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Comment by 0xDEADBEF | Hacker News Reader

Sigh, more politics intermingled with doing business. Just provide a service and leave it be.

Business is political. It’s only can appear apolitical if business activity is so in harmony with the political status-quo that political conflict and negotiation is almost wholly absent.

Facebook is obviously involved politically, and has been well before 2016. Hell, how many millions do you think they spend on political lobbying? Why do they fill so many of their high-up executive positions with ex-politicians?

Or, why are so many of our current politicians ex-executives or ex-lobbyists?

> Business is political. It’s only can appear apolitical if business activity is so in harmony with the political status-quo that political conflict and negotiation is almost wholly absent.

100% agree.

It's amazing how techy-engineering-types are so unaware of how interdependent systems and institutions in the real world are. Especially given the nature of tech/engineering itself.

To be honest I think it's common for such types to have had essentially no higher education in politics and civics. Saying business is or should be apolitical is such a nonsensical opinion that you'd get laughed out of the room at university.

The dominant political ideology in tech hubs is _so_ dominant that it's usually invisible. Now that big tech is getting challenged political, some people think returning to the status quo would be to free themselves from political involvement.

The work you do 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 40 years is the biggest political thing in your entire life.

I support your position of outlawing lobbyists, overturning Citizens United and instituting a blanket ban on political contributions by corporations.

I agree in some respects. I see more and more of this in the company I work for (and its peers) to the point where it's getting a bit overwhelming. I often wonder if we actually even care about building a good product anymore, or if the mission has changed to social justice initiatives. Not to say I'm against them, but it's slightly concerning that pockets of social media outrage is having such a pronounced impact.

The Black Lives Matter movement and organization stopped being pockets of social media since Ferguson. This a real movement for civil rights changes. Down playing it as a vocal minority is offensive

Can you give me an example of something businesses do which isn’t political?

Selling lemonade, running a bike shop, etc.

You seem to be confusing small businesses with corporations, as if they have the same economic and power imperatives.

> You seem to be confusing small businesses with corporations

No, not at all. The question was:

> Can you give me an example of something businesses do which isn’t political?

And thus I gave 2 examples. A small business can also incorporate if they wish. And yes, the bigger a business gets, the hairy things get politically if they want to stay neutral or simply true to their business model, but they are not mutually exclusive.

You've never actually opened and ran a bike shop have you?

Even just the zoning, taxes and permitting process alone will be political.

I'm loving seeing all these responses. They're hilarious.

There's no difference except size. Facebook and Google were small businesses once.

That’s the argument imo.

That if you took Apple, Google, Facebook and started them today under appropriately matches circumstances... they would all either be purchased for meager amounts or put out of business.

I believe in free markets, but also monopoly wrangling. FAANG will absolutely work against the very landscapes they came up in.

There are permits required to run a lemonade stand and a bike shop. Who do you think sets the rules for those permits?

> There are permits required to run a lemonade stand and a bike shop.

I get the lemonade stand, but who needs a permit to run a bike shop?

Again though that's an example of being affected by politics, not participating in it.

Sales at the lemonade stand are affected by weather, but that doesn't mean that the owner should immediately start building a climate-changing machine.

Comcast serving everyone. Planned Parenthood not turning away any customer. Airlines allow anybody to fly.

All three of those examples are insanely political enterprises.

You basically showed your lack of awareness by answering the question.

I think you're intentionally missing the point here. Sure, all business are affected by politics, but in the context of this article, none of these generally limit services based on political ideologies.

No, you don't understand that the following is a massively significant political position:

> [not] limit[ing] services based on political ideologies.

I'm confused, so you say it's okay for business to don't do business with anyone based on political differences.

I give examples of companies that don't discriminate based on political ideology.

I also wish we had a functioning democracy and those were still apolitical.

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