Can you point to an example where the legal system was changed so easily through protests, and say why that applies here?
It took fifty years of a well executed and persistent legal strategy to go from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education. Plessy lost the test case and had to pay the fine. The equivalent here is to pay $1B in fines.
I'm not saying that fear of terrorism or other boogeymen is as entrenched as racism was in 1896, but if it was that easy to change, we wouldn't have the TSA and all this other nonsense. We wouldn't be instituting policies that erode privacy, the same way the UK has been over the past couple of decades. I remember when I was a kid, and people talked about the stuff happening in the UK as if it was on the moon. Now that's normal. I would love it if that changed, if someone would put in the sort of effort the NAACP did from 1909 to 1954. But, I don't expect twitter to risk bankruptcy doing it.
Even if the founders are completely selfless and willing to throw away their fortunes, they'd probably feel that they have a responsibility to their employees to not run the company into the ground to prove a political point. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even possible to do it, given twitter's legal obligations. The VCs might be able to step in and get management removed if they start burning money on political causes. And, if they're going to do that, why shouldn't they just donate it to starving children in Africa? Because it's not their money, not in that sense. It's one thing for Bill Gates to take the money he's made off of MS stock and spend it on causes he supports. It's an entirely different thing for the CEO of a company to use company funds to support the same causes.
I should point out that, at least the NAACP managed to accomplish something, which doesn't always happen. I have radical leftist friends. They go to protests, get beaten up by the police despite protesting peacefully, and are often charged with crimes, so that it will look like they're just trying to get out of something if they complain about the police. It's been happening for decades, and nothing has changed. It's possible to make a stand, and for no one to care.
The alternate headline, call it the fox news headline, if you like, goes something like this
Twitter CEO refuses to pay fine yet again, company is held in contempt again. Twitter's complete disregard for the legal system comes on the heels of . . .
It took fifty years of a well executed and persistent legal strategy to go from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education. Plessy lost the test case and had to pay the fine. The equivalent here is to pay $1B in fines.
I'm not saying that fear of terrorism or other boogeymen is as entrenched as racism was in 1896, but if it was that easy to change, we wouldn't have the TSA and all this other nonsense. We wouldn't be instituting policies that erode privacy, the same way the UK has been over the past couple of decades. I remember when I was a kid, and people talked about the stuff happening in the UK as if it was on the moon. Now that's normal. I would love it if that changed, if someone would put in the sort of effort the NAACP did from 1909 to 1954. But, I don't expect twitter to risk bankruptcy doing it.
Even if the founders are completely selfless and willing to throw away their fortunes, they'd probably feel that they have a responsibility to their employees to not run the company into the ground to prove a political point. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not even possible to do it, given twitter's legal obligations. The VCs might be able to step in and get management removed if they start burning money on political causes. And, if they're going to do that, why shouldn't they just donate it to starving children in Africa? Because it's not their money, not in that sense. It's one thing for Bill Gates to take the money he's made off of MS stock and spend it on causes he supports. It's an entirely different thing for the CEO of a company to use company funds to support the same causes.
I should point out that, at least the NAACP managed to accomplish something, which doesn't always happen. I have radical leftist friends. They go to protests, get beaten up by the police despite protesting peacefully, and are often charged with crimes, so that it will look like they're just trying to get out of something if they complain about the police. It's been happening for decades, and nothing has changed. It's possible to make a stand, and for no one to care.
The alternate headline, call it the fox news headline, if you like, goes something like this
Twitter CEO refuses to pay fine yet again, company is held in contempt again. Twitter's complete disregard for the legal system comes on the heels of . . .