If yes, then Amazon is not "bowing", and it is The Guardian who is playing word games here. If not, then it would seem to imply that we are OK with western powers using their capital (instead of gunboats) to impose their ideology on other cultures in the world.

Now, one may argue that the customs and values of some countries are incompatible with those of the West and may even be considered "backward" to the point that western companies should completely withdraw from those markets because providing services to such markets equates to empowering those backward social values. That can be a fair assessment, but just remember not to blame them for "banning western companies" in the future.

If you're strictly in the business of making money, then by all means conduct your business but stfu about it.

A cynic might even suspect the value signal is more about marketing than deeply held belief.

If society wants to promote parenting, then society should pass laws about parental leave. Individual businesses have no obligation to reduce their competitiveness in the marketplace.

Plenty of other businesses remain competitive while treating their employees like fellow humans who have their own lives to live.

By your reasoning, if anyone is able to abuse their freedom to do something immoral, it isn't that person or organization's fault, it's society's fault for allowing that to happen. Then why bother with freedom at all?

Because the statement below is not true:

> Plenty of other businesses remain competitive while treating their employees like fellow humans who have their own lives to live.

See the widening of income/wealth gap in the US over the past few decades, the movement of manufacturing and industry to places with even fewer labor and environmental protections, even in the US. Nobody is going to pay Target $1 or $2 more if Target started treating workers considerably better, they will all go to Walmart.

> By your reasoning, if anyone is able to abuse their freedom to do something immoral, it isn't that person or organization's fault, it's society's fault for allowing that to happen. Then why bother with freedom at all?

That is not my reasoning at all. Immoral and moral is an opinion, and not offering subsidized health insurance to employees falls far short of the “universal” immoral line. If Walmart was beating it’s workers with whips or something, you might have a point.

But Walmart’s job is to get goods from manufacturer to consumer. Not providing its employees with a minimum quality of life. That falls on the government and society as a whole, simply for practical purposes. Expecting anything else is fantasy.

It's the whole bit about forgetting people are people. If you want robots go R&D some robots

> Employees have more utility if they get an abortion

Yea like that

Societal benefits fall squarely on the government’s shoulders, and their shoulders alone. Admonishing and expecting businesses to not optimize within their boundary conditions is a waste of time.

> This is exactly what people find gross about it.

Calculating that an employee out on parental leave will cost you more (and hence cause you to be less competitive in the marketplace) than an employee that is working is not gross, it is simply math.

If the action is inhuman, I will hate you for it. Maybe those excuses help you sleep at night but if we want to pretend we aren't just especially smart monkeys then we should act like it

I think it is inhuman to not offer a woman 1 year of parental leave to breastfeed and raise her baby.

Should I simply not attempt to operate a business in the US, because this benefit would make my payroll costs so high in my line of business, that my customers would opt to buy from my competitors at a lower price and my business would fail.

These are practical reasons that businesses cannot take on this responsibility. Easy for white collar programmers and government workers to take the high road. But there are many who have to compete with much smaller margins and volatile cash flows.

I want to give my employees a year of parental leave. I want them to have many more vacation days. I want them to not have to depend on their employer for healthcare and be able to shop around for different jobs easily. That is why I support political efforts to do all these things, but I cannot afford to enact it at my business because my customers would go to my competition. That is a perfectly valid reason to “blame the game” and not “blame the player”.

Pretending that companies aren't made up of individual people all making constant choices is a very very useful thing for people in companies that want to have their cake and eat it to.

If you sign off on "do bad thing so the company keeps making money" then you should quite literally be ostracized. Your competition only gets to benefit from those horrible things because people like you keep telling us it's a bad thing to expect companies to do better.

People’s choices are to either start a well funded business where margins are huge and you can offer plush benefits, work for a business offering high compensation, work for the government, or do nothing at all?

Immigrants should not try their hand at restaurants or gas stations or convenient stores, tradespeople should not attempt hiring apprentices unless they can give the same compensation as big firms, etc?

> Your competition only gets to benefit from those horrible things because people like you keep telling us it's a bad thing to expect companies to do better.

