Hacker News Reader

Comment by _8j50 | Hacker News Reader

Are you kidding me? People should feel guilty about getting paid? What a marvelous perspective, long live the oligarchy?

Instead of making 600k and using that to fund whatever political causes or charities I should work for less and allow that nicer company to lobby politicians on my behalf?

And then you wonder why corporations control democracies so easily.

For everyone else reading: if your work is honest and legal and you don't have to violate your conscious to perform the duties assigned to you the make as much as you can. Fulfill your responsibility to your family and community firsr and the worry about the world. Use your own money to influence politics instead of using employment activism, investor activism, social media cancelling,etc... to lobby for causes. Talk to and convince your peers. This is how you fight for democracy and democracy is dying because people are allowing proxies like their employers to speak for them. Companies have no place at all in democratic discourse. It is "we the people" not "we the corporations".

This is why shit like your healthcare being tied to your employer is a thing!

View on HN

if your work is honest

if you work for advertising then your work isn't honest.

it's like saying being a janitor for a crime syndicate is honest work.

either way, your salary is coming from a dishonest source.

Exactly.

If you're a cook for an army who is pillaging and destroying, you are still contributing to destruction while making soup.

No you're not. You got paid to feed people. Only those make decisions with intent are responsible for the outcome of those decisions. If the army is doing something wrong then you must actively stop them, not quietly say you won't cook for them lol. If it was that clear that which war rarely is. The strawman you and others are using is crime ot war or something but the subject here is a legitimate corporate entity.

Make the activity you disagree with illegal first before comparing advertisers to a pillaging army.

My point is, don't work for a company you don't like but don't you dare take this high and mighty morally superior attitude when others work at those legitimate companies so they can make a living. You cancel and judge instead of vote and convince others.

if as individuals we want to make this world a better place then we need to take responsibility for our lives and the influence we have that goes beyond earning a paycheck. if your moral attitude is so low that you don't care what your employer does, as long as it is legal, then you are not making a positive contribution to this world. i won't cancel you, but it's also unlikely that we would be friends.

I agree we can't be friends because you would sacrifice your friends and family for a cause. You do not understand your basic moral obligations as a human, that a world better off by sacrificing those who need you or even yourself is a world built by unneccesary sacrifice. You would introduce more suffering into the world when you have tools like democracy and free speech that were paid for by ages of suffering and anguish that have made that unnecesary. You will cause yourself and others to suffer all while not solving the actual problem or making the world better one iota. You would alienate anyone that you need to convince to make change happen so you can feel morally superior.

You do not understand that the many rights and betternments you enjoy now was built by people working at places they did not approve of, using their position and power to make change happen.

You do not undersrand your contribution into the social divide today that is making the world much worse in every way you can imagine. Not just I but many others are also not your friends and cannot even begin to have discourse with you to have our opinions changed because you have erected barriers of moral outrage and socio-economical activism that forces others to be with or against you. It could be adverising, fossil fuels, finance, insurance, military and this is just for employement we are talking about lol.

A house divided is what you have contributed. Witness the not standing part.

you would sacrifice your friends and family for a cause

there is a difference between avoiding people i don't like and abandoning friends or family. you are making a claim that has no basis in reality.

i stay away from people who are primarily materialist, so those would never become friends to begin with. the special case that a friend suddenly turns materialist is unlikely to happen.

my basic moral obligation as a human is to make a positive contribution to the world. i can't see how i can make a positive contribution to someone who is materially oriented, but there is no need, because i get to choose how and who i contribute to. there is no obligation to work with anyone specific except my parents and my children (and siblings) but you can rest assured that my conviction here is how i grew up so everyone in my immediate family is similarly oriented. there is no risk of abandoning any of them.

You would alienate anyone that you need to convince to make change happen so you can feel morally superior

i am not alienating anyone. i am staying away from people who try to push their worldview on me like you are doing now. i am holding my ground on my beliefs, but you try to keep telling me that i am wrong. i am not trying to feel morally superior. i am just trying to explain that i reject your moral basis.

You are a materialistic person who pretends you are better than others by denying reality. Feeding yourself and family in your view is being materialistic while usually that word is reserved for someone pursuing pricy things like fancy cars and houses as a way of life which obviously no one suggested in this thread.

