Um, think you've got this backwards. Private entities shouldn't have to take on anyone they don't want as customers (for whatever reason - do you have to justify who you do or don't want in your livingroom?), but publicly-funded institutions shouldn't be able to deny service on political grounds.
They can deny service to anyone, so long as it does not run afoul of discrimination laws. ICE is not a protected class.
It's still politically dangerous, and would earn a company a lot of enemies and mistrust (as well as some allies, though they may be the type to just ask for more, as others on this post have mentioned).
conscientious objection is a different case where you can fulfill your legal obligations in a way that's compatible with your religious or moral obligations -- if we created legislation requiring businesses to serve government agencies, there might be an implied right moral objection where use of force is concerned
That would, of course, be a terrible and illegal abuse of power and essentially be the government policing political speech by private individuals. What an indictment of our government (and I don't mean a single person, but of the system itself) that this seems to be an uncontroversial statement. Because I agree, it's true, and it's the mark of terrible corruption.
Actually that one is illegal in many jurisdictions, e.g. when it's a store refusing service to gays and lesbians.
That might be overly naive and I agree that there’s great potential for corruption here as well.
It's wholly different to not accept a contract in the first place, but to unilaterally end it for any reason, political or otherwise, is grounds to consider that service provider unreliable.
Not everything has to be political & tribal.
Imagine for a moment that things change completely, and the ICE starts refusing to follow the orders of the Government - but now the Government is leaning towards the far-left, and wants the ICE to open borders to all. The ICE would no doubt have a lot of supporters, but disobeying the Government in such case would ALSO be wrong because in a democracy, the Government represents the people - by not following the orders of the Government, you're basically advancing anarchy. In both cases, the correct attitude is to fight for a Government change. It's not democratic for a Government organization to take its own stance on a topic despite the Government's policies.
ICE (or any other company/org for that matter) actually has a choice in how it behaves.
Do you see the difference?
In free societies, governments should only be able to forcibly compel people not to do things (murder, threaten, steal, etc.) - see the concept of "negative rights."
If a government was committing acts of genocide, do you believe private enterprise should be compelled to be complicit in these acts?
Denying service to ICE the organization isn't even remotely comparable to denying service to actual human beings.
But let's take your example, since you aren't the only one who interpreted it that way. That would be covered by the scope of the government contract being awarded during the normal bidding and contract process. The contract would stipulate the terms by which one party could pull out of the deal. What would be illegal would be for political influence to discourage the awarding of that contract.
If, like a significant portion of the HN audience, you are straight, white, middle class and male it's probably easier for you to dismiss the right to fair treatment than it might be for individuals in those categories.
The great thing about this, is that someone else will realize there is now an under-served market, and create a business to fulfill that need.
The same case can be made for hiring practices.
>> forcibly compel you to allocate your time and resources to ends they define.
...as has been SOP in even the most permissive of societies throughout history. I'm all for classical liberal ideals influencing the world, but these extreme libertarian rules and values have never existed outside the minds of their most zealous believers and you don't have to get too far into the details to see their contradictions.
Just like I can decide not to let people not wearing shoes or shirts into my business, why shouldn't I be able to deny entry to a neo-Nazi? What if I'm losing black customers because I have racists regularly visiting my store?
That is a childishly simplistic understanding of how free markets work. There is no way a retail business would be established to service the needs of 2% of the population who are wheelchair users for example, when they could easily make their stores considerably more efficient by making the aisles a little narrower.
With that being said, in the private sector, there really is no "right to fair treatment" with exceptions for anything required by law for affirmative action. By forcing fairness (where a business must provide service to someone it doesn't want to), you are simultaneously removing the freedom of association [0].
[0] While not explicitly stated in the US constitution is argued to be a fundamental human right.
Besides, GitHub probably does offer services to the Chinese government bodies and it will be no surprise to anyone if it turns out they are committing acts of genocide against the Uyghurs. They are probably hosting code related to research and commercialisation of the facial recognition programs that various governments will be implementing.
To draw the line at Ice but not withdraw services from the Chinese mainland showcases the level of myopic politicisation that is being lobbied for here. They are a platform, they should act like one.