I have spent many words explaining that this is wrong. The competition gets to benefit because customers will buy from the seller selling at the lowest price. It has nothing to do with people like me or their comments.

Higher paid US manufacturing did not disappear because of people like me. It disappeared because customers wanted to save money and buy cheaper goods made in countries with lower manufacturing costs.

i.e. we should not take corporate Pride as sincere support, but as an indicator of the zeitgeist.

I think that this is the main issue. It is my opinion that this problem stems from the business and finance minded dogma of pushing efficiency, regardless of the long-term damage done to a brand/product/service, simply because in the short term it is _cheaper_ to do so. The long term damage is traded for short term gains.... kicking the bucket down the road if you will but doing long term damage to the business or institution overall.

In this particular context, lets take the example of Disney cutting/splicing/editing certain scenes from their films and shows in order to gain release approval in China. Instead of having one film product with a certain edit in the US, then another for China, then another for India, and so on, it is just _cheaper_ to have a single version edit of the film to release "everywhere". So in order to do this Disney has to appease a variety of censors and overview boards and make all changes in order to make a single film product where every governmental review board is happy. The pros is that you have a single version of the film thus making overall production costs cheaper. However the main con is that you may have specific ideological influence added to the product where it should or shouldn't be, or the tone or message of the film product might fundamentally change which breaks the premise/lesson, or the story is watered down essentially making the product meaningless, or the entertainment product might not be entertaining! The only real benefit in this case is that Disney still gets to release the film in as many markets as possible (thus meeting the rule of numbers for possible profit) but the customer starts to feel less connected to the brand so they start to lose interest and eventually abandon it. There are better examples of course. This is just one.

American companies are banned from paying foreign bribes. They’re not given a free pass with suporting genocide or terrorism, regardless of where it happens, even if that’s the law or custom somewhere else.

If we place domestic profits over sex trafficking or death penalties for gay people, so long as it’s there not here, then fine, let’s live with that sociopathy. It’s an abysmal moral space to occupy, but I also can’t argue with putting food on one’s table.

I would argue our value system is vastly superior, but I would never demand someone take my values as their own.

Fair enough. Would note that the death penalty, alongside torture and chemical castration, are sanctioned punishments for being gay in the UAE [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Ar...

- sociopathic corporation, profits above people… and stop pushing rainbow symbols all month domestically

- actually find your backbone and push rainbows globally

I think customers should refuse to tolerate the abuser mentality of corporations screaming at people who already agree about “gay rights” while refusing to actually stand up for them globally.

Boycotts work when they’re deep, acute and with agreement on the solution that will lift it. Boycotts won’t do anything here. This requires legislation.

They may do that, but then playing a champion of the opposing values when it's convenient (pride month in the western world) is hypocrisy and it should be pointed out. If they didn't have an LGBTQ-based PR campaign in the West, then this move wouldn't merit a mention. Alas, it does.

In a way the world was easier during the cold war, good and bad was clearly distinguished, human rights didn't matter in the public opinion as log it was "our" guys doing the violations and things like LGBTQ, minority and women rights were a mere fringe phenomenon in West anyway. I like today's environment better.

People not liking to eat cheese or beef or rice porridge is different than human rights issues. In general, I am not a fan of pushing or maintaining an ideology over another when it comes to economic and other such policies, but when it comes to human rights violations, I don't think that's something that should be bowed to.

I agree that companies should be forced to abide by the local laws and norms.

For my own sentiment, referenced as hand wavy, it is not that hard to let people do what they want with their own life as long as it does not hurt or infringe upon others’ rights. Is that really that difficult of a rubric to follow?

For the original question, I already answered that explicitly.

Secondly, what or who is your authority that people doing what they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone is a valid generalization to make for all actions?

Not local customs and values but local laws and regulations in their respective jurisdiction because even in these seemingly mono-cultural places, there's still variety and diversity when it comes to traditions and conventions.

No, definitely no. Corporations (especially american ones) know better. Corporations don't respect customs they respect growing value. /s

“impose their ideology” is a disingenuous frame for this situation. They are censoring search results. As in, the customer, who Amazon makes money off by showing them what they want, is not being shown items that relate to what they searched for.

