If Thiel were the CEO of a corporation he could be held to violate his fiduciary duty by giving the corporation bad press by supporting someone like Trump.
Trump has made a lot of enemies in the United States: minorities, gays, women, people who don't want to see the democratic institutions of America taken apart. He has also willingly built a coalition of outspoken neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other individuals. It'd be like if a CEO threw his outspoken support behind David Duke, spoke at his rallies, and donated 1.25 million dollars to his campaign. That's what's happening here. You don't think shareholders wouldn't have a problem with that?
"Yeah, stigmatize us in the eyes of society, that's great for business."
People aren't being realistic when they say business people should just have carte blanche to say whatever they want. They owe their shareholders, partners, and employees a duty of care to not bring ridiculously bad press to their organization.
If the people at YC don't care about this bad press, and the business it will likely lose, then that's their business. But to say that it never happens in the business world shows a lack of understanding how things work.
Just because it hasn't happened in these cases doesn't mean there isn't a case for it yet. It's very complex. That's why people pay lawyers.
The point I'm making here is that the business world isn't a universe where people can 100% of the time support an outspoken racist, anti-semitic, Islamaphobic, misogynistic, sexual predator authoritarian who wants to put an end to American democracy.
Imagine if the CEO of Coca Cola did what Peter Thiel did. You wouldn't think he wouldn't be out on his butt?
It's a case by case basis, but saying "business therefor you can say and support whoever you want" is wrong. It's up to YC to do as they wish, I just wanted to point out that things are a little more nuanced here.
You made a very specific claim in your first sentence, that supporting Trump constitutes a breach of fiduciary duty. Considering how quickly shareholder lawsuits follow announcements of mergers, I would expect lawyers to be circling these CEOs already. Please cite a single example of a CEO under threat of breaching fiduciary duty for supporting Trump.
If a new CEO of Coca-Cola made a speech announcing a proud partnership with the KKK or Al Qaeda and ran an ad campaign informing the public then sure I imagine that'd be a lawsuit. Coca Cola would never disassociate its brand, every reasonable person could predict the forthcoming disaster and every shareholder would want to recoup their losses.
So yes, CEOs do have a duty to avoid saying certain things, sometimes. Does it extend to Trump? Not quite, I don't think, but the very idea of it is not unreasonable.
Last time I looked, Trump's support and Clinton's support were pretty close to evenly split (Clinton slightly ahead in most polls, but not by that much).
Why is supporting Trump more "tarnishing" than supporting Clinton?
I understand that you don't like Trump (which is fine, I don't much like him either), but why do your opinions get to control? Do you think there aren't people who find Clinton equally repugnant, or even more so? I assure you that there are (I'm not voting for either, myself).
But, you know, the money of Trump supporters is just as green as the money of Clinton supporters, if you want to cast it solely in terms of fiduciary duty. Probably even more so, since I would expect that the median Trump supporter is wealthier than the median Clinton supporter.
I don't know, I think most of the money is on the left side of the aisle this cycle. Clinton has firmly grasped the title of "establishment" ie status quo, and status quo is good for the wealthy. Many, many wealthy republicans have flipped, IIRC from polls I think Trump's poor white base would dominate the median income.
A fringe candidate who advocates for war crimes and dismantling the democratic institutions of America. I think you're giving Trump too much of a pass here.
Can you name a politician at the national level with an executive position or foreign-policy-related legislative position who doesn't advocate war crimes?
I'm not giving Trump a pass. I'm giving Trump supporters a pass, because I believe it's possible to support a candidate without supporting every position they espouse. (In fact, with Trump's many contradictory statements, this is guaranteed for any of his supporters!)
If one of your employees advocates for genocide, go ahead and fire them. If one of your employees supports a candidate who advocates for genocide -- well, it might call into question their judgment, but maybe they like the rest of the platform and think that the call for genocide is mere hyperbole.
The crux of this whole situation rests on how "bad" a person considers Trump and by proxy Trump supporters. At the extreme end if an employee was fired for supporting literal Nazis would anybody kick up a fuss? Not likely.
Let's bring it to be less extreme. Is it "ok" for an employee to be reprimanded for supporting the KKK? What about David Duke who formerly led the KKK? What about if they are a member of Stormfront?
