Comment by renewiltord
5 years ago
I made up an example, and I requested that you make up examples that make the point clearer. If you feel that the example is unrealistic, you can simply provide another one.
In this case, if you have, in my example, Person A change his view to be "I will vote for Trump" and retain the rest mutatis mutandis then I'll gladly retain my view that I want all of that to be allowed.
In fact, I think we might be on precisely opposite sides in the fight for liberty if you want to stop people from having opinions just because they are not the only people to have that opinion. One person is free to state an opinion. Any n people are free to associate. Any n people are free to state the opinion together.
And you're going to have to clarify what a 'mob' is and what an 'attack' is. If five thousand people say "I won't buy this product unless you fire that guy", I think that's an okay 'mob' and an okay 'attack' because those five thousand people have the freedom to associate with each other and the freedom to choose not to associate with 'that guy'. It is morally wrong (repugnant, even) to force them to buy the product when they don't want to. If a single person hurts you for saying anything then that's a non-okay 'mob' and a non-okay 'attack'.
> One person is free to state an opinion. Any n people are free to associate. Any n people are free to state the opinion together.
It's right to n people to gather together and march in their support for Biden for example.
It is not OK (morally) to n people to gather togeher and ask a company to fire an employer for Biden support.
I think the different is in positive vs negative, constructive vs destructive.
"Buy from NNN because they support gay marriage" is positive and constructive.
"Ruin a career of John Smith because of his political views" is negative and destructive.
Of course it is not black and white. Like if you know for sure that company MMM knowingly uses slave labor, it would be right to boycott the company. And I don't know where to draw the line.
> what an 'attack' is
Something which leads to big loss for those who is attacked (ruined career, ruined personal life, loss of money, loss of business).
Yeah, I think we are on opposite sides here, friend. You have a view that slave labour is something that permits boycotts but there are things that do not. Now, I agree on that myself. But I don't presume to claim that there is a universal list of acceptable things and a universal list of unacceptable things. So to permit the places where I am wrong I have to let other people choose different lists. And that's why I need to let you ask my employer to fire me because I don't like spaghetti. My employer will say no and we will lose you. But that is freedom.
> Something which leads to big loss for those who is attacked (ruined career, ruined personal life, loss of money, loss of business).
Yeah, definitely on opposite sides. It's not my responsibility to keep your business alive. If I tell people things and they decide they don't want your product, then that's life. Information wants to be free. I'm not going to go ask anyone to suppress that Facebook targets ads because that causes loss of business to Facebook. That is totally insufficient.
> friend
I'm sorry, but I'm not friend of yours.
If we met in real life (like in the office), you would probably do a lot to hurt me for my views. (Because you have legal rights to do so, because it's not your responsibility to keep me alive, and because information should be free.)
But I would never do that to you.
That's the difference between us.