> i am staying away from people who try to push their worldview on me like you are doing now

To the contrary, it is you who are judging others and avoiding them as a tactic to push your "holier than thou" worldview. If you said you don't want to work at a company for whatever moral reasons, I have no objections or opinions on that, the subject here is that you think others should fall in line with your world view. I am not telling you that you are wrong, I am telling you telling others where they should work or judging them based your very subjective beliefs in morality is wrong. Your alienation of others to get them to follow your moral code is my disagreement.

In general I dislike advertising industry, just like I dislike the banking industry, or the gambling industry, but I think the comparison to a crime syndicate is not a good one. The difference is that the existence of both is within the boundaries that are specified by law, which is the most objective mechanism that we have to define something as honest. I don't think the law is always right, but it's got to count for a bit more than each individual's subjective morals. Because in principle it tries to break down things and isolate exactly what is problematic, which is something we're not doing when we pass general judgement in the form of an opinion.

Wouldn't you agree for example that collecting and analysing user data for purposes of displaying relevant advertisements doesn't have to be dishonest, if the users consented to it? Maybe then the problem becomes that some methods of obtaining user consent are not honest -which would mean that there could be methods that are honest, and companies that can follow them.

And if the subject is so nuanced then maybe it's not fair to say that an employee that simply wants to work in their domain of expertise doesn't do honest work, just for failing to set more strict standards than the law with regards to their employer's activities.

i didn't mean to equate advertising with a crime syndicate, just that dishonest is dishonest, and obviously there are different degrees of how bad something is.

there may be some honest and fair advertising, but a lot is deception, and maybe an ad platform isn't dishonest by itself but they are enabling deceptive advertisers.

Wouldn't you agree for example that collecting and analysing user data for purposes of displaying relevant advertisements doesn't have to be dishonest, if the users consented to it?

no, because the majority of people do not understand what they are consenting to and when they consent they have no way to verify that the data is actually used in a fair and honest way.

to elaborate: people need to be protected from sharing personal data against their own will. say for example you share your address. and then somewhere on a public forum you indicate that i am your neighbor. suddenly you shared my address too, against my will. therefore i have an interest to stop you from sharing your address. people do not and can not understand the consequences of consenting to share their data, because the ways to abuse that data are way to complex and subtle.

> it's like saying being a janitor for a crime syndicate is honest work.

If the crime syndicate is legal? Yeah, that's exactly what I am saying. Your hypocrisy amuses me, are you telling me you would starve and let your familu starve rather working for a legitimate company because instead of voting to make thay illegal you chose starvation? Or is your claim that because other people are not actually starving, the suffering and hardship they and theirs endure is tolerable?

People work to live.

If you're going to play the indirect moral culpability game then by simply being a voting age adult you are morally culpable for everything the US government does and everything it refuses to do (including regulate ad business lol).

And how much of your tax money went to weapons that kill someone else's innocent child continents away? So why do you pay tax? Shouldn't you be refusing to pay tax or is prison the line in the sand you won't cross?

Unlike democracies, corporations do not derive their authority from their subjects, their authority comes from their owners. Only those with the authority to make decisions are culpable for those decisions. Hitler's janitor is not responsible for the holocaust.

are you telling me you would starve and let your familu starve rather working for a legitimate company

that's not fair because most of the times you have the choice to work for another company. i do refuse to work for google or microsoft or other companies if i have a choice, but if i had no choice i would accept their offer. it's a matter of degree and opportunity.

by simply being a voting age adult you are morally culpable for everything the US government does and everything it refuses to do

yes, you are. i don't blame my american friends for being american, but i do listen carefully which activities of their country they support, and which they reject. unsurprisingly most of my american friends agree with me on many issues. i do keep an open mind though if they disagree.

obviously as an individual we have little power to make a visible change on things we disagree with, therefore i consider it sufficient to focus on one particular aspect where one can make a small contribution.

but if your attitude is that you don't care what your government (or employer) is doing, as long as you get your paycheck, then we will likely not become friends. in fact we are more likely to become friends if we disagree on issues but are able to have honest and open debates about that.

So why do you pay tax?

first of all, refusing to pay tax won't change anything. if i want to change my country i do need to be a lawful citizen and try to influence my peers until we have a majority that will be able to influence the country to stop spending taxes on such things.

Unlike democracies, corporations do not derive their authority from their subjects, their authority comes from their owners

which is why i prefer cooperatives.

Only those with the authority to make decisions are culpable for those decisions

disagree. following the orders of your superiors does make you culpable if those orders turn out to be illegal or cause harm, and you knew that they would cause harm.

Hitler's janitor is not responsible for the holocaust

hitler's janitor was most likely carefully selected as a trustworthy person, and probably would not have been a person that i would have liked to be friends with.

