alt Hacker NewsThis is from the comment you replied to:
>As for "someone else will do it if i don't".... (aka your argument). That's true of a lot of things, and I sleep great at night choosing not to steal from people even though I know others will choose to steal. It turns out I don't have the ability to choose their actions for them, only my own.
This is from your response:
>It's more like "if I don't do it then I better hope somebody else will, otherwise my whole country will inevitably become subservient to a despotic regime".
Are you now claiming that all those "I"s are really "companies"? You think you were having a conversation about how "[companies] sleep great at night"?
The "I" a person. If a company has no employees, it ceases to exist in any meaningful sense, so if you refuse to work for such companies you better hope somebody else will do so in your place.
Just to be clear, the conversation so far:
> beloch: It's also completely fine to say, "I don't want to deal with moral grey zones" and refuse to work for companies that do military work.
> JumpCrisscross: Idk, there's something unethical in outsourcing ethical grey areas [working for defense contractors] to other people while reaping the benefits of the peace (or war far from your home) it brings.
> sophacles: "someone else will do it if i don't".... (aka your argument)
> me: That's not the argument. It's more like "if I don't [work for defense contractors] then I better hope somebody else will. [Because strict pacifism isn't tenable.]
You then somehow interpreted this comment as me saying "a nation taking actions off the table "will inevitably become subservient to a despotic regime"", which wasn't at all what I said, so I jumped back in correct that. Then the whole conversation went off the rails.