Forum Overview :: Gamergate :: lack of job security is a consequence of economics, not politics

[quote name="serial malcontent"]It sucks that people lose jobs over stupid shit, but people have always lost jobs over stupid shit unless they are in some way key employees. The value of keeping them has to trump the value of losing them, and this doesn't currently seem to be the case in western society. Big corporations that screw everyone over for the sake of profit cannot afford to alienate entire demographics of people one way or another, so they spend some commercial or political capital by firing a small, easily replaced cog in the machine because it costs a lot less to do so than it might to spend lots more capital to fight a PR problem. Big oil would rather spend a few bucks on a campaign and some safety standards than be held fiscally responsible for cleaning up a spill. Same with some company firing a guy because legal and PR staffers say the crowd of people sending instant hate mail represents a liability. A decade from now, it'll come from some other direction - Anita will be less relevant than some other political shill but the reasons people get fired will be stupid. At the height of the great depression, the reasons people got fired were beyond stupid, they were downright offensive as justifications for why someone's family would be starved of their breadwinner's income. The only way to provide security is if the system benefits from providing it and has little other choice. Eisenhower sent national guardsman to back the Little Rock Nine during desegregation because not doing so meant invalidating a supreme court ruling and creating the atmosphere for a constitutional crisis - do you think FDR would have done nothing if Oppenheimer's twitter feed got into dicey political waters during one of those wild Los Alamos benders? Job security is something few people have, mob politics is always a few irritated people away. Whatever the hot button issue of the moment is - communist sympathies, union membership, racial prejudice, sexual harassment, hating gays, looking like a terrorist, getting accused of microaggressions while you're drinking after work, being disabled, hitting on the boss' daughter - whatever it is, if your understanding of where to tread lightly is what secures your access to employment it's wise to have some because free speech protections and other rights will always lose to the algebra of what your value is to those you depend on. Less value than the cost of replacing you? Get a backup plan, you'll need it. The people that were going to get their asses fired were loudmouths for the most part, except when they also weren't smart enough to create accounts that couldn't be traced back to them. Nobody deserves to get fired for being stupid in public, but hey, there's a lot of shit in the world that happens to those that don't deserve it. Best to keep your eyes open for hazards before things go wrong, otherwise you're in the position of blaming someone as impotent as Anita for all your problems.[/quote]