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