That’s not a pop-up that says “Muhammad was bisexual.”

In any case, cultural relativism is a liberal cop-out. American companies should use their capital to promote American values.

Like how Facebook bans all nudity, even in countries where nudity is much less of a big deal (eg Germany)? Or apple has a blanket ban on “adult” apps in their App Store, because in America violence is ok but sex is bad?

I hear what you’re saying, but as an Australian, exported American cultural values can be pretty odious too. I don’t have any simple answers though.

Which, come to think of it, is itself a distinct value: compromise of free expression for money.

You have a good point here.

I'm confused about what makes it liberal.

But that happens in the US too, if I want to ISIS's propaganda magazine on Amazon is it censorship that I can't find those? If I look for porn on youtube, is it censorship I can't find it?

sure, there's a social stigma. but if google/youtube/alphabet wanted to (as in they think there's enough money to be made in that sector) they would do it.

US conservatism does interfere with a lot of personal things (cough), but at least the current status quo is that it does not want to restrict selling data. (though there's a big think-of-the-children scare, and with the same sustained push for banning this or that this could change eventually)

The point that I am trying to make is that the argument I quoted doesn't work, because we already have situations where someone might look for something and can't find it.

I am not agreeing this is good, I am not saying it's the same, I am just trying to interact with a specific argument. This is a complex topic about cultural differences and ethics, let's try to stay curious and not just give shallow dismissals.

To a goldfish in an aquarium, it is also very natural that food appears from above, as per magic.

My intention was to indicate at least a fraction:

There must be /some/ western culture that has been successful because it [that portion] is what humans naturally gravitate towards.

My accident was to imply that western culture has been wholly successful:

There must be some-western-culture that has been successful because it [all of it] is what humans naturally gravitate towards.

Sorry to any readers in the future, I deserve the replies I got today in this context.

My sense is that the corporate decisions are easier because they're depersonalised, but I don't see much of a moral distinction between the two.

Clearly there's a difference in the directness of interaction when it's a person or a company. But speaking personally I would never compromise my core ethical beliefs (which include not working in an environment where gay people are executed because of who they love and secret service agents are sent to kill critical journalists overseas) just so my company could make more money.

This isn't to say that I don't think politicians shouldn't talk to those regimes, but that feels quite different.

Not saying bin Salman is any better (he's not) but my point is that things aren't so cut and dried, and ultimately companies are just going to do what is best for them even if it means accepting some shady stuff. If all workers were that strict about the morals of the companies they work for, most of us would be out of a job.

"I don't want to support Mohammed bin Salman" needs to be traded off against "I don't want to make 34 million people have worse lives".

In my view, in nearly every case, the latter effect outweighs the former.

At least in my experience, a censored version of a foreign website is always much better than the stuff developed locally, and there are some political reasons for this I won't go into.

In my opinion, it's pure virtue signalling to argue that "a company compromising morals in a different country is bad", at least in the general case. I would totally rather use a censored version of Google over Baidu.

Arguing that "companies operating in China while censored hurts the Chinese people" is pure nonsense. The only people that care that {some company} is censored in China are distinctly people outside of China.

There are a couple camps:

Do business but censor, in the hopes that the users become aware and become promoters of your views

Don't do business as to not enable the regime to succeed and hope the potential users notice and become promoters of your views.

I think that for the most part, even companies like Google or Facebook will not be able to change a country, similar to how the US was not able to change Cuba or North Korea.

I think that there is a lack of understanding in Western society that other societies view their government/societal structure not as vehicles for increased personal freedom but as a structure to promote social stability over long periods of time(1000 of years. Something I think China is particularly proud of, for good reason).

The idea was that the good British made the Raj more tolerable.

- - - -

Edit to add: I should point out that that strategy did not result in victory. It was famously Gandhi and the Non-violence movement who ultimately succeeded.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_independence_movement

Is Gandhi censored by the CCP?

Was Ghandi's method really the reason for success or does western media (& ruling class) prefer that narrative?

If you check the Wikipedia link in my previous comment you'll see that it was actually a whole epic constellation of events and forces and personalities and masses of people. Not quite the Mahabharata but still pretty epic.

