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Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

they should probably go ahead and enforce a no-travel policy as well, fire anyone who attends SXSW for instance. they should also go through their ranks and thoroughly question anyone who was born in or has lived in Texas in their life, just to be sure they have the correct worldview. and while you're doing that, might as well question all the Christians, especially those pesky Catholics, and ask anyone who doesn't agree with the company's values on this sensitive topic to renounce their faith or face termination. this is the only way to have a morally correct workplace where you know everyone shares the same values you do, and you don't have to fret about whether or not the guy in the cubicle next to you is morally bankrupt.

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Setting aside anybody opinions on this particular law/topic, are you suggesting companies shouldn’t “vote with their wallet/feet”? If you had a 2 person company and you were the CEO and SomeState enacted a law you strongly disagreed with would you not seek to limit your business’ support of that state?

comparing Apple to a two-person company is highly disingenuous. in the past decade or so we've slid into a world in which massive corporations start pretending to have morals outside of "increase value for shareholders" and it's absolutely ridiculous that anyone takes it seriously at all... especially when at the same time, everyone is on board with firing the Brendan Eichs and Palmer Luckeys of the world for their individual beliefs/donations! we cannot continue to allow a world where these gargantuan corporations attempt to exert moral influence on the populace, it's like we're just asking for a technocratic corporate dystopia at this point

It just seems weird that you would choose forcing Apple and its employees to operate and live in Texas as the non-dystopian option.

where did I say I was advocating for forcing anyone to do anything? merely encouraging people to respond to massive corporate superficial moralizing with a "lmao ok bub you're a corporation not a person" instead of enthusiastic agreement would go a long ways.

I think a lot of this ends up being motivated by employees and customers of Apple who are using Apple as a lever of action, rather than being orchestrated top-down by Apple. This works, at least in part, because Apple is subject to popular opinion in a way that the legislative process is at least somewhat insulated from.

So I guess I just don't agree that it's a corporate dystopia. It's a popular opinion dystopia, actioned through corporate activism. To use a sports metaphor badly, Apple is the football, not the quarterback.

(And to be clear, I don't think it's dystopic at all, at least compared to the alternative, which would be to forbid this type of corporate activism)

> it's like we're just asking for a technocratic corporate dystopia at this point

You think we're not already there? Optimist...

A huge amount of modern life on the internet is intermediated by a very, very small list of giant companies. And those companies have started going, rather aggressively, after points of view they don't like - Amazon has recently announced they're going to be paying more attention to what's running on AWS, etc.

I don't think those are good ideas.

neither is allowing massive corporations taking moral stands on divisive political issues—wholly unrelated to the purview of their industry—to become socially acceptable!

Corporations happen to be composed of people who do have opinions.

corporations are comprised of people that work for them, but corporations themselves are not people, regardless of the image social media managers try to portray. this is a crucial distinction.

How would you apply that logic if a corporation took the bounty and reported an employee? A person didn’t do it?

You would forbid it?

Nobody's being asked to renounce their faith. Give us a break.

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