Hacker News Reader

Comment by cramer4next | Hacker News Reader

Because there is none. Its rhetoric and its personal to you. Its like me saying I haven't spent a nickle on anything Nike because of their narative selling. Hence anyone who wears Nike products is a bad person. Its ridiculous, narrow minded and undemocratic.

View on HN

Telling my mind about anyone or any company is the ideal expression of free speech and democracy. Using government force against a company that refused a contract is the opposite of democracy.

It sure isn't democratic when only the top 1 percent in charge make those decisions that inflame you. These companies have thousands, if not tens of thousands of employees, that I can guarantee don't agree on statements or positions that the people at the top make as a company whole. So why would you want you punish people who have nothing to do with this. In the end its the regular employees who pay, not the corporate leadership.

I am the last person to "enjoy" that openai is getting boycotted. I respect both companies. And openai themselves probably did it under pressure knowing that Trump is a thug.

Aren't you the one who said this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694185

>For me the end of buying anything Nike for my household and owning there stock was 2018. After their embracement of kaepernick and circus of marketing schemes that followed its no surprise what the outcome would be. Now Lululemon hired one of architects of all this as their CEO. They followed the nike playbook and are already suffering from it. Now their doubling down in a race to the bottom.

Yes. Exactly where I stand. I also dont use anthropic products because of their false anti-gorverment stance even though they want to sell to them. If I could i'd short their stock too.

How are they anti government? You keep making up stuff out of thin air. Anthropic posited certain requirements in their contract, trump pissed and shat and got them designated a supply chain risk randomly instead of negotiating or just canceling.

If you support using AI to kill people without human oversight and using AI to mass surveil the American population, of course its your freedom to.

> Using government force against a company that refused a contract is the opposite of democracy

If democracy is working, isn't using the government to express the collective will of the people exactly how it should work? Else why are we bothering to vote in the first place?

Collective will of the people cannot supersede your ownership over your business and its right to engage with anyone it wishes to free of government retaliation. The business is people. Feel free to go to a communist country if you want collective action against companies. What other things do you think the collective vote should permit if the numbers tally? Do you support the collective will of the people to gag your free speech? To vote to shoot you dead in the street? Certain rights supersede voting, at least until somehow people manage to repeal the 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment etc.

You seem to have escalated that argument a long ways towards hyperbole. The government refusing to have anything at all to do with a company seems like a perfectly valid position to take, and I expect my representatives to exercise that authority on my behalf. There is some nuance to how much that should extend to companies who themselves do business with the company you are refusing to contract with, but it is not completely wrong.

And I think the governments reaction was driven by trump's thuggery not any real reasons, any reasons given were after the fact. I mentioned those examples because you mentioned the collective voice of people, sometimes one needs reminded that unvarnished collective vote is not permitted to do certain things as rights of free expression and property exist, nothing more nothing less.

Seems completely rational to me? Why would I do business with a company that doesn't share my moral values? I find the influence money has in politics more undemocratic than anything else.

I doubt any company shares your moral values. Though a few of them might pay some lip service do some of your moral values. You tell me, have you audit all the companies you do business with to see if they share your moral values.

It's certainly rhetoric! Corporate leaders must be made to understand that the business risk of collaborating with fascism is greater than or equal to the business risk of standing up for the rule of law. Really, we're being generous if we only punish a few companies and only hit their contracts; a strict application of the law would put quite a lot of CEOs behind bars for their overt bribery of the Trump regime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com