Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

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'the office' or the firm today, is for better or worse our primary means by which we can exercise influence. That is why tech workers are bringing politics into the firm in the first place, because they realise, rightly, that it is one of the most potent channels to actually exercise change, and that's why so many people want to keep politics out of it. The workplace is the one space where your political opponent can't simply escape from politics, and has to be confronted with your views, which is after all the actual point of political life.

People realise that rather than the local town hall, the large internet platforms, their workplace, and their social media feed have become the public space of ideas. That's why the free speech debate focuses so much on internet platforms, and why 'it's privately owned' has long lost meaning to anyone in the debate.

Keeping politics 'out of the workplace', at least in our environment today, is basically to say to keep politics out, period. It's not the apolitical position, it is the 'idiotic' position because it intents to keep politics out of the one place that actually matters the most in this day and age.

You haven't really provided any arguments for why converting companies (entities providing goods and services) into mini political parties is a good idea. Anyone can yell about "status quo" and "change". In reality, "status quo" is frequently an ill defined concept and the benefits of change depend entirely on what kind of change it is.

When I work for a company, I provide my labor in exchange for payment. I am then free to use my money to support an activist organization or a cause. So are all other employees.

Corporate activism, on the other hand, is inherently degenerate. It means your employer withholds resources from improving the business or paying higher salaries. They instead apply those resources to some causes of their choosing. Any employee who doesn't agree with the cause is effectively coerced into supporting it unless they quit. So is every customer. The goods and services become inherently tangled with an ideology of some sort.

Why should a model where everyone is free to pursue their personal activism be replaced with a model where people are coerced to pursue activism "approved" by corporate execs?

The post doesn't argue for converting companies into political parties, merely that it's natural for workers to be politically active at work, given the continued atomization of modern society making the workplace a default place for political activity, especially since so much of day to day life and social activity takes place there.

It's also a straw man to talk about corporate execs leading the activism, the post was talking about the workers themselves.

> The workplace is the one space where your political opponent can't simply escape from politics, and has to be confronted with your views

It is for this exact reason that many people object to politics being overtly brought into the workplace against people's will.

If someone wants to discuss politics (or religion or sexuality or anything else that makes us all human) with you, have at it. If they don't want to, you need to stop.

No means no here as well. The fact that they can't leave imposes a higher burden on consent, not a lower one, IMO.

Some would call political activism on your employer's dime theft.

Unless it's part of your job description.

But no one likes to face what it means to sell their time to another person.

> Some would call political activism on your employer's dime theft.

That's probably true, but they would be wrong. The fact that some people would say incorrect things is not a strong argument.

It’s always been this way in the west, post industrialization. People treating it as some novel development are just ignorant of history. Why do you think so many democracies have “labor” or “workers” parties? Myriad progressive movements and political parties were born out of and materially supported by workers organizing their workplaces.

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