There are groups and positions that cross a line that is acceptable and that line is different for each person. We can delegate to the government - I.e. Groups that are "officially" designated as hate groups - but many people don't.
There are many people (Trump supporters AND critics) that interpret some of Trump's most defining and consistent policies as racist, sexist, islamaphobic and xenophobic. So Trump to many people is beyond their line of acceptability. And therefore the supporters are too.
The messiness of the situation is that it is so subjective despite there being an objective component to it (objective is: unacceptable opinions should not be tolerated. Subjective is: what is unacceptable?)
how "bad" a person considers Trump and by proxy Trump supporters
Stop right there. There is a constitutionally protected right to support a political candidate. You should not be punishing someone for exercising their constitutionally protected rights; the fact that a candidate is reprehensible does not justify exercising collective punishment against his supporters.
At the extreme end if an employee was fired for supporting literal Nazis would anybody kick up a fuss? Not likely.
I don't know if there is a National Socialist party in the USA, but if there was then I don't think anyone should be fired for supporting their political activities.
Of course, if a National Socialist party included a paramilitary wing which was carrying out violent attacks on political enemies, supporting them would no longer be a matter of supporting a political organization; it would be supporting a criminal organization, which is certainly not a constitutionally protected right.
>> Stop right there. There is a constitutionally protected right to support a political candidate. You should not be punishing someone for exercising their constitutionally protected rights
First Amendment is a constitutionally protected right. It is perfectly legal to say something "all Jews should be gassed" at a public rally. Do you believe that such a speech should have no consequences whatsoever?
We're not talking about laws here, note. No-one is saying that we should jail those people or fine them. We're talking about private actions - ostracism, boycott, and other forms of (ironically) exercising one's individual freedom of speech and of association.
Do you believe that such a speech should have no consequences whatsoever?
Of course not. We should absolutely hold Trump responsible for what he says. The disagreement here is whether we should hold Trump supporters responsible for what Trump says.
(And I'm not sure if saying "all Jews should be gassed" is legal; in Canada it would probably fall under hate speech laws on the basis of inciting violence, but the USA has stronger protection of free speech rights. Per Brandenburg, it may be that "all Jews should be gassed" would be legal but "we should beat up the Jews" wouldn't, in that the latter advocates more imminent violence.)
I'm pretty sure it would be legal in US. Something like "let's go gas some Jews" would be getting into the imminence territory, but the blanket statement of desire is protected speech.
As for your main point; I think that saying that we're holding Trump supporters responsible for what he says is not really correct. We're holding them responsible for what they say by the act of supporting him and/or his platform.
And the platform is always a thing under consideration. Even someone who's supporting Trump because "Hillary is worse" is still making a relative comparison between his platform and hers, which is a political statement - and I don't see why they should get a pass on being responsible for that statement and its implications.
It all becomes a lot less ambiguous if you pick some specific thing instead of discussing it in abstract, and spell out all the consequences in full. Say, I know quite a few people who are going to vote for Trump for the sole reason that they consider him better on gun rights. But when you account for his "law & order" dogwhistling, and unpack it, what they're really saying then is, "my right to own a semi-automatic firearm is more important than this black dude's right to be treated with dignity by the police and the courts". Some people actually find it acceptable even when worded that way, but I'm not one of them.
Out of curiosity, can you explain why you think there is a constitutionally protected right to support a political candidate and no such right to support a criminal organization (assuming by "support" you mean simply voicing support and not actually funding or committing crimes yourself)? It sounds good to me, but I can't think of where the constitution actually says that.
Of course, the real problem I have with your comment is that you say "collective punishment" is not justified. I'm not so sure I agree. I have no problem with collective action like boycotts, even if the boycott is in response to a perfectly legal action. This is just basic economic freedom and freedom of association. Perhaps you're speaking specifically about terminating someone's employment, which does have some specific legal protections.
Milton Firedman's most famous work is Capitalism and Freedom and yet within that work, he completely rejects Hollywood blacklists (or "boycotts" if you prefer). If you consider his main point is that under communism, people are un-free, it seems odd that he would sympathize with avowed members of American communist party, who would ultimately like to bring communism to the US, and in Friedman's eyes, result in societal catastrophe. Doubly so given the power of persuasion that Hollywood writers wield. So why does he reject the ability of studio execs to simply exercise their freedom of association, and not contract with blacklisted writers?
