> - Autodesk is partly owned by fossil fuels investor BlackRock (8.3%).
They're the biggest investment company by NAV, so of course they're going to be invested in fossil fuels. This is the same blackrock that says they would begin to exit certain investments that "present a high sustainability-related risk" earlier this year[1], so I'm not sure why the hate.
It's well past the point where divestment could be motivated by environmental concern. Coal is a loss maker. If you're getting out now it's a profit driven decision.
Well, at least they're getting out, even if it's not driven by true environmental concern. BlackRock taking that step seems like it has/will set the stage for other, smaller organizations to follow.
Yeah, I'm conflicted on this. Obviously I'm happy that companies are moving away from unsustainable practices, but less than pleased that they see it as unsustainable financially as opposed to environmentally. Which leads me to believe that they would embrace an equally ecologically-destructive practice if it was forecast as profitable for the next 50 years.
I'm still in the camp of "I'll believe it when I see it".
> Fink doesn’t own that $7 trillion of assets, he manages it as a fiduciary for others, and it is obviously wise for him to say that this initiative is client-driven. But it’s also helpful for him if that’s true. This letter will get attention, and if BlackRock’s biggest and most vocal clients think it’s bad then they might take their money from BlackRock and give it to some other, less environmentally committed manager.
Or the investors don't actually think that it _is_ good, just that it _looks_ good to publish such a statement (and not actually enforce it), the same way that Autodesk is just parading "sustainability" as a marketing statement.
I was very surprised to read your comment, since my last thought after using the website was literally "that website was really nice and simple." Just goes to show how different user experiences can be.
Scrolling worked fine for me. I'm using chrome on a samsung phone if anyone is interested :)
In Firefox on a desktop, sometimes one "tick" of the scroll wheel jumps down an entire page, sometimes just a few inches, and the scroll wheel stops working until the page is finished moving. You also can't scroll up once you get to the bottom of the page.
I hate websites that think they know better than me how I should read a web page. The idea that as soon as I scroll the bottom of your 'page' of content you think it should auto-scroll so the 'next page' is at the top is asinine. I wanted to scroll the page just enough that the focus of my reading is in the center of my screen, but it kept insisting that it jump to the next 'page'. Worse still is that it treated it like a new page of content by monkeying around with the page history. That means when I get to the bottom of the web page and want to go back to the previous web page (HN), I really needed to hit back multiple times instead.
I understand the POV here, but as a user of autodesk products, I don't want Autodesk to turn away the revenue they need to keep making products I use. products are an ecosystem and if the product gets worse or updates get slower then the whole ecosystem suffers.
I will bet that a large number of green energy plants (solar, wind, etc) are designed using Autodesk tools, and a large amount of sustainable manufacturing as well.
Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing. Autodesk probably has provided services and tools which make this coal mine more efficient than it would have been otherwise, too - many of their products are designed to make engineering and manufacture more efficient.
I do agree, though, that their PR department and their actual response to the issues have been poor. I am thankful that we don't judge ever business merely by their PR; most are not that good.
disclaimer: I do not work for autodesk but I do own some small amount of autodesk stock because I like their products and use Fusion360 for free as a hobby machinist and woodworker.
> Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing.
We're literally talking the end of life on this planet as we know it. The companies you mention are also complicit in creating the upcoming climate-caused world wars and their executives should similarly be held responsible.
If you think this position is extreme, you are not paying attention.
It's true, but it gets fuzzier when the tool is a service. If Autodesk has a cloud component, it's up to them whether they vend that component to fossil fuel prospectors or miners.
How is it fuzzier? If someone stores illegal content on Google Drive should Google be prosecuted? Of course not. And in this case we're not even talking about something that's illegal.
It's not whether they should be prosecuted, it's about what their ethical / moral stance is on the topic. Some people think cloud services should be like fire or water; available to everyone agnostic of what they choose to do with it. But that's a moral stance, and one reasonable people can have disagreement over. Google employees, for example, pushed company leadership on weather they were comfortable with the notion the company would provide machine learning services to the US military for target identification purposes in drone video.
Software as a service gives technology companies incredible power, and it is possible that in a world of potential existential risk to humanity, it is power they should leverage. Possible. I have no idea if it is a good idea.
Whether it's a desktop solution or a cloud component isn't really a big difference in my eyes. With both of them they will be purchasing (use-case agnostic) "customer support" as the main service.
What I do think is more problematic, is when the company goes out of their way to help develop the tools specifically for questionable industries, which is exactly what they are highlighting in the linked PDF (which is still a hotlink to Autodesk servers...).
Legally they all already are. Any tool which is required for the production of nuclear weapons is regulated. Things like hammers are easily available and not tracked, but precise enough CNC machines have built-in always on GPS and cell/satellite links to report their locations. The manufacturer is responsible for ensuring the machine cannot be used outside its licensed geofenced area.
I think you are referring to dual-use technologies [1], where the "dual" use means civilian and military. The list of technologies that are deemed "dual-use" is quite explicit and can be found in the Wassenaar Arrangement document [2]. In that document you'll find out there are plenty of paragraphs about software, for example on page 139 "software application programs designed to be hosted on general purpose computers located at Air Traffic Control centres and capable of accepting radar target data from more than four primary radars". I would be extraordinarily surprised if Autodesk were not in compliance with this rule. Similarly, as soon as a rule were passed to limit the use of a technology to ecologically damaging activities, Autodesk's Legal department would start combing through it and make sure they are in compliance, and if not, they'll see what steps to take to fall in compliance at the earliest date possible.
