Mastercard to Hold Shareholder Vote That Could Cut Off Payments to the Far-Right
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Either allow them both, or forbid them both. If you allow one, but forbid the other, your policies are nothing more than thinly disguised attempts to use the law to attack people with different political beliefs.
Arguably, a tougher standard should be applied to decide to whom Mastercard is allowed to refuse service, because there are a lot fewer alternatives to Mastercard than there are to the corner cake shop.
Secondly, in your example you're comparing a protected class with a non-protected class.
Thirdly, let's do away with the idea that government is apolitical. There are things that the government makes value judgements about, that's not a bad thing. The government can decide that some groups deserve protection more than others - for example, that being Gay is a part of who you are, whereas voicing particular political views is a choice.
There’s also no fighting in the war room!
Indeed, a government could in theory do this. A government could refuse to take action when banks refuse to accept customers with particular political views. A government could allow "redlining" housing practices against people with particular political views. A government could cut off police services to people with particular political views. Barring legal and constitutional restrictions (which these days are very "fluid") a government can do almost whatever it wants to do until it meets pushback from its power brokers.
Just because this could happen, doesn't mean it should. Modern civil society is based on the notion that non-criminals are entitled to some degree of participation in society, even if they are disliked. If you take away that foundation, society will quickly become paralyzed by violence. I personally would like to live at least a few more decades, so I'm not too eager to see where that road takes us.
Rightly or wrongly, a lot of people perceive the complainants here as being the sort of people who like to call this the free market when it happens to others.
Can you prove either one of those statements?
it has to go both ways, otherwise you are playing a game of slippery slope where you start blocking “those you don’t agree with”...
what happens when leftist parties start to become more resurgent in eurozone (for example podemos)... do we block them too because they are calling for a changes that may threaten the economic systems that support these companies?
what happens when you are labeled “far right” or “far left” and the “committee” thinks so too... is that enough reason to literally cut-off your access to money? just because a committee said so?
these things are not the purview of for-profit corporations... this is for democracies to decide (e.g free speech, free association, etc)
[edit] just to clarify
my point isn’t to support these groups, but that corporations shouldn’t be doing the blocking, if any, instead democratically elected governments should be doing so after going through a judicial process (iow democratic peer-review)... at least then he public saw the decision process, that it was transparent, and it was “fair” and can have a process for appeal etc; corporate committees have none of this.
The organized left has always been more of a threat to the establishment than the far right. Nominally leftist activists who push this sort of tactic would do well to realize this and resist the urge to encourage and allow this behavior from corporations, and especially corporations as powerful as Mastercard.
Many things in our society operate better when we are permitted to discourage or encourage interaction with people or groups based on non-innate traits, such as choices made voluntarily as an adult.
Protected classes should be limited to innate traits only. Discriminating against people based on the decisions they undertake (e.g. going or not going to university, joining or not joining the KKK, donating or not donating to anti-gay-rights organizations, et c) is not only valid, it is actively beneficial to our society.
No employer should be forced to offer equal opportunity to an applicant that believes, for example, that that employer should be denied life or other rights based on the color of their skin. Mutual consent depends upon mutual respect for the basic and fundamental rights of the counterparty.
This is a direct implication of what you have said. And many of the things you've declared as "innate" aren't even obviously such, so at best we end up with a politicization/corruption of science trying to claim theories as indisputable facts. Couching an argument in progressive-sounding terms may make it sound like a good idea, when it is actually a naive setup for the pendulum to swing hard the other way.
The general principle is live and let live. The whole "protected classes" thing was really just an imperfect approach to pushing back against the glaring worst of identity politics that was causing ongoing direct harm, because the general principle is impossible to codify just like Free speech itself.
But please Mastercard and shareholders, go ahead and cut off your own leg. The more demand created for Free payments, the better.
I think your argument against my claim hinges on this belief, and I think it is pretty plainly incorrect.
If you have specific arguments against any of the things I have listed being innate, let’s have them. Otherwise, without that lynchpin, the argument against the discrimination boundary of innate/chosen falls apart.
What you are attempting to do is tie the definition of acceptable to "impartial" science. This is tempting because it's authoritative and currently lines up with what you want. But it is a dangerous path because while the scientific process itself is impartial, the focus and interpretation of it is certainly not! Much oppression has been justified by pointing to some groups "innate qualities" and then asserting they need to be "helped".
It's also insulting the various struggles that have gotten us to this point, and shirking the current struggles. Did slavery end because some scientist finally got around to discovering that by-gosh Black people are actually the same species, and then everything just fell out? Or was it generations of iterated struggle to both self-organize and wrest acceptance from wider society, which is still going on?