> that's not fair because most of the times you have the choice to work for another company. i do refuse to work for google or microsoft or other companies if i have a choice, but if i had no choice i would accept their offer. it's a matter of degree and opportunity

And for yourself that's fine. Do what you want. But the problem here is you are expecting others to follow suit or they are social pariah. If someone can make 600k at facebook and 500k at amnesty internarional and they choose facebook, as much as I abhorr facebook(even called for mark to be jailed!) power to them for evaluating their needs and obligations and making a choice. It is not your place to ask othere to morally justify their choices of employment so you can cancel them, to the contrary, doing so makes any problem worse because now you've alienated one more person (with a fat wallet) that you could have convinced to be onboard with your ideas.

> but if your attitude is that you don't care what your government (or employer) is doing, as long as you get your paycheck, then we will likely not become friends. in fact we are more likely to become friends if we disagree on issues but are able to have honest and open debates about that.

I never said that, I said I don't care what other people are doing to make a living. You seem to confuse governments and companies like so many today. Companies have no legal authority to make laws or influence politics except by playing this "with me or against me" game you are giving them that power.

Earning a paycheck at a company you disagree with means you take money from them and are free to spend it on contributions of your choice. And not alienating people who work ar companies you don't like means you can be their friends and convince them to regulate or criminalize whatever practice you think companies should not do and make actual change. But your cancel mindset just alienates people and makes things worse. If I decided to work at some company and people like you tell me I should quit to be their friends, guess what, we could have been friends and made change happen but now I will oppose you not because you are wrong because you chose to make me your enemy and to control and manipulate my life by trying to force me to make employment decisions.

> first of all, refusing to pay tax won't change anything. if i want to change my country i do need to be a lawful citizen and try to influence my peers until we have a majority that will be able to influence the country to stop spending taxes on such things.

Yes, I agree. You are right in being a lawful citizen and convincing your peers to make change happen. The disconnect here is you think paying taxes to support a government you disagree with is fine but working at a company you disagree with and in a similar way by earning as much as you can and exposing yourself to others and changing their minds, making change happen inside the company and outside the company by using your finances is wrong. It is fine to support a government you don't like so long as you work to civically promote change but your hypocrisy is that you think it stops being fine when others do the same thing except the organization is private instead or government and unlike paying tax people get paid money enabling them to have more power to make change happen.

> disagree. following the orders of your superiors does make you culpable if those orders turn out to be illegal or cause harm, and you knew that they would cause harm

I did not say that. Following orders is making a decision. Following orders to cook dinner or to kill someone are different decisions. You are culpable for the orders you follow, you are not culpable for feeding the other person who followed the order to kill. Big difference. However, if you could have stopped that person from killing or if you could have reported him after the fact and stayed quiet, you are culpable to some degree,but still, not for murder.

> hitler's janitor was most likely carefully selected as a trustworthy person, and probably would not have been a person that i would have liked to be friends with.

I agree, but he is still not responsible for the holocause and I am sure was not tried at nuremberg.

you think paying taxes to support a government you disagree with is fine but working at a company you disagree with and in a similar way by earning as much as you can and exposing yourself to others and changing their minds, making change happen inside the company and outside the company by using your finances is wrong

i can't avoid paying taxes, but i can choose where i work. you missed the point where i said that it makes a difference if someone works there just to get a paycheck (and doesn't care what the company does) and someone who actively tries to change things in that company. the latter is fine.

> i can't avoid paying taxes

Yes you can, you get sent to prison though. And you can choose to get paid less then that means less medical care, more suffering in other ways,etc...

What you are saying is the suffering of prison is too much but other suffering other people have to endure is not so bad so in order to comply with your moral code, they have to accept the same amount of suffering you can accept.

A moral code that is worth getting paid less but not worth prison is not only cheap but very much hypocritical when you hold others to it. "Suffer what is right but only up to my endurance level, not more and not less".

And you can choose to get paid less then that means less medical care

not where i am from. everyone gets the same medical care, only those that earn so little that they can't pay the normal rate get extra support or a lower rate for the same service. that's a problem you should fix in your country so that people can actually live to their chosen moral code without having to suffer for it.

A moral code that is worth getting paid less but not worth prison is not only cheap but very much hypocritical when you hold others to it

how is that? not breaking laws is part of my moral code as it is part of the moral code of most people in this world. so if you were to accept prison for something you believe in you would be violating my moral code.

how is that hypocritical? we do the best we can to improve the world, with the means that we have, within the legal framework that we are in.

i come from a culture that values social responsibility, and working for a company that exploits people or pollutes the environment, is not socially responsible.

