Hacker News Reader

Comment by IncRnd | Hacker News Reader

> The strengthening of social ties within the union gives you a pulpit from which to influence

Hmm. If a pastor uses the church pulpit to convince their flock to vote a specific way, that's okay from your definition. If a well-loved ceo at a company spontaneously meets with the employees in the breakroom, over their free coffee and free lunch, and decides to use that pulpit to convince people to act a certain way politically, that's okay from your definition.

There is a saying: "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" [1] which is "used to say that one person or situation should be treated the same way that another person or situation is treated".

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/what%27s%20good%2...

View on HN

> If a pastor uses the church pulpit to convince their flock to vote a specific way, that's okay from your definition.

I don't think they're saying that, just that it does occur. It's actually illegal for churches to convince their flock to vote a certain way specifically[0], since they get such sweeping tax benefits.

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/30/johnson-amendment-el...

> …that's okay from your definition.

Can you point to where GP made a value judgment about what is and isn’t “okay” in their post? It kind of seems like you’re arguing against something that nobody said.

That comment was specifically to say how a student's union can effect societal changes unrelated to the purpose of the union, by the leaders of the union using their bully pulpit to coerce people to act. That is exactly what they said. They even gave the example of how to effectively use the bully pulpit: the corrupt Jimmy Hoffa, who incidentally was convicted for jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud.

Giving an example of how a thing can be observed to work in the world is not the same as saying a thing is inherently morally good or bad.

If I were to say “The catholic church has had a lot of influence over architecture decisions”, would your response be “I see that you hate Frank Lloyd Wright”?

Does describing how a plane flies mean that I like fighter jets?

Nobody ever said that the description of a thing implies any morality. Are you actually engaging in honest conversation here?

The GP clearly wrote how a student's union can affect the members actions, outside of the union's purpose, through using the bully pulpit. That is literally what they wrote. By the same logic as what they wrote in their comment, the bully pulpit can be used to push different beliefs. I've answered your question about that twice now. Please don't try to engage me in red herring arguments.

What did you mean by the word “okay” if you didn’t mean to imply that the author had any opinion on that process?

I’ve now asked you in multiple ways what you meant by that phrasing!

edit: I’ll make it even easier, since you don’t seem to want to answer that question. How about this:

What was the topic of these sentences?

> If a pastor uses the church pulpit to convince their flock to vote a specific way, that's okay from your definition. If a well-loved ceo at a company spontaneously meets with the employees in the breakroom, over their free coffee and free lunch, and decides to use that pulpit to convince people to act a certain way politically, that's okay from your definition. There is a saying: "What's good for the goose is good for the gander"

To clarify what I mean by “what is the topic”, I mean

1. What was your purpose in bringing up your example of a well-loved ceo when nobody else had? What were you trying to illustrate?

2. If you weren’t commenting on somebody’s perceived moral statement, did you share the goose and gander quote as a completely unrelated fun fact for everyone to enjoy?

Was it some sort of fun little moral lesson unrelated to the rest of the content of your post, like the text on a popsicle stick or Snapple cap?

> What did you mean by the word “okay” if you didn’t mean to imply that the author had any opinion on that process?

> I’ve now asked you in multiple ways what you meant by that phrasing!

You might want to use far fewer words, then, if you want to know the meaning of a word. Using paragraphs to ask that question has a very high noise to signal ratio.

  okay [1]
  also OK also O.K. also ok
  Word forms: okays, okaying, okayed
  1. ADJECTIVE
  If you say that something is okay, you find it satisfactory or acceptable.

  OK [2]
  exclamation (also okay)
  OK exclamation (AGREEING)
  used to show that you agree with something or agree to do something:

> 1. What was your purpose in bringing up your example of a well-loved ceo when nobody else had? What were you trying to illustrate?

> 2. If you weren’t commenting on somebody’s perceived moral statement, did you share the goose and gander quote as a completely unrelated fun fact for everyone to enjoy?

Those are for the exact same reason. The first shows a parallel to what the GP posted but in an unexpected context, which is mentined to show the unintended consequences when using the bully pulpit of a union in a context that it shouldn't be used. The actual article mentioned that even the union organizer in the story denounced this. The second showed the long-held societal wisdom on this, that when one pushes their beliefs using a questionable method in one context, that same method will be applied by others to additional areas in unexpected ways. There was a link that contained an explanation for that.

As I wrote, "By the same logic as what they wrote in their comment, the bully pulpit can be used to push different beliefs."

> Was it some sort of fun little moral lesson unrelated to the rest of the content of your post, like the text on a popsicle stick or Snapple cap?

And, it is now clear that you are intentionally not engaging in honest conversation.

[1] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/okay

[2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ok?q=...

Buddy you saw someone mention organizing in a way that you didn’t like, invented a scenario in which the very mention of that is equivalent to advocating against a way of organizing that you do like, and tried to start an argument against a shadow opponent.

Congrats on not answering my question at all, in any fashion. Condolences on not baiting anyone into a pointless argument about CEOs or whatever, it was just too far a stretch to get from your outrage to anything remotely on-topic here.

You've completely made-up things that you believe I have done in my head. It's all false. Please just stop and go away. It's very tiring.

Even if well-loved, a CEO has material leverage over employees that a pastor does not.

Just to be clear I was describing what happens, not implying a moral judgement either way.

Religious leaders are in no way barred from discussing politics from the pulpit by the way. They are prohibited from speaking for or against individual candidates by name or risk losing their non-profit status but they can definitely advocate for their positions on certain issues and leave it to their members to conclude which candidates that most aligns with (and given how peer pressure / communication works, it’s not a secret which candidate that turns out to be). Anything else would be a 1A problem. And religious leaders can ALSO express personal views about what their preferred candidate happens to be outside of the pulpit. And Trump made it even less problematic for politically active religious leaders [1].

CEOs also definitely advocate for/against policy within the company. “I think legislation X is bad for us / our industry”. Some CEOs even cross the line and try to retaliate against/incentivize for your vote (it’s hard with anonymity in general but much easier with mail in ballots).

None of this must apply to unions which regularly endorse candidates by name and have so for a very very long time.

So regardless of good or not, all this does happen. I haven’t thought well enough about what kind of electioneering regulations is good or bad, but generally I’d do some research on countries that I view as having a healthier democratic process (Canada, France, Germany, Norway, etc) to figure out how they deal with the various issues.

Anyway, I don’t know what you’ve taken away from my post or why it triggered you so. What could I clarify there to help you interpret the post in the spirit that it was intended to?

[1] https://www.nonprofitissues.com/to-the-point/can-pastor-disc...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com