Comment by sedev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sedev | Hacker News Reader

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But it's also wrong to say that an institution and its members are completely separate. They aren't and can't be. There is no institution without members, and there are no members without an institution to be a member of. You've got to deal with them as entangled, and treat them as such. There are varying degrees of responsibility for acts that we attribute to an institution, because generally we're talking about institutions with internal hierarchies. So for example General Keith Alexander is much more culpable than a random sysadmin. But because of the responsibility-diffusing nature of institutions, no, you can't completely let members off the hook without also letting the institution off the hook.

By the way, about your Mafia/Nazi examples: a zealous prosecutor could easily charge the housekeeper, and the police and FBI would certainly lean on them a bit whilst investigating the boss. That's totally commonplace. Meantime, in the case of the literal Nazis, yes, there were in fact consequences for such people (leaving aside that you've constructed that scenario very poorly).

I never argue they are not morally responsible for what they do. But arguing that we need to look at the issue of discrimination being a current or ex-NSA. How would that affect employment. Will major employer like Google or open-source giant like Mozilla, reject people for the sake of being NSA?

That's my issue I want to discuss. If we are striving for a better society, discrimination should be minimized. If we keep discriminate them, penalize them, the only job they will ever have is NSA job.

I think now this point is clear why it is important to look at the effect and the moral issue of how we treat them.

And to many, it is NSA is evil, every NSA employee is evil. and that's a big issue.

> If we are striving for a better society, discrimination should be minimized.

Bullshit. Discrimination is the foundation of a sane society. Unjust discrimination with no bearing on one's ability to do a job (such as on the basis of one's genital configurations or preference of who you like to smooch) should be minimized, but you absolutely must be discriminating about you who choose to work with. After all, if we really wanted to minimize discrimination, we'd just hire people for any job without any consideration towards their capabilities, experience, or work history.

Being cautious about hiring potential employees because their work history demonstrates that they may be a threat to the security and reputation of your company is a damned good reason to discriminate.

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