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Comment by drewbug01 | Hacker News Reader

> You are interfering with their freedom of association.

A corporation has no inherent "freedom of association." A corporation has exactly what rights we choose to give it, because it is fundamentally a legal fiction - the concept of a "corporate person" is useful for legal reasons, so we create such a thing in our laws. But it only has the rights we ascribe to it, because it isn't an actual being.

With that in mind: we've given corporations no "freedom of association." But even if we accepted your claim here - how does "pressuring a company to drop a contract" violate its supposed "freedom of association?"

"Freedom of association" is not freedom from consequences. "Freedom of association" means "you may associate with whomever you please and the government may not interfere". It does not mean "you may associate with whomever you please and no one may protest."

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The only question that matters in this argument is whether a corporation's freedom to do business is worth more than stopping the action you consider immoral.

Your attempts at refutation are all general and fail to address the critical equation.

If you will, describe what exactly you think a "corporation's freedom to do business" entails? Where do you find such a definition? Is it in the same place you found a corporation's "freedom of association"?

It makes sense that you don't think my refutations are valid: I fundamentally disagree with your underlying premise that a corporation has any rights beyond the limited ones explicitly assigned in various bodies of law. And I specifically disagree that a corporation has a "freedom of association" or a "freedom to do business."

So of course I'm not engaging with your question of "is whether a corporation's freedom to do business is worth more than stopping the action you consider immoral". Why would I? I disagree with the whole, underlying, fundamental premise of your question. A company has no freedom of association! It has no freedom to do business! These things do not exist, so refuting your question is impossible!

(And, setting aside the whole absurdity of the central question: even if companies had these rights as you claim, how on earth would a letter from concerned developers infringe upon those rights? It's patently absurd to think that a group of customers sending a letter to a company somehow infringes upon its rights, unless you think that these "rights" entail freedom to do business without any criticism or bad press whatsoever)

> The only question that matters in this argument is whether a corporation's freedom to do business is worth more than stopping the action you consider immoral.

Can you explain to me how does people pressuring them to stop a contract affect their freedom to do business? This is a free market, Github can still do business with ICE, they just know that people won't share that same view and that theses peoples may move their business elsewhere.

Let say there's 2 business that sell chocolate, you want to buy chocolate. One is 1$ cheaper, but they kill a kittens for each purchase. Is it wrong to go buy the one that doesn't kill kittens because for you it infringe on their freedom to do business?

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