Is it within their moral rights for backhoe operators demand manual ditch digging too because that will benefit their friends who lost jobs to powered equipment?
That doesn't change the fact that I'm personally disappointed that they're executing that privilege on this particular issue.
Maybe they use a lot of a free service you provide that costs you money. Maybe they require too much customer support. Maybe they return most of the products they buy from you. I've looked at a few datasets where profitability by customer varied pretty widely, including many that were clearly in the red. Most companies just don't break out their costs by customer enough to see it.
It looks like you're trying to imply that discriminating based on political orientation is as bad as as discriminating based on race, gender, origin or religion, but that's wrong. At least when it comes to the law, political orientation isn't a protected class. Race, gender, origin or religion are.
Religion is a choice. Does that mean that you're fine with discrimination based on one's religion?
The question is: does the automation help us build things that were impossible before, or does it exist for the sole purpose of cutting jobs and funneling more money to the executives?
Taking it further, what if a majority of businesses gradually decide to be racist and refuse all services just because they can? Not serving minorities wouldn't really impact their bottom line all that much. The minorities would literally die off.
It's easy to talk about "rights" as if they exist in a vacuum i.e. my rights are mine and they do not affect anyone else, ergo my rights should be absolute. They are not, and should not.
Reality is usually a tenuous balance of rights (usually tilted towards the majority) that people participating in civil society share.
Slow down there, you're going to need more evidence than that to claim that an underserved segment of the population isn't an attractive commercial target.
I agree that wheelchair users might be comparatively expensive customers, but if that 2% stat is correct they would be profitable to someone. A business with 2% of the market as a captive audience is going to be profitable.
If more companies were forced to pause and consider whether taking on certain customers would cause their workers to revolt, we’d all be better off.
Except that every other business can now refuse to serve that business services, because that business serves people nobody else likes.
Given even time and systematic discrimination, that business owner and everyone they serve will be driven to destitution and cease to be a meaningful market segment. They, along with the people they serve can't afford to buy anything anyways.
Should society should just let them die because of the magic of capitalism and (???) rights?
Does everyone refuse to work for Komatsu, John Deere, Liebherr, etc? Is that even possible?
Honestly, I think the claim that the free market would solve this is so outlandish that the burden of proof is on those who believe it.
Maybe, just maybe, in a dense population centre like London their needs would be met by a few specialist 'accessable' stores. But what about some rural town of a few thousand people?
I'm not you, and I can't imagine what your situation is, but I'll bet whatever precious little civil rights laws that are enforced wherever you are has probably has helped you more than you know.
Some people thought pandemic response teams are a waste of money, until a pandemic happened, then they realized perhaps there wasn't a pandemic previously because that team was doing their job.
If I'll ever find my self in a situation like this - I'll pack my things and run. I'm not going to be happy in a place like this even if government will force those people to tolerate me.
> if a majority of businesses gradually decide to be racist and refuse all services just because they can
That means anyone entrepreneurial enough will have access to an underserved niche market.
I think there will always be places that exist that help everyone. First in mind are churches, who often will help people even if the people they help have differing views.
Segregation wasn't a case of the government pushing these ideas on to unwilling populace.
The company.
You can support the employees without needing to twist reality. There is no question that ending service on non service related grounds makes a company unpredictability unreliable.
"I think ICE needs reforms, but I don't believe a pressure should be put on them to impose changes"
Makes me wonder if you truly support people protesting or even agree that ICE is doing anything wrong.
An underserved niche market of people who have significantly less money because they can't find work - and your company won't hire them because your other customers who actually have money will boycott you - isn't worth much.
Anger and outrage are valuable, and it's important that we channel them in the right directions.
At some point you will run down all these dead-end alleyways and you will realize that the perfect spheroid does not exist. For your moral sake I'd hope it's sooner than later.
My personal choice here would be a tax for practices that are provably automatable but not yet automated. The result is the same, we are funding a UBI but now businesses are also incentivized for innovation to escape from the tax. I'm probably missing hundreds of reasonable concerns with my simplistic view point though.
