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Comment by i_am_nomad | Hacker News Reader

The NBA boycotted North Carolina over HB2 (the “bathroom bill”), but doesn’t have a problem doing business in China. I hope they go bankrupt.

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Exactly this. They have no claim of neutrality or being apolitical. They have already demonstrated that losing money for the sake of attacking lgbt rights is a sacrifice they're willing to make. The values of team owners and major nba stakeholders are already more in line with the ccp than the american public, so let them choke on our scorn. It's our collective responsibility to do them enough financial damage that this becomes a learning experience.

I’ll expand on this by pulling two sequential quotations in the article from NBA commissioner Adam Silver:

"It is inevitable that people around the world -- including America and China -- will have different viewpoints over different issues. It is not the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences.”

Bullshit, see North Carolina.

“However, the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way."

Bullshit, see Donald Sterling.

I agree with your callout of the NBA's blatant hypocrisy on adjudicating political issues, but Donald Sterling's comments were definitely not a good faith contribution regarding an issue of public contention.

>Bullshit, see Donald Sterling.

Yeah, blatant racism, including against some of the biggest stars in the NBA's history, is definitely the same thing here. That's not regulating political discourse - that's not allowing a racist to be in a position of power over the very people he is prejudiced against.

No one said anything about political discourse, just about differing opinions on various issues. Surely, racism is one of them.

And just so you know, the prevailing Chinese opinion on that is quite a bit different that what we believe in the West.

Do you think that the extent of racism is what opinions you hold?

No, but since you asked, can you tell me what racist things Donald Sterling did, besides make some comments in private?

Donald Sterling settled multiple racial discrimination lawsuits related to his openly racist criteria for putative tenants in his apartment buildings...

See e.g. https://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=4619819

Then we have to wonder why the NBA let him own a team in the first place.

Google is your friend.

Donald Sterling bought the Clippers in 1981. At the time, he was a former trial lawyer that had made millions purchasing and selling high-end ultra-luxury apartment/condo buildings in West LA. (He used to run multiple ads in every issue of the LA Times.)

His forays into the low-income housing developments to which the racial discrimination lawsuits relate did not begin until some years after he had purchased the Clippers. His racism was not well known because the Internet didn't exist back then and he spent millions annually on self-promotion, including sizable annual donations to the NAACP.

You're headed off into the weeds a little. The point was that the NBA does regulate what the players, owners and employees say.

>You're headed off into the weeds a little. The point was that the NBA does regulate what the players, owners and employees say.

No - I'm being realistic. Silver's point is quite obviously they do not want to step in on political disputes and things of that nature.

If anyone was taking him as saying that they wouldn't do anything if they found out an owner was spewing racist rhetoric, they're being obtuse. To take it to the point of absurdity - would you expect an owner sharing Sterling's views to be able to go around on TV repeatedly saying the N word and then use that quote from Silver as a defense and reason as to why they shouldn't be banned from the league?

The issue with that sort of behavior, and Sterling's, is that it shows he is unfit to work in a sport where roughly 75% of the players are black. How can you fairly run a team full of black players if you are plainly prejudiced against them? How can you participate in the owner's meetings where so much policy is set? It wasn't just about what he said - it was also about how it effected the professional players on his team and in the league, as well as what it could mean in the future.

Comparing Sterling's actions with someone speaking about the Hong Kong protests is horribly obtuse.

Let's give them some initial credit for being supportive of employees that support Hong Kong- They've shown more of a spine than Blizzard at this point.

>Let's give them some initial credit for being supportive of employees that support Hong Kong

Daryl Morey is not an employee of the NBA, so I don't think there's anything they could do, practically speaking.

North Carolina didn't have 4 billion dollars and a 1.3 billion person potential market to dangle in front of the NBA is why.

No, the difference was that anyone with a whit of sense knew that North Carolina would bow down to pressure, and had more to lose from the NBA taking a stance.

And now, everyone with a whit of sense knows that China will not bow to pressure, and the NBA has more to lose from taking a stance.

For some reason, they aren't keen on tilting at windmills.

Somewhat but a good bit of that pressure wouldn't have come from companies if NC had similar market power and the ability to just shut out whole companies from their market on a whim like China does.

