Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from consequences, particularly in one's dealings with private individuals or corporations.
At best it's supposed to mean no reprisals from public institutions, such as the TSA, IRS, DMV, and the like.
Freedom of speech has never meant freedom from consequences, particularly in one's dealings with private individuals or corporations.
At best it's supposed to mean no reprisals from public institutions, such as the TSA, IRS, DMV, and the like.
It should if you have some semblance of professionalism. At work I don’t want to know nor want to know about the politics of the people working with me.
If I’m engaged in a business transaction I don’t care about the personal views of the person I’m buying or selling from. Call me old fashioned but the world used to be that way before the rise of social media addictions and the current online echo chambers in our society.
That was the approach GM's senior management took with Opel during World War II. Opel wasn't nationalised; it continued trading and did business as usual with the German government of the day, just with less direct involvement from Detroit.
While it worked out very well indeed for GM in a commercial sense in that they retained control of the business, it continued to be profitable and the U.S. Government paid for damage to their factories due to Allied bombing, history has a less favourable view of the individual people involved.
I'm not sure it ever was that way, but it was perhaps less prevalent before the rise of social media, where it's now very easy to see one's views.
> If I’m engaged in a business transaction I don’t care about the personal views of the person I’m buying or selling from.
I mean that's perhaps the ideal in a civilized society, but that's not remotely the norm. I'm guessing you do it subconsciously even if you don't realize it. It's very natural for humans to "other" different humans and shun them. Even if it's not what we strive for.
Pick the “wrong” group you find utterly distasteful (Nazi, anti-Nazi, conservative, liberal, gay, homophobic, etc).
If I find the person’s views abhorrent, not a surprise I would choose not to do business with them if I had alternatives.
And one should have that right, but whether one should exercise that right is another matter. A thought experiment: If you could pick any point in history and make it so all people expressing socially unpopular views were permanently cast out from society, and all other people never spoke or traded or dealt with them ever again, when would you choose to freeze social opinion? Which modern day group of normal every day people, who we consider unobjectionable now, would be cast into the dustbin of history if societal opinion was frozen at your chosen moment of time?
Really upping the ante if my personal morals lead to banishment of another. This was in the context of choosing business partners when I had the option.
Not all of my beliefs are likely to be perfectly rational such that I could objectively defend them. That still means I can pick and choose my friends without casting the rest to oblivion.
If the question is, “What happens if all of society rejects X group for their beliefs”, well that’s civilization. Part of the implicit agreement is that we can all reasonably agree on some things. If someone rejects that notion, well, there can be consequences (even for the “correct” position (say civil rights)).
Sure, but my larger point is that I believe people should strive for free speech maximalism even in their private dealings, and even within the private dealings, we should strive to make the consequences we impose minimally "dangerous". There's no bright lines to be had, and everyone will have different limits, and every situation will have different criteria applied to them. But overall I'd rather err (and see other people err) on the side of being too permissive rather than not permissive enough. On the scale of less to more permissive, I'd probably argue that the order would be something like "friends", "business partners", "employees", "contractors". The less likely you are to be inviting someone over for dinner, the more permissive you should probably be over how their outside speech impacts your business dealings with them.
People only change by exposure to new ideas, and if all the "bad people" and all the "good people" never mix, then what hope do the "good people" have that any "bad people" will learn to think differently?
Basically, I really don't want to live in a world where it's normal for my boss to go trolling through my HN comment history before deciding whether I get a promotion or not, no matter how much of a right they have to do that. I'm not ashamed of the things I've said here (to the best of my knowledge), I just don't think that having a discussion with other people, about topics that don't directly bear on my work should be used when determining how to treat me at work. I am not so conceited as to think I am right all the time or that my bosses would agree with every thought I have. Which is why I have these discussions here, with other people engaged in the topic and not at work, with my bosses who weren't talking about the topic in the first place.
