Comment by kadendogthing | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kadendogthing | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

We codify against pointless discrimination against protected classes of people for a reason. Some things are no longer worth debating and serve no purpose but to actively harm people. So no, they shouldn't be allowed to do that.

Can you explain how discriminating against minority members of society is somehow logically relatable to selling a technological product that immediately expands the governments surface area of an easily abusable power? Because I don't know where bakeries not selling doughnuts to gay people, purely based on personal perspectives, really comes into play with not selling a technological platform that enables governments and its officials to more easily abuse and greatly expand the power they currently have.

From the article:

>On stage, he acknowledged that big tech’s products might be misused, even exploited, by autocrats. But rather than meaningfully explain how Amazon will act to prevent the bad uses of its own technology, Bezos suggested we wait for society’s “immune response.”

>Law enforcement has already started using facial recognition with virtually no public oversight or debate or restrictions on use from Amazon.

>We codify against pointless discrimination against protected classes of people for a reason. Some things are no longer worth debating and serve no purpose but to actively harm people. So no, they shouldn't be allowed to do that.

But where do we draw a bright line? Sure, maybe we want religious people baking cakes for gay weddings. But should Muslim bakers be forced to draw likenesses of the Prophet Muhammad if a customer requests it? Should a bikini wax establishment that only works on women be forced to wax the intimate areas of a pre-op transwoman?

>But where do we draw a bright line?

It's an evolving conversation. There is no line to be drawn. We learn, we codify, we move on.

Let's stick to applicable conversations, shall we?

So how about we codify that any bakery can refuse any order? Or is that off the table for some reason?

> we codify

That is a line.

> Let's stick to applicable conversations, shall we?

Unless you a have a principle that everyone agrees on over what is 'applicable' and what isn't, that veers pretty close to begging the question - conversations that support your point are declared 'applicable', while ones that bring up difficult questions to your point of view get dismissed as off-topic.

Getting back to the original topic, if you're saying that "employees' political views should be taken into account in company decisions", the difficult question is "what about employees whose political views are repugnant to you?" The example of the cake bakery is easy to dismiss because it seems covered by existing law, but what about other cases?

E.g. if a medical device company's employees are religious, should they force it to not sell to abortion providers? Should Trump supporters agitate to only manufacture in the US?

>conversations that support your point are declared 'applicable',

But that's not what's happening.

>the difficult question is "what about employees whose political views are repugnant to you?

Why is this a question? What part of any statement that I made lead to the implication that only a certain subset of employee's should be heard from?

>The example of the cake bakery is easy to dismiss because it seems covered by existing law

It's not only easily dismissable if the conversation called for it, it's actually just irrelevant to the current situation. They touch on two completely different subjects and contexts. A company targeting specific individuals on an ad-hoc basis has no bearing on a company empowering a government with its product. You have to strip both situations down to "employee has opinion, will business listen?" for the current conversation to make any sense. I'd say that'd be absurd to do but I guess that's what we're actually doing.

>if a medical device company's employees are religious, should they force it to not sell to abortion providers?

There is an appreciable difference between a company taking its employee's views and wishes into consideration and obeying laws. There is no law stating that Amazon has to sell this technology. It'd be hard to make such a law, for a whole host of reasons. I'd be happy to expand on such reasons since we're going to start having a civics conversation at any point now.

These kind of analogies, again, are fundamentally mistaken. Because they confuse different issues, different subjects, and different contexts. It's a bad abstraction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com