Hasn’t that ship already sailed? The cake shop ruling by the Supreme Court seems to point to yes.
Either way: not a protected class, and it should stay that way.
Regardless, if enough people think it is wrong that the company goes out of business, so be it. I don't think that is likely, but ok. Automation is going to continue to happen no matter what.
I'm sure many people who believe in $DEITY, and the duties which follow from this, do not see "belief" as a choice they are making.
For example in many countries you need to "register" political advertising[1]. One could say that it is perfectly reasonable not to help political opponents, but then it would be reasonable to declare your business as politically oriented.
Similarly to how even private universities in the US must uphold free-speech rights is they declare free-speech friendly.
This is not a complete solution, but it does not need to be all or nothing.
[1] in the Uk there was some conversation about Ryanair's showing pro-stay slogan on a plane behind a press conference during the Brexit campaing
It might very well be, and it's worth debating how much giving business support to an organization whose policies you (possibly vehemently) disagree with is a kind of implicit support of those policies. But, it's also worth asking: if protest by workers to put pressure on their employees to stop giving business support to organizations whose policies they vehemently disagree with is "disappointing," what kind of protest isn't?
It seems to me that when we're talking about corporations, who you do and don't sign contracts with -- who you buy from, who you sell to, and what charities you support -- is far and away the strongest signal you can send. If you're sending a signal of support to Black Lives Matter protests, it's nice if you send out a few tweets and update your home page, but it's better if you donate money, services, and/or employee time. And the group you donate those things to is going to send a signal: donating to Colin Kaepernick's "Know Your Rights Camp" is in some sense a more specific, stronger message than donating to the ACLU.
So it certainly seems reasonable that asking the corporations you work for (and perhaps work with) to put their money where their PR is in terms of who they do business with also sends a message. No, it's probably not in and of itself going to put much pressure on ICE, but it is a statement of values.
I am not sure how much legal barter is, but in many sense the currency is intrinsically linked to the public space of the state.
So disabled people don't get an automatic job, say. But an employer can't just decide not interview someone because "it's inconvenient to interview you due to your disability".
Another: It's not acceptable to say "sorry we can't interview you if you can't climb stairs, because there is a staircase between our interview room and the downstairs offices", because there is a reasonable accomodation possible, namely interviewing in a different room.
A shop is required to make reasonable accomodations, such as provide an entry ramp if that makes sense, and a wheelchair compatible toilet if that makes sense (i.e. it has other toilets).
That prevents shops from saying "we don't care about the 2% so we can't be bothered with a ramp even though the cost is negligable to us".
On the other hand, reasonable is relative. An organisation with no funds would not be required to do the same things as an organisation with plenty of funds. A club open to the public is expected to do more than a private gathering of people where nobody in the group has particular needs. And accomodation doesn't always have to be pre-emptive. For a public facility, anticipating needs of a broad spectrum people is expectecd, but for a small, private workplace it may suffice to react to the particular needs of individual people as needed.
(Note, disability is complicated because there are so many kinds, many of them invisible but cause much difficulty for the persons affected, and people without experience do not recognise the signs. I've used wheelchair here because everyone recognises that, but even with those, a lot of people seem to not understand that if a person can stand up and walk a bit, it doesn't mean they don't need a wheelchair.)
Well, how about "don't discriminate"?
I am not saying it is the perfect solution, but if you want to refuse a service you can always terminate your commercial venture. I do not necessarily see this a clear cut case of positive/negative right.
Similarly to how the state can compel you to get a driving license to drive. You can just give up on driving.
The intended outcome is not that people that want to discriminate stop existing (well, long term also...) but that non-discriminatory interactions can be allowed to flourish.
Whether it's the kind of discrimination the store is obliged to deal with is going to come down to principles of reasonable accomodation.
So, say you had an extremely boutique store up some rickety stairs, where the way it's used is you go up the stairs and meet the chef who will take your order for a wedding cake and you can collect the cake next week.
I would expect, in that case, if the chef is willing to meet you at your home or another place with a menu of options and discuss your order, and then have it delivered next week, that would meet the bar of reasonable accomodation for someone who couldn't use the rickety stairs.
