Heroes they’re not. But when profits and progressive policies align… POW!

Tech companies come out against restrictive immigration laws. Disappointed CEOs abandon their seats on a national business council as the government walks away from climate accords. The normally corrupt NCAA moves a basketball tournament from a state looking to impose discriminatory bathroom laws.

More recently, large retailers have decided — of their own accord, without any law imposed upon them — to raise age minimums and stop selling military-style assault rifles. Even on a micro scale, after incidents like Charlottesville, employers have fired people after being notified of those employees’ hateful online speech.

To be fair, it’s not all rosy. Some businesses have fought for their right not to provide birth control as part of employee health insurance, or their right not to serve LGBT customers. And of course, there’s Citizens United.

But the trend does seem to be toward (most) companies coming down on the side of (mostly) progressive issues. In part, as this article reminds us, because:

Politics is competitive, but the competition is constrained—by time (e.g., elections only happen every two, four, or six years), by geography (e.g., the gerrymandering of districts), and by partisanship, in which every issue often boils down to “the other side is worse.” Many companies cannot rely on time, geography, or negative advertising to save them. Every week is a primary for a consumer brand; the global nature of business exposes companies to more rivals; and no company can thrive by making nothing and investing exclusively in hostile marketing. “Politicians assume they can wait out the outrage, but national companies have to respond to the immediacy of demand.”

So what role can corporations play in creating social change? Should they be doing this more, or less?

What issues are they best suited to affect? What issues do we want them to stay out of completely?

What pressures can people put on them to be better “citizens”?

Guilty of smug wall-leaning, and cliche prison posing, respectively.

So many dangerous things, wrong-but-technically-legal things, democracy-corrupting things, totally-unfair-to-all-but-a-few things, should-have-been-decided-for-good-a-long-time-ago things go on in this world every day. There oughta be a law.

If you were given ultimate global power to make two things illegal what would you choose?

If you prefer, these can apply in certain places, at certain times, for certain people, etc. with good reason.

They can’t compel people to do things that are already illegal. They would override existing rights/laws as applicable.

They’re not wishes, but they are instantly, easily enforced to the point where the illegal things stop right away. The idea isn’t to punish and imprison people, just fix problems.

A topic best depicted in the abstract.

If you truly want to be challenged emotionally and ethically, I suggest — though with the requisite warnings about content that’s troubling, difficult, and may put you in a head space you do not want to be in — listening to the Love + Radio episode, “A Red Dot”, an extended interview with a man describing what it’s like to live life on the sex offender registry.

This isn’t a gawking look at how awful people live. It’s an attempt to empathize with a person who for many will be the least empathetic person you can think of. And it’s successful in that it doesn’t let him off the hook for making some very bad decisions, or having moments that suggest there’s a lingering disturbance within this person. But it also confronts us with the fact that a man can make a bad decision and continue paying the price for the rest of his life, no matter how he may learn, or grow, or change. It’s heavy stuff. I dare you to listen and not find yourself, at least at moments, feeling that empathy.

The tough question is, what can or should be done in this trickiest of situations?

If it’s acceptable to keep persecuting people after they’ve paid their debt, what are the limits to punishment?

Do we believe people can change enough to be forgiven, or at the very least left to live their life?

If we do, why is it ok to keep vilifying them? If we don’t, do they deserve what we put them through, or is there a better way to handle those we want to permanently ostracize?