>Instead of making 600k and using that to fund whatever political causes or charities I should work for less and allow that nicer company to lobby politicians on my behalf?

What % of your money do you spend on political causes and charities, badrabbit?

Not kidding, no.

"Take care of me and mine" is a fine way to burn the world down to cinders.

Can you honestly tell me that how surveillance capitalism has unfolded over the past twenty years has been a net positive for democracy or for world stability?

I say no, and those well paid cogs in those machines are complicit. They don't need to feel shame. They need to accept the scope of what they are doing and be mindful of its impact.

Honest and legal doesn't necessarily mean "right". Those that work in the fossil fuel industry are for the most part doing what is honest and right. They are also (as are we all) complicit in catastrophic climate change.

I don't think things are as simple as that. Maybe for example there are some technological or scientific breakthroughs with cross-domain application that come as a result of work that at present is practical only with the resources of giant companies like Google/Facebook/Microsoft. I think it's fair that engineers and scientists get to work for whatever employer they choose, doing what they do best and advances their expertise, without being judged negatively. I think the acquired experience and knowledge itself will leak, one way or the other, in applications that bring a net positive, even if the activities of the specific employer are not directly positive. Morally-wise, I think the onus shouldn't be on the workers any more than it should be on the consumers, so someone working in the fossil industry shouldn't be considered more responsible to the climate change than someone consuming fossil fuel.

So the ends justify the means?

Do soldiers not carry responsibility for their actions while in an active army? What's the difference?

hm soldiers are only expected to follow orders that to the best of their knowledge are lawful, and are held accountable for following unlawful ones. The law actually covers a lot of the cases that are very clearly wrong (i.e. torture or execute prisoners).

That leaves ambiguous situations where for example there is an order saying "get satellite data from that location". In this case, if the data end up used for something unlawful, I think the responsibility doesn't lie with the soldiers at the bottom of the chain, no.

Now for the case that best serves your comparison, generally serving in an army that very clearly wages a war of aggression. In this case yes I think soldiers carry the responsibility to not help in any way (which realistically would mean stop being soldiers). The difference in this case is that we can't compare an army waging an aggressive war, which is as clear an evil as we can imagine and is in fact considered a crime internationally, with a company that analyses data collected by consent, where the question is whether the mechanism for obtaining consent is good enough or not.

someone working in the fossil industry shouldn't be considered more responsible to the climate change than someone consuming fossil fuel

right, they shouldn't directly be more responsible than consumers, but they should be responsible for the influence that they do have at their job.

obviously consumers are responsible for the pollution they create. just today my son had a fit because a friend tried to use plastic to start a fire. this may not have been the right response, but he knows that burning plastic is bad, and he acted on that.

i have more sympathy with the oil workers because their options most likely are to quit and be out of work. but anyone who studies to work in the oil industry is making a questionable moral choice. (depends on their attitude, maybe they are trying to contribute improvements to make the impact of fossil fuels less damaging. that would be good)

The reality is that fossil fuel is still necessary, choosing to not work in the oil industry doesn't change that. If suddenly no people chose to work in the business under some belief that it would be morally wrong, then what would happen? Wide spread energy crises, affecting everything from heating to transportation/travel and all production chains.

I don't think anyone except the most hardcore climate activists would be willing to accept that cost, so I don't think it's consistent for anyone except these to judge negatively people who choose to work in this industry. This doesn't change that we as consumers should try and use as little fuel as possible, opt for renewables where possible etc., that's the only way to guide the change. If we do that, the market will take care of the rest as the conditions allow it.

If suddenly no people chose to work in the business under some belief that it would be morally wrong, then what would happen?

salaries would rise, making it more costly, but motivating a few people to continue working there. in the long run it would contribute to make oil more expensive, which is really the only way to stop people from using it.

salaries would rise, making it more costly, but motivating a few people to continue working there

Sure, and they wouldn't be wrong to do so, just like they're not wrong now. We can't admit that on one hand we need something because there is no viable replacement and on the other consider that those that choose to work on that make a morally questionable choice.

well, we wouldn't need it had we focused on cleaner energy earlier. we already predicted climate change half a century ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34358759 ). had we acted right then, we would not be depending on oil now. therefore already 50 years ago someone made a morally questionable choice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com