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Comment by Opt_Out_Fed_IRS | Hacker News Reader

> Your labor and skills are not owed because they got lucky, they are owed because that is what you are exchanging with the owner for money.

But if everybody is woke (and that is the case given that we are talking about tech and California) then the company has no choice but to accept wokeness because the money becomes a non factor if it can't be offered to somebody who is not woke . The supply of non woke workers just isn't there.

Employees will keep wokeing about until they are replaced with non woke workers at the same price point or slight premium due to the efficiency gained by not having political discussions on the job

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There is an enormous supply of workers who don't want social and political issues in the workplace, but silently acquiesce because saying anything gets you branded negatively and quickly canceled. It doesn't matter if you agree but prefer keeping it out of the workplace; you must either support the woke brigade or keep your mouth shut.

Keeping your mouth shut is no longer an option “silence is violence” and “not taking a position is a position” have taken over. The issue at Basecamp was that activists were harassing other employees to get them to make public statements on issues.

>..keep your mouth shut Some woke mobs equate silence as being against their cause. YMMV.

Correct. As long as you are relatively powerless (think low to mid level IC), silence is tolerated.

Attempt to transition to a strategic or management role and you will discover your past silence must be "clarified".

In other news, Leadership positions requires you to lead and deal with people and their problems

Of course. By "clarify", I meant you will be forced to toe the party line if you don't want to be passed up.

There are still many of us out there who believe that hiring candidates based on their race is not healthy for society, the company, or any individual candidate. That opinion is largely being stamped out, by design, in management at the orgs I'm talking about.

This has nothing to do with not wanting to step up and manage.

The only way that's true is if you have a very narrow and specific definition of "political issues". Your claim itself is very much political.

Every workplace deals in money, in power, in status and class and survival. Those are inherently political. As is insisting we pretend otherwise.

You don’t think conservatives do exactly the same thing? Cancelling isn’t unique to the left nor something that just recently started.

> You don’t think conservatives do exactly the same thing? Cancelling isn’t unique to the left nor something that just recently started.

Yes, conservatives did the same thing during Mccarthyism, and it's widely accepted to have been a bad thing. A different group having made the same mistake in the past is a reason not to do it again, not an excuse to do more of it.

Might the current efforts to make it harder for specific demographics to vote be considered a form of canceling? Is gerrymandering a form of canceling?

Conservatives currently use cancelling as a tactic as well.

And that makes it ok how, exactly?

Because the problem with McCarthyism was the government infringing on freedom of association.

On the other hand, the kind of cancelling that gets talked about today is simply people independently exercising their freedom of association, and it's being made into a boogie man to take those choices away from people.

I don't have a problem with conservatives doing it either as long as they don't enforce it on others, and don't do it for the protected classes. Everything else is fair game for both sides.

Ask Liz Cheney how that goes.

What happened to her is making an example. Tow the MAGA line or else.

As much as I disagree with their decisions, the Republicans get to decide Republican leadership.

Just like people get to say "we decided not to associate with you".

I think you missed my point. It’s not about party governance.

The more reactionary elements are, to put it politely, bullies. Stefanik went to school a few blocks away from me and her evolution/devolution has been well publicized even before she hit the national spotlight. It makes her the perfect patsy.

She has been “rewarded” for loyalty, but has to double down on whatever. The problem is you have to do what the bullies want or you’re in the cold.

The issue for the public at large is you have a coalition of reactionaries, losers (the Colorado bartender with a gun fetish turned Representative) and compromised people whose only path forward is double down on extremism. There’s a non-zero probability that someone like Rep. Greene will accuse POTUS of being a alien lizard-person. It’s exactly the same as McCarthy.

It's not the same as McCarthy because they aren't nuking someone's access to anything other than Republican party leadership. McCarthy could take away random citizen's livelihood; Greene is just playing politics in a gross way with other politicians.

They do it today, too. Conservatives in my area canceled a small business because the owners shared a BLM meme on Facebook. They even got the local PBA spokesperson to smear the business all over media, as well. The owners had to take down their social media profiles, and felt pressured enough to release a statement for apologizing for the meme.

Good. If we can have more even distribution of that, then it'll hopefully enable bipartisan pushback.

Or it'll just get worse and even more partisan, but that's the current trajectory anyway.

It wasn’t just the Red Scare. Black people were cancelled by default. Jews were tolerated, at best, and quota’d out of leadership roles. Women were functionally disallowed from being anywhere near whole classes of employment. Gay people were forced to hide and remain closeted to even be allowed in polite company.

Most of what right wingers complain about being “cancelled” for are perpetuating arguments to restore the bad old days where members of all those groups were treated as second or third class citizens. Can you blame them for occasionally being a little overexuberant in telling you to STFU?

> Can you blame them for occasionally being a little overexuberant in telling you to STFU?

Absolutely. If you claim the moral high ground, you cannot possibly expect to be taken seriously if you make the same mistakes as the people you are criticizing.

It’s not a “mistake.” It’s a power struggle and people just don’t like the shoe being on the other foot for a change.

That's fine. Struggling for power is absolutely okay. It is natural. Let's recognize it for what it is.

What I don't accept is virtuous claims that people want equality. It was never about that. It's about increasing their own group's power and privileges.

> It's about increasing their own group's power and privileges.

How does an underpowered, underprivileged group achieve equality without doing this? What does "equality" even mean without those things?

The supply of non woke workers just isn't there

The responses to the Basecamp and Coinbase announcements were equally mixed between people who wanted to avoid them, and people who want to seek them out. There are plenty of people who want work to be about working together on work.

I for one want work to be welcoming and productive for everyone. Ironically, the best way to accomplish that is to focus on work, and not non-work.

I avoid woke workplaces. I’m much, much happier. I don’t give a shit about politics or activism and it just gets under my skin.

Agreed, as long as there isn’t some major issue internally (sexism/racism) that affects your ability to work, or the work itself is an issue (being made to create distasteful content for example) I don’t want to think about politics at all.

I don’t want to have outside matters pushed on me while working regardless of how much I agree with them.

I’ll happily engage in activism outside of work where people aren’t forced to sit around me every day.

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