I mean, doesn't the concept of a free society apply to private corporations as well? The government is not restricting you; the private company is exercising its right to run its business according to its own free will. The principle of a free society suggests that "if you don't like the company's policy, find another one or create your own." Is that wrong?
Scrutiny is justified. However, it should be within the scope of whether the product fulfills the need and should have nothing to do with "sovereignty" or "free speech rights," don't you think?
Can't believe how often I see this sentiment, and how nonsensical it is.
We're private citizens, nothing prevents us from criticizing them for a wide variety of reasons. If you want to restrict yourself and ignore everything except the literal function of the product, you're free to do that, but you can't argue everyone else has to do the same.
Or is your argument that we have some kind of social responsibility to judge products based on exclusively on what the product does, but the product has no social responsibility whatsoever? That's a double standard that can't have any justification.
No one is preventing you from criticizing them. I am just saying that criticism from the standpoint of free speech or sovereignty is inconsistent with the idea that you can satirize whatever or whoever you want.
> I am just saying that criticism from the standpoint of free speech or sovereignty is inconsistent with the idea that you can satirize whatever or whoever you want.
I don't understand what you are saying. Criticising a company on free speech grounds who prevent you from satirising someone is absolutely consistent. What inconsistency are you seeing?
For the record: pretty much all clothing is still created with effectively slave labour.
Either in the harvesting of the cotton, refinement to cloth, sewing to clothing or finally when dyeing.
And the second example: apple still has an assembly manned by Uruguay internment slaves and pretty much everyone here fawns over it every chance they get.
So from the perspective of HN both of these are seemingly acceptable
>Should a company be allowed to do business with a company that owns slaves?
They do, all the time. Manufacturing, mining (particularly of the rare earth metals that go into electronics) and agriculture all depend on slave labor.
It certainly should be illegal, but a lot of the comforts of first-world civilization would vanish and the velocity of modern capitalism would grind to a halt, so politically speaking apart from token gestures that don't threaten the status quo that isn't likely to happen.
I think generally owning slaves goes against the idea of freedom (let's discard the concept one has the freedom to sell themselves for once). Thus company does not have the right to own slaves.
