I've been very influenced by Isabel Wilkerson's new book to look at America as having a racial caste system that's 400 years old. The entire economic and political history and present of the United States is governed by this caste system; it's even written into the physical geography, e.g. where there is lead and where there are trees. If you don't ask about race on government forms, how are you going to measure progress on dismantling this system?
Abolishing race is a good goal, but it's going to come after we've acknowledged and reckoned with the violence and harm this country has done to so many millions of people. And we've barely even started that process.
We can argue that there is work to do toward equality without discrediting ourselves and our objective with incredible claims about “having barely started” as though we still have slave plantations and so on.
Fair question. I'd like to think my close friends are ethical people, although it's not like I've seen them do the trolley problem. I'd categorize the people who would accept a Facebook (or even Palantir) offer in a second as casual acquaintances. As for why I'd be casual acquaintances with people who don't care about ethics, well, sometimes you can hang out with people who you don't trust completely.
Among many other points, more than half the laws you mention are terrible. We shouldn't be banning people in need from taking food or shelter when there's an extreme excess of both, or loving who they want.
Markets and liberalism have been failing so drastically for decades that fascism is rising across the globe. What evidence do you see that this is going to change in time to prevent unimaginable catastrophe? We all need to sprint lefter and greener before it's too late.
The evidence is to the contrary as you said. I just think that the only way to get people to actually do this is to let the markets work it out.
I'm not saying, at all, that the "invisible hand" will sort it out by itself. Agreed: that's ridicilously naive, or worse (bad faith).
I mean that if regulators force the costs of externalities into the market, things could work out.
When I'm shopping for milk, my local grocery has options like organic, and locally produced (within county). Which is the green choice? Soy milk is likely less co2 intensive, but then again it's shipped from across the globe. I do not know. And this is just milk.
I'd prefer the govt to tax greenhouse gases to oblivion. Then it becomes easy for me and others.
You're right, when someone who isn't Jewish says "the Jews" it sounds weird and is followed by "control the banks" often enough that it sets me on edge.
I had no problem moving here. I've compared both countries and it's orders of magnitudes easier to move to the US and becoming a permanent resident or citizen in the US than China.
From the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: 'Revealed: Israel's Cyber-spy Industry Helps World Dictators Hunt Dissidents and Gays'
"Within a few years, the Israeli espionage industry has become the spearhead of the global commerce in surveillance tools and communications interception. Today, every self-respecting governmental agency that has no respect for the privacy of its citizens, is equipped with spy capabilities created in Herzliya Pituah."
> There will always be people eager to point out the race of people who do wrong, when those people are Jewish.
What was pointed here was an country government's agency, not ethnicity. I see nothing wrong in including that information and in, in fact, in favor of it.
This way, it's possible to have a grasp of what govts. are doing what, even though not much.
if it were American companies doing this, people wouldn't question the headline.
the truth is, nationality matters. not all countries would permit a private intelligence sector to exist like this, or perform these types of services. understanding that the israeli government permits this behavior helps contextualize their complicity.
Jewish is an ethnicity that encompasses the national and cultuarl affiliation of its adherants in a similar way that a person might identify as Kurdish, and it is additionally a term used to describe the religion of the Jewish people. You can say Muslim is not an ethnicity (Persian and Arab are). But that's not an accurate thing to say about the Jews.
Like many things in life, there is a lot more nuance once you dive past the surface. There are in fact numerous jewish ethnicities, it's not one homogeneous group. Some of those jewish ethnicities, such as the Beta Israel (aka Ethiopian Jews) have been discriminated against by the rest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel#Depo_Provera_...
Given the discrimination the Beta Israel have faced; particularly the sterilization controversy; it's important to recognize the ethnic diversity of the jewish community, lest some parts of it be forgotten and erased.
The answer is that being a human with moral and ethical obligations to the rest of humanity should take precedence over being a corporate leader. If you don't sell censorship and weapons tech or cut backroom deals to silence victims of sexual harassment, there's no need to try to stop your employees from talking about it.
And there’s nothing preventing employees from finding a new place to work if they don’t agree with how their company handles things. It’s a multinational corporation not college or even a democracy.
But the company shouldn't prevent employees from trying to improve their workplace for their fellow employees either way, especially given the power imbalance between employers and employees. Children, debt, high COL, and health emergencyes can easily prevent employees from seeking new places to work.
These are systemic problems in the industry, though. Leaving google will almost certainly place you in a company where the situation is worse, and where the ability to set industry standards is less.
As for the "it's not a democracy:" I ask why we tolerate that. In a country founded in individual freedoms, we're apparently ok with creating no-freedom zones that pretty much every adult has to spend half of their waking hours in.
> Leaving google will almost certainly place you in a company where the situation is worse
That is a baseless assumption. For me a toxic work culture is the worse situation.
The US was founded on the concept of liberty more so than on the concept of democracy, which is how we ended up with a federal republic and an electoral college. According to JS Mill the greatest enemy to liberty is a hostile majority.
>"These are systemic problems in the industry, though. Leaving google will almost certainly place you in a company where the situation is worse, and where the ability to set industry standards is less."
These issues seem to be particularly acute in Silicon Valley. "The industry" is much more than companies located in the Bay Area and Peninsula in Northern California. There is no shortage of companies out there that have zero tolerance for sexual harassment, who do not pursue projects related to censorship or the Pentagon. I know because I have worked at them. They are only worse than Google salary-wise. Let's not pretend that Google employee's primary concerns are trying to set "industry standards" or that they're somehow looking out for all of us.
The whole point of these actions is to avoid paper trails.
The political speech aspect of the matter is a red herring. The priority is suppressing contrarian contemplation in writing to avoid issues with litigation, etc.
Lawyers who are defendants want to preserve nothing. Lawyers who are plaintiffs want to retain every utterence ever made since the dawn of time.
That's just, like, your opinion man. Other people have different political opinions.
The progressive majority were all for firing people for political beliefs as long as it was people they disagreed with... now they're aghast at the abstract concept of it?
Uhhh why would you be ok with someone who chooses to use their labor to work for a racist/kitten murdering website because it’s a “technical challenge”? I’m sure keeping the Daily Stormer up and running is difficult, but anyone who helps them do it is a nazi who deserves whatever they get.