I did state something very plainly that is not innate - men having sex with men. The desire may be innate, but the action is not. And sure, you can respond well that's just a proxy for an innate quality of gayness. But I'm not asking you to address this argument as if I'm making it right here, but rather to think about it if it was being made by someone in power to justify ongoing persecution of gays. "Being (innately) gay is fine, just don't put it in our faces". If you think society only moves forward, I'd call that a massive blindspot.
Even if something is not innate, path dependence can make it effectively so (eg living in a trailer). Ultimately, the scourge of identity politics doesn't care whether something is innate or not, but whether it can be used to sow divisions and divide people into ingroups and outgroups. And that's the real root of hate.
Analogous, if a Jewish baker refused to serve a Nazi, that would be wrong. But the Jewish baker should not be forced to draw swastikas on a Nazi-themed cake.
Had the court case gone the other way, it would have set a dangerous precedent.
Also, the protected class of the people isn't a factor in this case (or the analogy), because, again, they were not refused service outright and the baker never discriminated against them based on their sexuality. The baker was asked create a custom cake depicting a ceremony that ran counter to his personal beliefs. The argument before the court was that forcing the baker to make this cake would force him to participate in a ceremony that ran counter to his beliefs.
> Waggoner (the attorney) said Phillips is willing to sell ready-made products to anyone who enters his store. But, "he simply declines to express messages or celebrate events that violate his deeply held beliefs," she said.
Moreover, the ACLU, which represented the couple, said it was pleased the court did not endorse a broad religion-based exemption from anti-discrimination laws, and stated ...
> "The court reversed the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision based on concerns unique to the case but reaffirmed its longstanding rule that states can prevent the harms of discrimination in the marketplace, including against LGBT people."
- Louise Melling, the ACLU's deputy legal director
If it makes you feel any better, you can extend the analogy to, let's say, a baker who just doesn't like public education and therefore refuses to make a custom cake with the logo of any public school, but still permits them to purchase any pre-made cake. The class, protected or otherwise, of the baker and customer simply don't play a role here.
You didn't call gay people Nazis, but that's not what I said you said. You equated them in the specific aspects that were being discussed, and ignored the aspects in which they differ that I and other people think are salient.
Are you saying you think legally, Jews must serve Nazis under the present regime, or are you saying morally, under a just regime, they should be forced to?
That’s one hell of a stretch.
There are groups that are to be treated as if they are National Action:
> Note: The Government laid an Order in September 2017 which provides that “Scottish Dawn”and “NS131 (National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action)” should be treated as alternativenames for the organisation which is already proscribed as National Action.
For people who don't know who national action are, they're linked to the death of one MP and the planning of the murder of other MPs.
If you want to be part of the political system, a fundamental concept is that everyone should be treated as having equal political power.
Who thinks humans are not equal? In what way do they think them unequal? What do they want to do about it? Are they white supremacists or are they just anti-immigration? Do they hate Islam or do they want to protect what they see as the established culture of the nation? Are they prepared to work within democratic structures and appeal for votes the same way everyone else or not?
These distinctions matter when you’re talking about banning people from political involvement.
https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/funding-ira-wit...
2. "SumOfUs has also pointed to the activity of Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. The former English Defence League founder is running as an independent in May’s European election."
This is because historically, the #1 thing by far that authoritarians are concerned with is stomping out the opposition. People 'gathering' to discuss 'political ideas' that challenge the status quo are really why the KGB etc. existed. Most armies in the world exist to suppress their own people (FYI it's why the US Army cannot be 'deployed' on US soil).
In that context, it's a very, very dangerous thing to start blocking people from the financial system for political views.
Yes, we can block Nazis and ISIS. FYI I still don't know why we allow Communists to exist after the reality of the last century, but hey, they don't get many votes so there's that.
But this is pragmatically a very, very slippery slope. The slipperiest of all ropes.
The bar for financial transactions is much higher than for Twitter and FB.
This kind of stuff could blow up into a pop culture war, where every corporation and every teenager with an Instagram account will be calling for banning this or that for whatever reason. It's doubly hard when everyone thinks they are acting for the 'social good'.
Let's actually try to be tolerant here.
We aren't "starting". Recall all of the countries that have had sanctions placed on them, such as Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Russia, etc.
Russia invaded parts of Ukraine, is actively trying to take over the governments in the Baltic states, and is directly interfering in the elections of democracies. What kind of punishment do you think we'd give a person who did that? It would be more than a 'ban' from Mastercard, it would be more like life in prison or possibly execution.
All countries are made up of their citizens. I'm reminded of Mitt Romney's statement that corporations are people...
I’m a libertarian and I’m labeled “far right”. If that’s a harbinger of the future, get ready for it to be your turn — unless you swear fealty to your local leftist overlord, you’ll be “re-educated” with a bout of starvation or freezing on a park bench.
Is that the future we really want?