The particular thing that Gandhi's "arc", if you will, achieved was to demolish utterly the rationale for the British Raj in the first place: that Indians needed outside governance. The non-violent movement showed that Indians were the moral equals or even superiors of the British, and Gandhi knew it.

Winston Churchill: What do you think of Western civilization?

Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Just like russians are now being forced to learn to live without Ikea furniture or Intel computers, for the hopes that the complete lack of the better stuff might encourage them to think about overthrowing their oppressors.

Google with censorship is like a false hope, a kind of political PR greenwashing. The people of China use Google and think it's the same Google the rest of the world uses. It might be better to reveal the ugly truth, and say, you either get the whole truth, or no truth at all. To reveal the liars.

Also, while we're on the topic of moral dilemmas, I would like to add some spice by pointing out that buying almost anything from the supermarket funds someone like Mohammed bin Salman, because their oil was used in the production and transportation of the product or its components.

Edit: My reference to "change" here is about transitioning from fossil fuels so governments like that of Russia and Saudi Arabia have less hold on other governments.

Choosing an MBS-free activity is all fine and good for personal moral growth. However, in general, I've observed a lot of gloating about moral highground once someone does a few of these choices. Without realizing that the people they're trying to describe as morally corrupt might actually be less corrupt just because they shop less.

> but I don't see much of a moral distinction between the two.

The key here is that you will have to elaborate how you think the two are similar. And then we can discuss whether those reasons also applied to (c) and (d), or additional (x), (y), (z) or not. This slippery slope is quite long, so we can't easily hand-wave things awaay

It might be the case that you driving less, and trying to be careful about sourcing necessities. But you are contributing more, rather than less, to the benefit of nations/ people you don't like.

The original discussion was you making the claim that working directly under MBS management is morally the same as working in one of the thousands companies that have to obey the request of Saudi Arabia, and I'm asking you to elaborate how to draw the line.

One set of despotic rulers deposits the majority of their oil money in Wall Street firms, one set of despotic rulers does not. That's entirely why the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen and the blockade of Yemen ports and the resulting famines and deaths are quietly ignored by the New York Times / CNN / FOX etc., and why the war in Ukraine gets daily front page coverage.

It's fairly obvious that if the likes of Putin and Assad cut the same kind of deal over oil money and recycling petrodollars to Wall Street, they could persecute their own people and wage local wars with not a murmur of disapproval from 'the world leader on human rights and democracy', just as Saudi Arabia and the UAE do.

For me at least, the willingness to take Uber rides I know are subsidized by Saudi money is little (if at all) different from a moral perspective than working directly for a fully Saudi funded entity, although I am sure many will attempt to define a spectrum between these two that happens to align well with general conveniences

What? No! The Uber driver is getting a paycheck; you're getting a ride; and the Saudis are getting ripped off.

I think people often mistaken "region based marketing" for genuine political statements. If promoting pride yields a net positive increase in reputation and revenue in Western countries, one would be foolish not to jump on that bandwagon.

Same goes for Hollywood preaching. It would be a lot better, if they did nothing and never commented on politics, than the charade they're playing.

It's worse than that. Many of these companies donate to political parties actively undermining those rights.

Anyway, Gay Pride and especially the Castro Halloween celebration went from being subversive to mainstream and the celebration itself literally became more exclusive, with fences and then ticket sales. Now it's the theme-park version of itself.

Same with Haight St. and the hippie culture: packaged up into a theme-park of itself. The actual hippies are marginalized in favor of tourism and consumerism.

You literally explained what a woke corporation is, while simultaneously denying its existence.

However, it's a fallacy because those making these decisions are not "corporations", but, in fact, humans, and many of them (optimistically, most of them) are not sociopathic monsters, and therefore like the idea of engaging in benevolence. (You can make an argument that all benevolence is merely atavistic tribe/family-protection behavior on a long enough timeline, and that's another topic, but it is a good analogy for the "true benevolence" vs "false benevolence" theory of corporate behavior). All desires inescapably inform decisions to some extent, no matter how shrewd a person is - therefore, genuine benevolence plays a part in corporate benevolence. It's unrealistically pessimistic to assume all corporate benevolence is purely false, and it seems like that accusation is frequently used to make shallow arguments about social politics.