On the other hand, a large grocery store, where browsing the goods is part of the experience and is also significant to product discovery, and maybe pricing and access to better fresh ingredients and different bargains, and where the only obstacle is that the store does not replace one door type with another that a wheelchair user can enter, and the store can reasonably afford the cost, that is clearly inadequate of the store; they have no good excuse and could reasonably accomodate by changing that door.
On another hand, the same large grocery store may find it difficult to accomodate people who cannot tolerate bright illumination (that other people need, to see clearly), and large numbers of people moving around them. In that case, it is not at all obvious that the store can do much to accomodate. I would expect that if the store also provides online ordering with delivery, that it has performed reasonable accomodation for that situation.
In any case, I confess I'm always a little suspicious of this method of argument. Bob says, "I will ban neo-Nazis from my forum," and people chime in with, "Well, what about banning Catholics? Vegetarians? People who admit to liking Nickelback?". Is the principle really that if we find one single case where Bob would admit "I don't think banning that group makes any sense," then Bob needs to just give up and let neo-Nazis on his forum? Personally, I don't think that's a very good principle. An argument about where we (and Bob) should draw the line is reasonable, but I'm not convinced an argument about whether lines are intrinsically evil is.
This is an important point that those in disagreement with these kind of arguments often under-emphasize or ignore entirely. When a government makes it illegal to behave in a racist way, the racists don't go away, and they might even be amplified within those communities in a similar way to the Streisand effect.
If everyone in a community is racist, you can't simply make it illegal to be racist to fix the problem. They have to make that decision on their own - anything else is fundamentally authoritarianism, which doesn't have a great history of long-term success.
I bet most businesses would make their stores accessible (within reason) since you need room in isles for carts, etc.
It's important to channel them in all directions that could have impact. You never know for sure which 'direction' matters to the group you are trying to impart change on.
That's the capitalist enrich-the-owners purpose. In my mind, the real purpose of automation is to relieve humans the need to do work so they can live lives of leisure and personal enrichment. Unfortunately, I don't expect us to get there within my lifetime, if ever at all.
White parents were more likely to be able to afford to move which resulted in them leaving. Minorities tended to be poorer and could not leave and stayed in the areas with the worse schools. Kids who go to worse schools are less likely to get out of poverty so they stayed in the same poor areas and had kids in the same area repeating the cycle.
Since schools are typically given money based on property tax it meant that the schools in poor areas tended to receive less funding. There are also issues with teachers getting lower pay if they were in a poorer school. I think these issues are fixed in some states but there are still issues related to this in various states.
As an aside, the relative absence of that kind of movement in libertarian thought experiments has always bemused me; I think there's a somewhat utopian "everything gets better when you take the state out of the equation" notion at play. Everything doesn't automatically get worse, but it doesn't automatically get better, either. If the society still has discrimination, prejudice, and unequal justice, it's still going to face pressures to reform; most of us would rather see where we live be made "better" in our understanding of the term than be forced to move somewhere else to find that "better," even assuming we have the resources to make such a move.
A government agency cannot be a victim of discrimination, at least not in any way that matters. It is not a person, and does not have rights.
A government agency refusing to follow its orders is in no way parallel or analogous to a private company refusing to serve a particular customer. In the first case it's an illegal act, where the result will be the firing/jailing of the offenders (with the removal of their access that enables them to disobey), while in the second case it's just a normal, legal, expected outcome of business sometimes.
> the correct attitude is to fight for a Government change
Private entities refusing to do business with certain parts of the government is an aspect of fighting for government change. GitHub refusing to do business with ICE is a collective way for GH's employees and executives to lobby the government for change.
And more over, everyone can register a religion these days, look at Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption... So if someone wakes up one morning and starts a religion out of a joke I should be forced not to discriminate against him?
But replace John Oliver with Jewish religion and now this argument sounds different.
But that is the problem with context... I don't like blanket laws making me do things.
A food establishment forced to serve you might serve you food that's gone bad, a mechanic might not fully tighten the nuts on your brake pads, or any other variety of horrible things that people could do to harm you while leaving room for plausible deniability.