The problem in Friedman's eyes is that this boycott reduces to collusion. And under collusion, the benfits of free market dry up: for example, in the free market you can shop your script, no matter who you are, and if your product is good, you could make a living out of it. When firms collude to establish acceptable political beleifs as a pre-condition to an economic exchange, you have reduced the economic freedom of everyone who is not wealthy enough to establish a movie studio for themselves. In effect, you have by-passed democracy ("one person, one vote") and moved to [benevolent] oligarchy ("one chairman, one vote"). As the old saying goes - you're freedom to swing your elbows ends where my nose begins, and so too with economic association. If you would starve a man until he renounced his political preferences - even if you deem them antithetical to the good of society - you're no better than Stalin.
Legally, yes. Whether that is socially acceptable or not is another matter.
National Socialist Order of America is perfectly legal, for example. But I don't think you'll find much sympathy for the notion that being a member of it should be socially acceptable, and that people should just respect your choices.
> There are many people (Trump supporters AND critics) that interpret some of Trump's most defining and consistent policies as racist, sexist, islamaphobic and xenophobic. So Trump to many people is beyond their line of acceptability. And therefore the supporters are too.
Wouldn't that qualify these people at least as racist as Trump could possibly be himself ?
Where is the limit for these people, by the way ? Not buying stuff from people with some "unacceptable" political orientation ? How about religious orientation ? How about people who feel men and women aren't equal because of religious affiliation ? How about muslims who espouse the "kill anyone leaving islam" rule of that religion ?
We should not care if we are to have a well-functioning politcial system. Doesn't seem either party is interested in that, but still.
> I'm not giving Trump a pass. I'm giving Trump supporters a pass, because I believe it's possible to support a candidate without supporting every position they espouse.
I have held that position for a while, but it became untenable due to the sheer number of outright awful positions that Trump espouses. It's no longer possible to say, "yeah, this one thing isn't nice, but there's still a net benefit".
At this point, there's no rational way to conclude that anything about Trump candidacy has a net benefit, unless you subscribe to some of his more abhorrent notions about religion, race etc - e.g. people of the "I'm not a racist, but there's something about blacks that makes them commit crimes and riot" persuasion, say. Or "I'm for freedom of religion, but Islam is a death cult". And so on.
So no. I don't buy into that whole "the call for genocide is mere hyperbole" thing. It would require such a manifest lapse of judgment to be realistic, that I would demand strong evidence of such in other matters to accept it.
You realize that you're calling for the excommunication of 40% of America, right? That is not a productive thing. I consider Trumpism a real threat to my life, but Trump supporters are fine with me. Once a bad idea spreads too far, you can't isolate it. You have to engage it productively.
I think there's a contradiction in PG's (and Sam Altman's) public attitude towards Trump and their attitude regarding Thiel.
I mean either Trump is beyond the pale, in which case they should not associate themselves with any of his supporters, or he is not, in which case they should cut the goddamn hyperbole.
He wants to jail Clinton, because she has committed numerous felonies. And how has he been "actively undermining the legitimacy of the electoral process"? That's what Clinton did, remember? You know those Podesta emails that proved what everyone with a brain already knew? That Sanders never had a chance and the DNC had it rigged from the start?
Trump has made a lot of enemies in the United States: minorities, gays, women, people who don't want to see the democratic institutions of America taken apart. He has also willingly built a coalition of outspoken neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other individuals. It'd be like if a CEO threw his outspoken support behind David Duke, spoke at his rallies, and donated 1.25 million dollars to his campaign. That's what's happening here. You don't think shareholders wouldn't have a problem with that?
"Yeah, stigmatize us in the eyes of society, that's great for business."
People aren't being realistic when they say business people should just have carte blanche to say whatever they want. They owe their shareholders, partners, and employees a duty of care to not bring ridiculously bad press to their organization.
If the people at YC don't care about this bad press, and the business it will likely lose, then that's their business. But to say that it never happens in the business world shows a lack of understanding how things work.