Wokism is a dominant religion (not demographically) in the US, therefore corporations there pray to wokism and observe its rituals. Anti gay islam is a dominant religion in the Middle East, therefore corporations there will do the same things they do to wokism elsewhere, if grudgingly.

This is quite different than what the employees of a corporation might think, which will depend on the cultural milieu they were raised in. The corporation itself, however, is an emergent non-human intelligence, and it tends to abhor non-profit-related conflicts.

Dictionary tells me it is "alert to injustice in society, especially racism". But the vast majority of time I see someone talk about 'wokeness' or 'woke culture', they use the word in a derogatory manner.

So I'm guessing the 'woke' mentioned is not "being alert to injustice" (as it is a pretty reasonable stance to be alert to injustices). In your case, you go as far as to call it a religion. Is being alert to injustice really a religion in your view? Or, how are you defining 'woke' and 'wokism'?

Tough question, it's always hard to be honest about one's definitions. I will try to formalize wokism in a way that will make it clear why I despise it to people who see nothing obviously wrong with it apriori.

- It's an ideology characterized by outsized obsession with and the veneration of a few identities, chief among which are women, queers, and varying subsets of non-white ethnic groups.

- It's an ideology characterized by outsized hatred\bias\dismissal against the "opposite" of the above venerated groups, namely straights and\or whites and\or men, among others.

- It's an ideology that is utterly convinced of the morality of every single one of its positions, and sees 0 utility in debating, compromising with, co-existing, or even ignoring in peace any of its myriad opponents.

- It's an ideology that is uniformly in power across Western (== USA, Canada, Australia, and north-western Europe until the border defined by Russia, Poland, Hungary and the Balkans) institutions, chief among which are media, PR/HR departments of any corporation, law, secular universities, non profit organizations and think tanks, any left of center political organization, and, of course, mainstream social media.

Solve this system of constraints to whatever degree of accuracy you desire, and whatever the solver spits out is a wokism.

As to why someone would hate wokism, several reasons.

- They belong to a group mentioned in #2, or adjacent\similar to one.

- #3 makes sure that any single opposition or push back to wokism is a declaration of war against all of wokism. For instance, I'm atheist, vegetarian, non-white, left-leaning on economic matters, and very moderately progressive (== A lot of tradition is stupid, but we don't know which, and so one must be always very careful overriding it) on social matters. All of this isn't enough to offset the fact that I'm a straight man who is pro free speech.

- #4 makes wokism pattern-match to patterns that describe other authoritarian ideologies. Wokism is extremely similar in rhetoric and actions to religious fundamentalists in my country for example (which is why I call them a religion, they tick all the boxes except having a prophet, a god, and a path to forgiveness), other people who witnessed communist dictatorships often compare wokism to one. Regardless of whether those comparisons are in fact valid, wokism reminds (and promises) some of its opponents of much uglier things.

>Dictionary tells me it is "alert to injustice in society, especially racism"

Dictionary was right till about 2018-2019. The word 'Woke' dates back to the 1930s, originally meaning literal awareness and coined in AAVE, as in "Those cops appear to be looking for trouble, stay woke". By the 1960s the term refered to more abstract awareness of cultural\political matters, and by the 2000s the term reached wider English usage and had primarily positive connotations. See Wikipedia and linguist John McWhorter for more details about the history of the word.

The negative connotations of the word appears to have started roughly in early to mid 2020, replacing 'SJWs' or 'Social Justice Warriors' (itself an originally positive term, originally coined by the ideology itself and later used as an insult by roughly 2013-2014). Now it's the dominant word used to refer to the ideology described above and its adherents.

Thank you for laying out your thinking.

Probably a reaction 'what they do in the bedroom' being made literally illegal for a long period of time. I can imagine wanting to throw a parade to show the 'good people of society' that you're just as human as they are, with the expected goal being to ward off further persecution in the future.

