> such as "nobody should adjust their opinion of me no matter what I say", or "everyone should be forced to carry my words and see my words no matter what I say".
More like "I should not be fired, refused service, and kicked out of teams/events due to my speech/opinions".
I don’t agree with that. All those are voluntary associations, and freedom of association is at least as important as freedom of speech.
What I do think is that being fired should not be a death sentence; that there should be a mechanism, possibly the Government in our current society, by which one can continue living with food and a roof over one’s head even if people refuse to associate with that person. Generally speaking, I don’t think there should be an entity which can prevent you from feeding and housing yourself in the first place, though.
> freedom of association is at least as important as freedom of speech.
In that case, do you believe that it should be legal to fire/refuse service/kick out of teams and events someone due to their gender, religion, or sexual orientation?
The fact of the matter is that all this happens, legal or not. I’ve not had work in years, in the first instances because of illegal discrimination. I’ve been assaulted for being in the “wrong” spaces. People care so intensely much about freedom of association that they’ll break the law and use violence in order to maintain it.
So what should we do, given that enforcing association by law doesn’t work?
My solution is in anarchism; stop preventing me from living my own life (through a capitalist society enforced by the state, police and prisons) and I’ll stop forcing myself on yours.
People make and break friendships, or make any number of other associations, based on any factors they want, such as common interests and opinions, aligned goals and values, or just a common idea of fun and enjoyment. People have a right to decide who is welcome and who isn't, by any number of factors (modulo the interaction of protected classes with services offered to the public).
"Obnoxious" is not a protected class, nor should it be. You have a right to not be arrested for your words or opinions or expression. You are not entitled to (for instance) other people's business, patronage, custom, service, friendship, or any other kind of association. You do not have the right to control other people's reactions to you.
It doesn't matter if we're talking about a hobby group, a sports team, a software project, a company, or a social network. "I don't enjoy being around this person" is more than reason enough to stop associating with someone, let alone more critical reasons such as "I don't want to be around someone who wants to deprive me of my rights as a person" or "this person is driving other people away".
> I don't enjoy being around this person" is more than reason enough to stop associating with someone
So I should be able refuse to sell bread to someone with green hair, right? Or if they have a specific skin deformation.
Now, what if all shops in an area refuse to sell food to people with these characteristics?
> let alone more critical reasons such as "I don't want to be around someone who wants to deprive me of my rights as a person"
In that case I will be able to pretty much ban anyone I want as the vast majority of people think that certain victimless crimes should be illegal (and thus they deprive me of my rights as a person), right?
The lovely thing is that there's no symmetry required here. Excluding someone because they're intolerant/obnoxious/etc is very different than excluding someone because of who they are. It's perfectly consistent to consider it morally wrong to exclude someone because of who they are, and simultaneously consider it not wrong to exclude someone because of their prejudice. Those exclusions are not equivalent, and do not need to be treated as such.
Bringing up someone's employer in the middle of a flamewar is a really bad idea. Maybe you just sincerely became more interested in whether ME will be open-sourced, but a general reader (let alone the person you've just been in a flamewar with) could easily read this in a much nastier way; so please don't go there.
Also, please don't do this sort of flamewar on HN to begin with. It's tedious, predictable, and nasty. We're trying for a quite different sort of forum here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
> Bringing up someone's employer in the middle of a flamewar is a really bad idea
Guess I should have sent an email instead. In general I expect my posts to be understood as they are.
> Also, please don't do this sort of flamewar on HN to begin with
If you told me what exactly I said in the post that I should try to avoid from now I would appreciate it. I did not post anything with the intention of being flamewar-y, rather my posts were just sincere questions.
More like "I should not be fired, refused service, and kicked out of teams/events due to my speech/opinions".
Do you agree with this or not?