and company B doesn't, guess who survives?

Pressuring an employer to act outside of those bounds isn't helpful. What is helpful is realigning incentive structures at a system level. Radical proposals -- like eliminating NDAs, mandating open source for firmware, right-to-repair, and so on -- feel oppressive when one looks through the lens of private right to contract. When one looks at a systemic level, they result in much greater freedom for everyone.

Most executives would like to be good, but they're between a rock and a hard place, and walk a thin line. Laws are what determine where that line is.

Is your argument that because something is legal, it's ethical? I want to make sure I understand your assertion.

> of course, yes! As long as it stays within the boundaries set by the law.

This, it's even mandated by law to appease shareholders by making as much money as possible. Google changing their ways might just increase the number of shareholder x company lawsuits their legal team has to sort out.

https://www.litigationandtrial.com/2010/09/articles/series/s...

This is not correct:

"modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so." --Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby (US Supreme Court, 2014) [0]

[0]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/13-354

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