At least if they can legally deny service to you, you know that the ones serving you aren't a risk to your wellbeing. And to that end, I think it's a bit unfair to suggest that less money means there would be no businesses to serve that group of people. If every restaurant is discriminating, the singular restuarant that serves the less wealthy group would have plenty of business, simply due to the lack of competition.
The "pro-regulation" argument is valid with regard to a less commoditized market though, which is interesting. For example, I wouldn't want the only company that makes a life-saving drug to be able to legally discrimate who they sell it to.
It's a challenging problem and I certainly see both sides. My gut goes to regulations affecting large businesses but not smaller ones. It feels like there are probably some difficult edge-cases within there though.
I don't think many people would argue that we need a forum where people can advocate for pedophilia and child porn. We've clearly decided that sort of thing is bad. But saying we're going to ban child porn is not the same thing as saying we're going to ban vegetarians.
Certainly reasonable people can disagree on what types ideas deserve platforms. I imagine some (misguided but well-intentioned) people might think that providing neo-Nazis a platform to advocate for their position is a good and fair thing to do, even if they disagree with the neo-Nazi message. But it doesn't mean that people who don't think that's ok are somehow anti-free-speech fascist dictators who want to have control over every kind of speech.
I also get exhausted when people trot out the slippery-slope argument at every opportunity in order to shut down discussion. Not everything has to be a slippery slope! People are actually capable of making decisions in a nuanced, fine-grained way!
This seems like an unfruitful digression.
OP already agreed that the actions of ICE are immoral and that this action is within the moral rights of the workers.
The main question is about efficacy. That isn't elucidated by introducing a thought experiment where you believe the moral rights of developers are not as clear cut.
So the question is can employees who have diverging moralities have direct input on what a company considers moral and immoral outside the common take of the population at large?
When I was 11 or 12, I realized I didn't believe in god (I didn't know the term "atheist" at the time). My parents were Catholic, and I was forced to attend CCD weekly during the school year (the Catholic version of "Sunday School") in addition to weekly Mass. I tried so hard to believe in a god because I didn't want to disappoint or anger my parents, and I wanted to fit in with my peer group. I was trying to make a choice to believe, but that's just not a choice you can make. You either believe, or you don't.
In hindsight I'm glad I failed to choose to believe, but at the time I agonized over my non-belief daily, thinking there was something wrong with me.
I think this is a fair read on sexuality especially given the "spectrum" understanding of sexual preferences. If you're born 50% interested in men and 50% interested in women, you can very well choose to live your life (and identify) as a straight person or a gay person (or a bisexual person!).
That doesn't mean that others aren't born with a 0/100 ratio (one way or the other), though.
I think it's very easy to refute this statement by looking at any country where freedom of speech isn't guaranteed by law. The most populous country in the world is a glaring example.
Catholicism is an organization that as one of its main tenets is homophobic. How is that better (or is it worse) than being an Confederate flag-waver or a neo-Nazi or a Black racial separatist or ? I'm sure the answer is obvious to you, but only because of your personal idiosyncratic preferences. Evil is not an objective spectrum. It's a subjective high dimensional manifold.
What if the government, which issues identity documents that allow you to "run", decides they just don't like you and declines to produce them?
Which is pretty much what US law says, because it's reasonable on avwrgt.
I think there is justified wariness about building too much on top of any service given away for free.
In most casts that results in discriminatory civil suits. Imagine a restaurant, who has even greater leverage to test the for whatever reason mentality, asking a black family to leave without stating a reason. In most places in the US restaurants have the legal right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.
Race is a protected class, occupation is not.
Federal agencies are not protected classes of citizens. In fact it is quite literally illegal to force a company to do business with the government if it doesn't want to.
Yes, doing the right thing often is dangerous and earns you hatred from other people doing bad things who love the freedom of hiding amongst a herd of other equally guilty people.
The reason we have so much respect for people who take stand and do what they believe is right is because doing so is so hard. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
I'm in one of those weird moods where I want to see if I can argue something that sounds weird at first. If that's not your thing just ignore this post.