Freedom of speech at its minimum is freedom of reprisal from government institutions. But it is also (or should be) a set of social norms, and a goal to aspire to. A freedom which is only enjoyed against the government is useful, but without public support is fragile. Without the social norms to back it up, it is easier for demagogues and tyrants to chip away at those freedoms, until all thats left is technicalities and de-minimus freedom.
A world where your every word is analyzed, scrutinized and ground through the sausage factory that is current popular trends and then used for or against you at arbitrary times in arbitrary and distantly connected ways is a world that is pure hell. Most of us experienced something similar in middle school. Many might have experienced such a world in small insular communities where everyone knows your business. What good is freedom of speech when social norms make it such that exercising that freedom is punished just as destructively from society itself as it is from the government? If you can lose your income, your livelihood, access to food or even your home from private institutions reacting to your speech – and that is a normalized thing to happen – how is that functionally different from being jailed for your speech? At least if the government jails you for your speech, they have to house and feed you. If your industry blacklists you, and your bank freezes your accounts, and your grocer closes the doors in your face, then what do you do?
Should apartments disqualify you from renting a place because you support Palestine or Israel? Should banks deny you a mortgage for what religion you subscribe to? Should your boss deny you a promotion because you are a registered democrat? Should your company fire you because you are a registered republican? Should the local pharmacy refuse to serve you because you support the black panthers? Should you local grocery store refuse you entry because you donate to the salvation army? If you support unions should AT&T cut off your phone service? If you support right to repair should Amazon stop shipping to you? If you support Net Neutrality should your ISP deny you service? These are all private individuals or corporations, and of course "freedom of speech is no freedom from consequences". They probably do (modulo some court cases restricting that in certain circumstances) and should have that right if they really chose to exercise it but having the right to do something is not the same as whether you should do something, or whether doing that thing should be a normal thing to do.
Mind you I think no one should post about any major issue on social media because I consider posting on social media to be the equivalent of trying to hold a debate by way of bumper stickers. But people do post about major issues on social media. And some non-insignificant fraction of those people are going to be "wrong" on one or more of the things they post about, and sometimes egregiously so. But I don't want to live in a world where it is routine for someone who is on the opposite side of an issue as me to be denied a mortgage, even if that means they might become my neighbor. I don't want to live in a world where someone who is "wrong" about some massively complex multi-decade geo-political minefield is denied promotions or hiring, even if that means I might work with or for them. The personal might be political, but not all of us have the luxury of being able to live in politics all day long, and only associate with the right kinds of people. Not all of us have the luxury to be allowed to have the right politics, whether because of lack of education, or possibly because of those same private individuals and corporations already exercising their right to inflict "consequences".
Private companies and individual might and should have the ability to make their own association decisions, but that doesn't mean I don't want them to hold themselves to high standards and aim for impossible to achieve ideals. Because the alternative is that we live in a world where either you or I are at serious risk of losing everything we have because of this exchange.
> At best it's supposed to mean no reprisals from public institutions, such as the TSA, IRS, DMV, and the like.
That is the ONLY purpose of “free speech” - that governments and their institutions cannot prevent you from speaking freely.
And even there, some small exceptions should be carved out in terms of clearly unambiguous hate speech and bigotry. But with the Republican Party (in America, specifically) becoming Christofascist fundamentalists (Canada has the CPC and it’s openly racist little sibling, the PPC), good luck with blunting the hate speech and rampant bigotry that is the conservative platform’s bread-and-butter.
> That is the ONLY purpose of “free speech” - that governments and their institutions cannot prevent you from speaking freely.
I'm not sure I look forward to an America where the social norms, when the "Republican Party becoming Christofascist fundamentalists" is voted into power again, that make it routine for people to be denied employment, banking services or promotions because they aren't sufficiently Christian.
Freedom from governmental intervention is ONE purpose of free speech. But without social norms that encourage private restraint as well, we would be living in the very same Christofascist hell you already fear. Ask anyone who grew up in a small insular town what sort of damage "private" individuals can do when the social norm is punishing you for speech they didn't like.