(Also, after writing the above, I checked out the link and it’s also blocked for me.)

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At any point does speech that advocates action become tantamount to action?

If speech credibly threatens action, then I think it’s justifiable to respond to it as action. But I don’t think trying to get the government to do something qualifies as a credible threat in most cases.

On the other hand, while I’m still not sure I’d endorse a boycott, it feels less ethically questionable in the case of a business that itself endorsed e.g. racial segregation than in the case of one that just happened to employ a Klansman, especially if it’s a sole proprietorship. Part of this comes from the fact that it implies less collateral damage — the person shouldering the most direct financial burden is the same one making the speech. But part of it comes from the fact that a business is a social institution, and giving one money is a de-facto endorsement of its social role. Would this matter if its owner strictly separated their advocacy from their business practices? I’m honestly not sure, aside from noting that we’re looking at a shorter causal chain. But I think it’d be worth taking into account if there was e.g. a sign in the window saying “Restore Racial Segregation Now!”.

And on the third hand, if you walk up to a coffee shop and find that sign in the window, you gotta expect that the owner’s losing some business from it, boycott or no boycott.

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Are you sure I haven’t accurately characterized your position? After I posted that comment you said the following:

“The word “boycott” may alternatively refer to a situation where people organize a campaign to convince others to stop attending Starbucks…[This] situation feels like a clear cut case of tumblrina-style mob-rule. ”

Now, the ellipses hide a number of intervening sentences, but it’s pretty clear the situation you refer to is the fact of trying to convince others of trying to join a boycott.

No matter how detailed the explanation for my behavior, the mere fact that I attempt to convince others of the desirability of this action seems to be out of bounds for you. It seems fairly clear in that framing that you care far more about the normative statement than you do about how clear the box is.

And specifically you don’t like any normative statement made about the marketplace of goods that derive from the marketplace of ideas. You have set up a “non-overlapping magisteria” argument, it seems. So much so, that you even express regret that people privately decide where to take their business if it is not based on only the end product itself; concluding that it’s OK, but not optimal.

Now, steel manning slightly, you might be referencing the actual effect on the behavior of others that a call for a boycott has. You may be concluding that most people, when deciding to join a boycott, don’t carefully consider a list of 30 points on why the actions of an economic actor are bad and simply “vote with the tribe”. That seems like a really, really different point though (and almost all boycotts do have extensive reasoning readily available, even if the normative statement comes first).

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This reminds me a lot of the job I had at a residential special school, except I became increasingly sure that it *was* net-negative.

I find it really really reassuring that someone I admire and respect has had similar issues. I mean, obviously your work is a lot harder and you’ve been doing it for longer, but, well, I just assume that a Sufficiently Good Person swoops into a broken system and fixes everything. It is good (from a purely selfish perspective) to know that at least one Sufficiently Good Person just muddles through and does the best they can.

I mean, from your descriptions of your work (which admittedly are an incomplete and biased source) it sounds like the best you can do is good even if it’s not perfect. The best I could do was kinda shit. But it is good to know I am not Irredeemably Evil Forever.

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“there is an implied should, therefore they have not explained the box well enough.”

What? This is not my position. Something has gone terribly wrong. Increasing the length or resolution of the explanation doesn’t affect whether they conclude with paternalistic advice “therefore, you should perform action_x”. Like, you understand my punnet square, right?

I guess it’s kind of a weird square, because a white box (under my definition: revealing any relevant portion of your thought process regarding the objective facts of the universe) will by definition include a descriptive statement of how the world works. By (normative)(white box), I mean a statement which explains the reasoning, but draws conclusions for me anyway. So really, it’s both descriptive and normative.

It sounds like, in practice, you find it immoral to tell anyone you are boycotting some place, no matter how detailed the reason

Something has gone terribly wrong. My position is: an action was not made in the spirit of the Free Market (the dual of Free Speech) if: that action, for political reasons rather than economic reasons, deliberately affects the consumer habits of another person.

Whether the boycott was mentioned in the spirit of the Free Market is contingent on: a) the context of the conversation; b) Patrick’s intentions; and c) the manner in which the boycott was mentioned. All three points derive from the question of “Is Patrick attempting to deny Starbucks even more patronage by trying to smuggle his political preferences into others?” If the KKK falls out of political fashion, why should Starbucks suffer collateral damage? The KKK should be allowed to wither away without sinking a popular coffee company with it.

(As discussed in my comment to brad, the fact that the historical KKK was extremely violent changes the moral calculus considerably. In my thought experiments, I’ve been using it as a place holder for any old political faction.)

(I should stop talking about boycotts as “immoral”. I don’t think it’s immoral so much as inoptimal given society’s commitment to a Free Market. We would all rather live in a world with coffee as high-quality as Starbucks’s, right? (I don’t actually drink coffee; it’s too bitter.) )

[insert obligatory complaint about the threading]

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who are actively using their words to try to convince others to hurt me — including hurting me physically.

In my describing my new mental model of Free Speech, I highlighted two distinct ecosystems: the market of ideas and the market of goods and services. By considering physical violence, we must now consider a third ecosystem: the gene pool.

(Maybe the reason I dislike the KKK/coffeeshop thread was because I wanted to nail down the naive model before adjusting for complicating parameters. Like how Physics 101 asks students to solve trajectory problems without considering air resistance.)

It would seem to me that the Market of Goods and Services supervenes the Market of Ideas, both of which in turn supervene the Gene Pool. If people don’t have the freedom to think for themselves, there cannot exist a free market of goods and services. If people are afraid of physical violence (or literally dead), people cannot have the freedom to think for themselves.

galaxies
———————–
useful products
———————–
ideas
———————–
people
———————–
subatomic particles

The general goal is to not let the power of one ecosystem affect the state of another ecosystem. Each ecosystem has its own way of promoting the most fit of the competition.