I think a lot of people consider homosexuals as deviants and in some way less than human, also. They might not say it openly but they think it.

I think that most people would say that 2003 is not 'a long time ago.'

...so yeah, that's not a good example of your argument.

It's like having a 30 year old comment in a Windows driver about a variable no one uses anymore - no one cares and it doesn't reflect anything today.

Also, ONE stupid incident with ONE stupid prosecutor does not reflect society.

You're not going to find disagreement from me here, I think that some aspects of the pride parade are probably detrimental to the acceptance of LGBTetc amongst regular members of society.

There seems to be a subgroup that enjoys showcasing what can fairly honestly (as in, not in a pearl-clutching kind of way) be described as deviant behaviour and I don't think it's going to work out in the favour of LGBTetc in the long term.

There are no laws indicted that dictates you can't work if you are LGBTQ, there are no LGBTQ only water fountains and they are not forced to wear an identifying symbol on their arm for their camps.

LGBTQ loves to lump religion, race and their own decision to change "gender" together so that they can use it as a trojan horse to push their agenda.

Should we care for them? Yes. Should we love them? Yes and I believe that they must have access to all the therapy and treatments that they need when diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Should they be able to have an entire "month" dedicated to them and parade it in front of our children? No, I don't think so. Nor do I think it's wise to subject our children to these at the age of 5 and then encourage them to take puberty blockers and have life altering surgeries as soon as they are 16 to feel at "ease" with their chosen gender.

If we are even not even willing to have a conversation about this without one side immediately jumping into calling the other "transphobic", then we may have a problem.

Why can't we have an honest conversation about this issue for once with being attacked?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_scare#Executive_Order...

> they are not forced to wear an identifying symbol on their arm for their camps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_triangle

> Should they be able to have an entire "month" dedicated to them and parade it in front of our children?

Don't attend, then. No one forces you.

> Why can't we have an honest conversation about this issue for once with being attacked?

I'm expected to have "honest conversations" with people who call me a pedophile. You try it for a change.

I feel like it's reasonable to have LGBTQ people hosting events to try and let these people know that you shouldn't be ashamed of a perfectly normal thing.

You are saying that the Arab countries do this because they want to love or respect these people?

Maybe not stoning them to death might be more helpful. Just saying.

> Diversity of opinion is trivial if we agree only to differ on the easy stuff and not the difficult stuff.

This is the thing... I don't think this is the difficult stuff at all. It's just nobody else's business if people are gay.

Obviously bad faith, GP never mentioned the arab countries, they were talking about how western countries screaming about "bowing down" is hypocrisy, since they themselves do an aweful lot of making people, most of the time their own citizens, bow down when they could leave them alone. So if your house is made of glass, keep away from the stones. UAE is threatening a corporation to enforce an ideology, that is aweful, Oh gee, I wonder what that style reminds me of.

Preach only what you would do for others if the positions were reversed. Do not ask what you don't give.

>I don't think this is the difficult stuff at all.

I also think all my opinions are extremly based and uncontroversial in the slightest, all my enemies are just dumb and evil, they are making it up, they are not genuinely disagreeing.

Come on. This is the oldest trick in the book.

What good is free speeach if you're just going to relegate it to 'the difficult stuff', defined as whatever you say is the difficult stuff ? This is just like how authoritarian regimes say they are not impriosning 'genuine opposition', just the bad people who pretend to be dissidents but actually want to destabilize the country. But, mystery of mysteries, there never seems to be any 'genuine opposition' who are not harrased and imprisoned, it always turns out that all oppositions in those countries are of the bad kind. Almost as if selectiely defining exceptions to free speech is some tool authoritarians use to silence people without giving up the moral high ground.

Its all just kowtowing to the power of the Global American Empire legislated by misguided civil rights legislation, enforced by the politcommissars in HR. Every culture has a right to protect its values.

I would to know more as to why you this civil rights legislation, or presumably court rulings as well, are "misguided"

>Every culture has a right to protect its values.

Cultures that discriminate against people for innate characteristics like sex, sexual orientation, race, etc. are backwards. Label me biased by Western propaganda I suppose, but a person's right to participate fully in a society shouldn't depends on any cultural or societal norms or traditions.