Putting pressure on ICE isn't going to change anything. Institutions cannot be trusted to reform themselves. In fact, it's going to be worse than doing nothing. The people involved will feel like they have "done their part" and will do fewer useful things in the future than they would have otherwise, mostly because they wasted their time on this thing.
Pressure has to be put on congress to reform ICE. Anything that distracts from that, or makes people feel a sense of accomplishment without furthering that goal is worse than useless.
I think that social constructs could be discriminated against based on race, religion, sex, etc if it was discriminated against because its members were part of a protected class.
[0] https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/8686/what-is-a-creed...
If a practice is provably automatable, then it's already automated. That's what proof looks like.
Making something illegal may feel good, but if 100% of the population (by the terms of your scenario) are against it, legislation is hardly going to move the needle.
It isn't that outlandish that the market will sort it all out. I doubt anyone is going to be unhappy if business get a bit of a prod to remind them that wheelchairs exist, but the idea a free market would ignore 2% of their potential customers is just not true. Greedy capitalists have incentives to be thorough; 2% of the market changing hands is enough to get the attention of any CEO.
Most businesses would notice 2% of their customers disappearing, let alone 2% of the broader market.
Assuming that refusal-of-service is a sort of relief valve is wildly optimistic.
Overt but relatively passive forms of racism effectively give pervasive comfort and encouragement to those who would engage in more active acts. Indirectly, this is also why "dog whistle" speech is so dangerous.
Per your example, in an environment where simply refusing service to you was common and widespread, you might find that someone who does agree to serve you is doing so just for the opportunity to spit in your food (at best).
That is true, but it most likely leaves wheelchair users paying a premium on goods and services for the privilege of even being able to enter the establishment, and probably having a smaller selection of lower quality to choose from to boot.
That is what generally happens with captive markets, you know.
It wouldn't be the only obstacle. Let's take wheelchair-accessible parking spots for example. We have to convince the store that sacrificing regular-sized parking spots (and the ones closest to the store, at that) in order to make room for a smaller number of larger parking spots that are reserved for 2% of their customers (and not exactly the most profitable 2%, either) is a reasonable accommodation.
Bear in mind that some of those spots we're asking them to convert might already be reserved for the store manager, some senior employees, and the employee-of-the-month as perks, rather than for customers. You will have a lot of convincing to do, and should expect significant pushback from the local chamber of commerce.
I think that's a better situation than the U.S. model which essentially foments society-dividing political warfare by cancelling people from different political viewpoints. It just serves to divide your country even further.
If you disagree, answer me this: Are you okay with the fact that a racist employer can fire you for not being racist enough? Are you okay with the fact that a Christian employer can fire you for supporting LGBT rights.. (they cannot fire you for being gay, but they can fire you for supporing gays)? Are you okay with the fact that an employer can fire you for supporing BLM? If political opinion is not protected, you'd better hope your employer has the same political opinions that you do... or else you'd better stay very quiet (chilling effect).
Discrimination against an arm of the government itself (ICE) seems to me to be an advanced stage symptom of a systemic societal sickness. I have no idea how it will resolve, but I wish you all the best. Hang in there.
You know, in free societies, there is society. That is very different from "wild reign of every impulse going through the head of an individual", which of course would be impossible anyway as an individual is itself permanently full of conflicting impulses.
Not to do things and do things is only a matter of wording. Forbidding to kill people is equivalent with compelling to do something: people are compelled to repress their possible will to kill other people. Accepting to follow an interdiction is doing something. Only something that doesn't exist won't act in any way or an other.
Should they? Well, one hardly can force someone to work for one's self nowadays.
Companies aren't democracies. Why should "the population at large"'s opinion matter in anyway? Most people don't even know Github exists, let alone what it's for.
Depends on how spread out the population is - black folk, maybe (but I don't have a simulation on me to work it out for sure and in what situations that theory might collapse), the subset of trans folk who're still working out how to blend in and not be seen as such in a rural area, not so much.
There's entire countries where some products are just not available commercially due to the lower income meaning nobody wants to put in the effort to work out how to provide them cost-effectively.