I hope they double their profits. It's a fantastic product, even though you seem to strongly dislike it, and I'm proud of the commissioner Adam Silver for publicly standing up for freedom of speech.

This times a thousand!

I completely agree.

It's easy to be woke in US. In fact it's very profitable.

> Whether the topic is Colin Kaepernick, mass shootings or President Donald Trump, the Golden State Warriors coach is rarely shy about speaking out on difficult, controversial subjects. Except on Monday. Kerr was asked about the controversy engulfing the NBA ... He didn’t have much to say.

https://sports.yahoo.com/outspoken-warriors-coach-steve-kerr...

> That’s far from the standard Kerr response on social issues. He’s right on one point. The conflict between the people of Hong Kong and the Chinese government is complex, and speaking publicly on the topic from a place of ignorance is ill advised.

> But what’s not complicated is analyzing the NBA’s response to Morey’s comments, which places a clear priority on the league’s financial interests over human rights concerns on the other side of the world.

They did one thing right but did another thing wrong. Is that worse than doing two things wrong?

No, it only shows that they essentially have no principles at all, or at least none that they’re willing to lose money over (which is ultimately the same thing). It’s always useful when someone reveals their true moral fiber, as the NBA has done.

Why are both the same thing? If it doesn't cost me anything to fight injustice and I don't do it, that is strictly worse than if it doesn't cost me to fight injustice and I do.

Suppose the NBA gave the middle finger to Saudi Arabia but cozied up to China, would that be worse than if they cozied up to both? Your stance is wildly illogical.

It isn’t about what they did, it is the justification they gave for doing or not doing it.

If they said “we cozied up to China, but didn’t cozy up to SA because it made business sense in the former scenario but not in the latter one”, that would be one thing. But if they said “we cozied up to China because we want to stay out of politics and be neutral” while still not cozying it up to SA and flaunting how morally righteous they were for giving SA the finger, that’s a very different scenario.

At best, it is just dishonest and hypocritical.

You're talking about being strictly global utilitarian in all actions which is completely unworkable when it endangers the actor. Of course, they aren't as hard on China because of money. I don't see why they need to spell it out so as not to appear dishonest — it's so obvious that it can be assumed.

That doesn't mean it is better to also not be hard on North Carolina, which is OP's error. There is no moral framework in which appearance of hypocrisy is worse than not helping others.

Their actions also go against deontological ethics as well.

Indeed, but not doing anything in both cases is still worse in that system, which is the point. You have to do wild contortions to make doing one fewer good thing better .

It's more manipulative and does a better job of revealing their true motives. Doing a tiny good deed for manipulative reasons can be a net negative.

> Doing a tiny good deed for manipulative reasons can be a net negative.

In this case, how?

A company that does a good deed will draw attention and support away from other companies. If the good deed was done for ethical reasons, then that attention and support will feed further good deeds in the future. If it was done for manipulative reasons, then it dilutes the money going to the more ethical companies. The manipulative company is less likely to do good deeds in the future. It's more likely to ignore opportunities, or to do easier and less meaningful good deeds.

In other words, it's not a one-off. There is the same positive effect in the short term, but the long term differs.

All of that logic could easily apply to this scenario.

For a simpler scenario, if a company does a good deed to apologize for a bad deed, and the good deed is smaller but gets them off the hook, then that's a very clear net negative.

In what way would the long term effect be worse if they had not done anything in North Carolina? Did their actions in North Carolina keep them alive long enough to apologize to China?

"But why male models?"

Ah, so they just subscribe to profit ethics. It all makes sense now.

Again, is that worse than doing the wrong thing both times? Naming an action does not affect its outcome.

How so? The nature of profit ethics is that the right thing to do is what is profitable. This is exactly what they are doing in both cases. They have never done "the wrong thing".

I am asking if there exists any ethical system under which their actions are worse than doing what the original poster considers to be wrong in both cases.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21207175, a reply to you well before you submitted this comment.

And see my response. You and the others in this thread are grasping for straws trying to find a way to make doing more good deeds worse than doing fewer.

Is someone claiming that it is?

i_am_nomad is. If the NBA didn't do anything in North Carolina, he wouldn't have a problem. If his issue were purely about how they dealt with China, the NBA's actions in North Carolina are not related. He says they should go bankrupt because they took action in one instance but not in the other.

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