Did you mean to write "shouldn't"?

What "value" that would be? Oppressing gay people?!

You have the moral high ground in this debate, how's that even fathomable?!

I swear it's always a moral panic/mass hysteria with these people when it comes to discussing controversial social issues.

They also seem to be very fixated and invested in the talking point that with the proper and right formula of marketing, you can convert straight people to gay people, or make them engage in homosexual activities which is quite absurd and ridiculous if you ask me but here we go again.

I cannot fathom being the person at Amazon who makes that call. Do they sleep well at night? Do they feel good about themselves?

Can you phrase the attack you imagine they need defense from in a way that doesn't assume your worldview is the universal position (or that tries to achieve a universal position) everyone must adhere to?

Some things are simply wrong. This is one of those things. If one’s worldview disagrees, then theirs is simply incorrect on this matter.

The GP said, "in a way that doesn't assume your worldview is the universal position ... everyone must adhere to". Your response still assumes that universality.

Similar concept but different issue: Do you think women should have equal rights as men? Do you think that should be universal? Or do you think it is OK for some jurisdictions to declare them the property of their husbands?

What I think is irrelevant. The question why the US hasn't yet ratified the Equal Rights Amendment that would guarantee that "women have equal rights" is also irrelevant (hint: women opposed that).

The relevant question is, whether a powerful state is right to impose its values (which it, undoubtedly, holds in high esteem) on other states.

I thought we were talking about Amazon, not a state.

But let's say we were talking about a state, I think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can be the North Star that we hold states accountable to (incl. the United States of America).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...

Second, the Declaration has nothing on LGBT rights, and it's not by mistake, but rather by the agreement of the signing parties at the time.

Yes, we should. Pressure so they increase human rights is the moral thing to do.

> Second, the Declaration has nothing on LGBT rights, and it's not by mistake, but rather by the agreement of the signing parties at the time.

Yep, the fight must continue because we're still second class in most places and hunted down in many.

I mean the argument is “homosexuality and being trans are real observable phenomena in the human species across history and cultures and bringing harm to groups of people based on factors they cannot change is morally wrong.”

Skipping that, Amazon is not taking part in any genocide - they agreed to "restrict LGBT search results" in accordance with the local laws (however backward these may seem to you — and me). In the US, Amazon is not selling Mein Kampf (in accordance with the local laws). In China, Amazon wouldn't sell Tiananmen square memorabilia (in accordance with the local laws). In Europe, Amazon wouldn't sell pornography (in accordance with the local laws).

People in this thread think I’m surprised by this news, or they try to explain why we should expect this from Amazon. I don’t care about any of that. At the end of the day, someone or some people made the call to continue making a buck by empowering a homophobic and dangerous group. That’s fucked up.

Except for the fact that you agree with one ('cos it's "a good thing") and disagree with the other ('cos it's "a bad thing"), what are these differences?

> some people made the call to continue making a buck by empowering a homophobic and dangerous group.

For an LGBT person, it's better to be in the US than in the UAE [0][1].

If you want that to change in the short run, you're out of luck — it's not realistic to assume it will change soon.

If you want that to change in the long run, the way to do that is to have more contact (including trade) with the UAE.

[0] Mind you, it's better still to be LGBT in the UAE than in Afghanistan or Iran!

[1] For a sick child from a poor family who needs lots and lots of healthcare, it's the opposite.

Well, no... I don't give a shit if Amazon sells porn. Whether or not they do doesn't really disproportionately harm a minority group.

> what are these differences?

One actively targets a minority group.

It does disproportionately harm a minority group of porn afficionados. If your point is that LGBT minority group has some rights that porn afficionados minority group does not have, you'd need to prove it.

> One actively targets a minority group.

The search results will equally be hidden from heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. It's not that Amazon is treating LGBT group in a different way — all the population is targeted the same.

Are you really saying at someone who likes porn and isn't able to buy it is comparable to a gay man being indicted (or worse) for loving a man?...

So you amend the rule to be “you follow local laws that harm vulnerable classes of people as long as it’s just a little harm … as a treat” and it sounds ridiculous.

