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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

> teams tries to stay out of it.

There is no "staying out of" politics or just "remaining neutral" on topics (edit: the context here is "when doing business with the one of the belligerents of a conflict, an oppressive regime and so on. Not universally).

Not taking a stand for one side in a two sided topic means taking the other side. Either you are pro gay rights or against it. Or you are pro democracy or against it. Or you are openly against the Russian invasion of Ukraine or you are against it - whether you are silent or not. so long as you do business with or in dictatorships. This applies to any tech company as much as it applies to FIFA or anyone else.

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Or you can legitimately not know what to think about any particular issue. Some people don't have a favorite color. Expecting everyone to have a considered opinion about every political topic is just unrealistic.

It has more to do with one side never missing a chance to appropriate your silence.

Yes. And then you probably don't do business in or with a foreign country. The point is that you should know and likely do know, for example, what Qatar thinks about minority rights when you award them a World Cup.

This is an impossible standard to hold people to even on issues in their domestic country.

If you're from the USA, I'm sure that as a well-informed citizen, you know about how the relationship between tribal law and federal law were recently challenged at the Supreme Court (Haaland vs Brackeen), and can provide a reasoned position on the status of Native American tribes and how they should be addressed. After all, it was big news in Native American circles, and silence on that issue is violence towards Native Americans.

"If you're not with us, you're against us" is a pretty reductive, American-centric way of approaching politics. There are plenty of topics which I'm happy to not hold a strong opinion on and I'll probably spend my entire life that way. Folks who feel strongly about _any_ issue will always tell moderates they're just shills for the other side, which is part of what makes the argument so tiresome.

> There are plenty of topics which I'm happy to not hold a strong opinion on and I'll probably spend my entire life that way.

My statement wasn't about opinions in any way. It was basically about the fact that some times an action is already an opinion in itself. You can't e.g. do business in Russia and claim that "we like to remain neutral and stay out of politics/wars (and keep our income from the business in Russia)".

You can of course just not do business in/with Russia and few would wonder whether you have any strong opinions on the conflict. This isn't about forcing anyone to have strong public opinions. It's about that you can't meaningfully separate such opinions from business (or sports, or...)

Which side are you on in the Liancourt Rocks/Takeshima/Dokdo dispute?

Remember, there's no remaining neutral in politics, so I expect a well-reasoned answer on this fundamental territorial rights dispute.

He doesn't know. Not sure what your point is though.

I have no idea what that is, and I hope I'm not passively taking a position in that dispute due to my business involvements (of which are none).

I'm not arguing that everyone have an opinion on everything. I'm arguing that when you do business, you might be taking a side in something whether you would like to or not.

Google does business in both Japan and Korea. What's Google's stance on the Takeshima/Dokdo dispute?

I don’t think it matters to their business or customers. So while they may well be taking a stance without even knowing - no one cares. Few are demanding they leave either country (which is the interesting threshold here).

> I don’t think it matters to their business or customers. So while they may well be taking a stance without even knowing - no one cares.

If Google came out and said "Dokdo is Korea territory" I absolutely guarantee there would be a complete shitstorm in Japan, probably ending with Google getting banned from Japan. You have absolutely no clue what a hot-button issue that is between those countries.

Your initial assertion is just wrong. Businesses stay out of politics all the time.

Another example of how these two countries get pissy about naming things:

We were using Agile Client as our Common Operational Picture tool during a joint exercise with the ROK Marine Corps. The default map layer in Agile has labels on bodies of water in white text built into the imagery. The body of water between Korea and Japan was labeled "Sea of Japan". The Koreans were ADAMANT that we either remove the text or change it to "East Sea". I think we dropped a blue rectangle layer over the text and then another text layer with "East Sea" on top of that. But they repeatedly pestered us about this seemingly-small detail. We're about to get our asses chewed by flag officers for not executing the Commander's Update Brief in timely manner, while also struggling to manage the info flow about the battlespace, but the #1 issue to you is the damn text label on the map mentioning Japan?!?!

> There is no "staying out of" politics or just "remaining neutral" on topics.

How would one determine if this statement is true or not? If true, is the truth universal or contextual?

The context here is "when doing business".

How would one determine if this statement is true or not "when doing business?"

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