But if Barista Bob (as a KKK member) wants to physically harm you or remove you from the gene pool, I think it’s entirely ethical to defend yourself in any way possible. I think your physical well-being is much more important than the well-being of some hoity-toity economic market. I think there’s a good reason why we as a society consider the right to self-defense as superseding almost all other arguments.

You don’t like when the doctor says “take Prozac”, but that doesn’t mean he is acting immorally.

I did not mean to imply the doctor was acting immorally. In the case of the doctor, I agree that it’s just a matter of aesthetics.

A boycott is bad not because of some inherent property of the principle of autonomy. A boycott is bad because the violation in the principle of autonomy often signifies the influence of one ecosystem on another. And in an ideal society, I would not expect ecosystems to cross-pollinate. The previous sentence sounds like the thesis upon which all of my reasoning rests, so let me say it again for the sake of clarity.

In an ideal society, I would not expect ecosystems to cross-pollinate.

The badness is contingent on the cross-pollination. The Principle of Autonomy is a convenient (but perhaps not perfectly accurate) litmus-test of whether cross-pollination occurred. David Friedman’s litmus test has a lot of merit, but runs into edge cases because it’s possible for one party to increase the cost of speech/doing business of others by accident.

In the facebook example. Suppose Nancy asks Patrick if he wants to attend a picnic among mutual friends. Patrick mentions in passing that he can’t because he’ll be attending a boycott against Starbucks. Also suppose that Nancy is aware of the boycott, and is in fact a KKK member (non-violent) communist herself. (can I stop using the KKK? I’d rather my thought experiments not include air resistance)

This is an edge case where Patrick may have increased to the costs of expressing Nancy’s opinion. Nancy may experience peer pressure to hide her communist leanings for the sake of friend-group harmony. But I don’t think it was Patrick’s intention to exert peer pressure.

Let’s run this through the two litmus tests and the model itself.

Friedman test: Were Nancy’s costs of expression increased? Yes. [RED CARD]

Autonomy test: Did Patrick tell Nancy how to live her life? No. [NO VIOLATION]

Model: Did Patrick’s post affect Nancy’s future patronage to Starbucks (which would therefore be a case where the memetic sphere affected the business sphere)? Nancy may be afraid to be seen at Starbucks by Patrick, which would affect Starbucks business. But not necessarily because maybe Nancy and Patrick are good enough friends to mutually understand that people have different opinions, can agree to disagree, and therefore Nancy will continue to attend Starbucks without qualm.

I’m tempted to evaluate this case as a [NO VIOLATION]. Except now that I think about it, the premises may be contaminated from the beginning.

What’s the difference between a “boycott” and a humdrum situation were “people just don’t wanna buy from Starbucks anymore” (because the coffee sucks)? I think the word “boycott” smuggles in connotations which can affect whether or not we red card it. The word “boycott” may refer to a situation where people simply stop attending Starbucks because they don’t feel comfortable around a commie. The word “boycott” may alternatively refer to a situation where people organize a campaign to convince others to stop attending Starbucks.

I feel bad in the first situation because (back to the thesis,) I don’t think people ought to discontinue patronage to a company based on their political affiliation to begin with. In practice, it can’t be helped. There’s really nothing we can do to make people drink Starbucks brand coffee if they personally feel uncomfortable around the commie. It’s not in the spirit of Free Speech, but I can’t really condemn it on ethical grounds. People can associate with who they want.

The second situation feels like a clear cut case of tumblrina-style mob-rule. Not only does it disregard the notion of Free speech by trying to punish the commie, but it’s a phenomenon we can ethically condemn and do something about.

So when Patrick says “I’m going to boycott Starbucks”, does he mistakenly mean he’s going to simply stop attending over the long-term? Or does he intend to recruit friends to protest the boycott and therefore cause a intense short-term dip in Starbuck’s revenue.

(I suspect something involving “personal knowledge vs shared knowledge” is going on here, but I don’t understand exactly how yet.)

(Do you guys see how this is beginning to resemble a trajectory problem where the degree of accuracy requires us to adjust for a butterfly flapping its wings in China? The Coffeeshop thread looked like it was busy computing butterfly-wing perturbations without first modeling an accurate equation of gravity.)

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Boycotts are actually quite awesome- they’re extremely democratic, easy to enact AND counteract.

That’s the theory. The practice is that boycotts work by taking advantage of the psychological tendencies of people to jump on bandwagons, to apply double standards between targets with bandwagons and without, be easily outraged at claims they don’t bother to research, etc. In an ideal world where only rational people joined boycotts, boycotts wouldn’t be much like bullets. In a world full of Twitter, Tumblir, and Facebook, a boycott is the equivalent of calling your enemy a “practicing Homo Sapiens”; you are using people’s ignorance as a weapon against a third party.

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I think you are confusing an aesthetic preference for a moral one. You don’t like when the doctor says “take prozac”, but that doesn’t mean he is acting immorally. Perhaps he isn’t the right doctor for you, but maybe are some people who want paternalism in a physician.

Likewise, if you told me you don’t like people who try to peer pressure you into joining a boycott, I could totally understand that. But that’s not the same thing as saying those people are acting morally wrong.

This isn’t to try to say that there isn’t some compelling moral argument against boycotts, maybe there is, but I don’t think the one you gave quite does it.

Personally, though, having read through the responses here, I remain unconvinced. I don’t know why I shouldn’t use my words to try to convince others to use their buying choices to hurt economically people who are actively using their words to try to convince others to hurt me — including hurting me physically.

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