In the EU under human rights, discriminating based on political orientation is just as bad as discriminating based on race, gender, origin or religion. Religion and political beliefs are equivalent under the rule of law.
The UN also recognize discriminating based on political orientation under their human right declaration: "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status"
Denying service to ICE the organization isn't even remotely comparable to denying service to actual human beings.
Is ICE staffed entirely by robots? How is it not denying service to actual human beings?
AFAIK there is no strict control on US state borders, citizens are allowed to move freely. In many cases running away is as easy as purchasing Greyhound bus ticket. It's great that you deeply care about prosecution of LGBT people in places like Middle East, but it's not really relevant to a discussion of anti discrimination laws in US.
> isn't worth much
You don't have to be big to be successful. This scenario means that you have very low barrier to enter this market and will have to spend close to nothing on advertising. But what's more important - this scenario is unrealistic. If you live in a country where it's possible to pass anti-discrimination laws - you don't need those laws, since majority of your country already finds discrimination unacceptable.
The majority of a country finding discrimination unacceptable isn't necessary to pass anti-discrimination laws - just that most people don't care whether someone gets discriminated against or not. If you don't care (or need the job to survive yourself), you'll do whatever your boss tells you to do, and you're hardly going to boycott a store for discriminating against someone else, which means a subset of the population has disproportionate impact.
Denying the use of racially biased facial recognition software is a much clearer example where the risks are lower and the impact much, much greater.
It's much less clear that a source code repository is the fulcrum that enables 40 children to be jammed into a room without hygiene. Maybe if you worked for a critical supplier for ICE you could have an impact (which I would much encourage).
In this case, GitHub took actions similar to what you describe, donating $500k to "nonprofits helping communities adversely affected by the Trump administration’s immigration policies": https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2019-10-31...
Personally I think $500k is a bit small, and if I were Nat Friedman in this situation, maybe I would have announced a few extra paid leave days for employees engaging in protest, strikes, visiting elected officials to lobby for change, etc.
Nat Friedman's quote on this particular request from employees is "Picking and choosing customers is not the approach that we take to these types of questions when it comes to influencing government policy."
Even if there is no direct impact (such as another supplier stepping in) an individual choosing to avoid directly, supporting an organization they cannot morally abide has personal moral value. Probably not in a utilitarian sense, but that isn't the only basis for moral action in humans - see the trolly-problem for the canonical example.
I fundamentally disagree with this. Your argument is akin to stating that there should never be any casualties in a war. There is no way to effectively win a war without sometimes sending some troops into situations where you know they will die.
Compared to soldiers who knowingly lay down their lives in losing battles to help win the war, choosing a moral course of action that merely ends a company seems like a pretty cheap sacrifice.
For instance in France regarding B2B sales:
"Constitue également une discrimination toute distinction opérée entre les personnes morales sur le fondement de l'origine, du sexe, de la situation de famille, de la grossesse, de l'apparence physique, de la particulière vulnérabilité résultant de la situation économique, apparente ou connue de son auteur, du patronyme, du lieu de résidence, de l'état de santé, de la perte d'autonomie, du handicap, des caractéristiques génétiques, des mœurs, de l'orientation sexuelle, de l'identité de genre, de l'âge, des opinions politiques, des activités syndicales, de la capacité à s'exprimer dans une langue autre que le français, de l'appartenance ou de la non-appartenance, vraie ou supposée, à une ethnie, une Nation, une prétendue race ou une religion déterminée des membres ou de certains membres de ces personnes morales."
This clearly states that you cannot refuse to sell a product or to a company on political grounds, just like you can't refuse to sell to a Jewish association because they are Jewish, or to a Italian company because you don't trust Italians.
At least for Americans you are wrong on all three counts, and that may be where the confusion is coming.
The workers (and as I already stated, the OP) all agree that there are actions done by ICE that are not only unethical but morally reprehensible. One of the (only) two major parties officially agrees as do a large portion of their constituents.
So your question about views "outside the common take" is interesting but not relevant to this discussion.
[I bet I'll get more downvotes than answers].