Anti gay muslims in the UAE (and beyond) have the same exact attitude, so that reduces the whole problem to who has the bigger money\stick\media horn, and they happen to be the ones who have on their territory.

All empires collapse eventually but for now the West is still muddling on through.

Why not apply your same maxim to the UAE and see where you get? Why do gay people in the UAE have to submit to what the UAE requires to be universal?

Are you above them? You both have humility when faced with whoever you consider inferior - LGBT people that are so oppressed people think Amazon should consider them in their decisions, and presumption against your superiors: UAE asserted themselves and you can't even admit you'd change them by force if you could. But you can't.

Cry more.

"There is no monopoly of common sense, on either side of the political fence."

Shame is pride's cloak. Shaming people who aren't proud, isn't going to provoke revelation of their truth and meaning.

Most of the anti-gay arguments are derived from a 'natural law' and Platonic interpretations of sexual function.

Do they feel good about themselves?...They don't have to do that...I bet most people don't even feel "good" about their corporate jobs.

Basically, Amazon had two options; Tell the UAE to pound sand and risk being kicked out of the country or cave in to their demands. Should we really expect another response from a soul-less, union-busting corporate overlord company like Amazon?

Im not naive; I know they won’t. But I can still be disgusted that they won’t.

(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/expect)

If we demand a better response hard enough we can pressure them into being better. So... yes?

But you expect anything different from a corporation? Their only purpose is to make profit. It’s just basic economics. They don’t care about politics or LGBTQ, they care about money. The only reason they ever seem to care about LGBTQ is because they saw the group as a market. A Market to exploit.

My guess is the blame gets dilluted and people are really good at rationalising their work by hiding behind the corporation image, or "someone else will do it anyway", or "yeah, but look at what happens in X", etc

Below certain paygrade of people taking those decisions, a kind of mental "Nuremberg defense"(1) rule applies.

People should learn that companies milk these kind of feelings just because they profit from them; it's good for business. The top earners (investors and managers) that probably are, in this very moment, partying in a Singapore KTV, they don't really care.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

Yes, people who work at the corporation, the people who will be fired from the corporation if they do not comply. Everyone who works at the Amazon earns money from the profit they make and they will pay the most to people who will make these sociopathic choices.

Amazon is a private organization with lots and lots of customers. Some of those customers (and potential customers) are upset with what Amazon is doing, and they're voicing that opinion. They can't force Amazon to do anything, unlike the government, but they can certainly persuade them.

It's not that they dearly want to do the right thing but this horrible islamic theocracy is forcing their hand, they've just fooled you with their vapid rainbow-flag-wrapped virtue signaling.

I'm sure they sleep fine. It's not the role of a retailer to promote a particular political agenda. If we all only transacted with people we agreed with, we wouldn't have a society.

Standing up to an authority that declares some lives less valuable than others (e.g. gays, women, having slaves) is maybe a political agenda but it is moreso a moral position, and that is the thing to emphasize.

The trouble is, ultimately people tend to not care enough to stick their necks out (lose money, lose a job) to stand up for what's right, unless it affects them very directly. And it is rational to not forego your own wellfare for the sake of some other group, I just wish the circle of empathy people have were larger.

- those who lack empathy?

- those who declare some lives less valuable than others?

- those who don’t care enough to stick their necks out to stand up for what’s right unless it affects them very directly?

People and organizations have been putting money ahead of enlightened ideals as long as there’s been money or ideals.

I’m not trying to let Amazon off the hook here per se, but a cursory reading of history shows that such calls are on average, basically everyone ever.

We venerate King and Milk and Ghandi and others because they stand out.

This is business as usual not for Amazon, it’s business as usual in recorded history.

Don't you think calling this LGBT craze an enlightened ideal is a bit overselling it ?

https://www.nps.gov/articles/suffragistvssuffragette.htm

(As was the word “scientist“).

I will go out on a limb and say we can judge things a bit better now.

Sure, right now we accept plastic and plasticisers everywhere around us. Which is crazy. And quite probably contributes to the great hormonal disruption and the trans craze.