I agree, and do not think your position on the state of our planet is extreme. I do not think that asking autodesk to suspend licensing to a coal mine is going to stop coal mining. Nor will Autodesk adopting honest PR solve the climate crisis.
It is great when companies act, but it is not sufficient. If we are to solve the climate crisis, we need to put in place government regulations and price incentives to solve it. It is the only thing that has ever worked and we are not trying it.
These are not mutually exclusive strategies. Back during the 1980s, activists in the US tried to get the Reagan administration to pass sanctions against apartheid South Africa. While Reagan stalled, they successfully got individual companies to stop doing business with South Africa.
None of these individual actions stopped white-only rule in South Africa. Nor did anyone involved in the process think it would. But it was part of a worldwide movement that did ultimately lead to US sanctions and the end of apartheid.
In fact, one of the things that encourages government action is seeing that the change being suggested has become mainstream. Businesses boycotting the oil and gas industries could be an effective part of that.
There's plenty of opportunities for money to be made by abandoning fossil fuels. Russia and Saudi Arabia might disagree, as well as the Kochs and their friends.
Where do you draw the line? Is a company that manufactures mechanical pencils complicit, because they might be used as writing instruments at a coal plant?
I agree that accountability is a good thing, and we need to be doing more as a society to protect the planet. But at some point one has to come to terms with the idea that they're building a generic tool and simply can't be responsible for how others use it.
(I'd argue the blame primarily belongs on the plant itself, those who buy coal from it, and the government that allowed it to operate.)
A better question is where do you draw the line in terms of companies supplying actors that are directly contributing to human suffering? We (America, but others as well) cut trade and enact sanctions exactly for that reason, all the time. This idea that capitalism should be entirely apolitical is farce, people only want it to be apolitical as far as they are personally comfortable.
they're building a generic tool and simply can't be responsible for how others use it
AutoDesk is undoubtedly aware of its sales with a massive coal plant, unless they are a horribly run and incredibly lucky company. Beyond that, it seems like AutoDesk has gone as far as promoting their involvement in developing the excavators, no?
Do you consider quarantine and other responses to covid a, say, pause or temporary "end" of "life as we know it"? What would you consider an "end of life as we know it"?
Edit: Another good comparison point would be the Great Depression. Was that a (temporary) "end of life as we know it", in your view?
> The companies you mention are also complicit in creating the upcoming climate-caused world wars and their executives should similarly be held responsible.
It seems just as likely to me that the economic deprivation caused by an end (or dramatic reduction of) fossil fuel consumption would also lead to world wars (and likely vast ecological destruction). How does one effectively weigh those risks against each other?
At what point does a business entity need to draw the line in ethical matters, though? We've seen recent movements at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. where employees put pressure on leadership to cease work with military, law enforcement, and surveillance bodies. Certainly there was lost revenue from there. So there is precedence in tech.
As trust in the government has withered away and civil society (along with God in the public sphere) has perished, business in America remains booming, perhaps it is time to rethink corporations as amoral capitalist rational actors, but as moral agents that must coexist within society as a whole, not just the market. So we will see more and more cases where businesses are forced to take corporate responsibility seriously, and not just perform acts of woke capitalism.
> I don't want Autodesk to turn away the revenue they need to keep making products I use.
More than that, I don't want companies selling products to get to decide if I can use them based on what my business is. A product for sale should be available to all, regardless of why you don't like me today. If you don't like making money from me, you can always set up a MFFAM policy: Morons Funding the Fight Against Morons. (So named by Nearly Free Speech). Basically take the profit from my purchases to work against me, but don't deny my purchases.
Anyway, even if you won't sell to me directly, I could likely setup a straw purchase, which is just wasting resources.
At some point you will have to come to terms with the fact that things in the world will get shaken up by climate change. We've ridden comfortably through our grace period by matters of decades. Time to tear the bandaid off, some companies will adapt and some will fail. If you're right about AutoDesks' role in creating green energy products, then hopefully AutoDesks' success is tied to the green industry's own success.
As a descendant of polish Jews and an eventually a user of various IBM software and hardware I can say confidently and definitively state that I would have much preferred they chose not to serve the Nazis at the potential discomfort of today having to buy a laptop that wasn't a ThinkPad (pre-lenovo).
> products are an ecosystem and if the product gets worse or updates get slower then the whole ecosystem suffers.
I can't resist pointing out the irony in your concern over the health of the software ecosystem, when it is the health of the our ecosystem that we depend on for life that's being discussed : ).
Which is not necessarily a critique of your comment, but, in a way you could argue that you just successfully argued against yourself ; ).
AFAIK that only works if the domain's used in "bad faith", whatever that means. Considering that there are gTLDs that literally intended for criticizing companies (eg. .gripe and .sucks), I'd say he's fine.
edit: read a few lines down on the wikipedia article and it says the factors for determining bad faith are:
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark;
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, if the domain name owner has engaged in a pattern of such conduct; and
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
> Whether by using the domain name, the registrant has intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, internet users to the registrant's website, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark.
I was genuinely confused at first. I was thinking "this this their marketing page for the coal vertical? or is this people talking about them not doing it" – and the language made it more clear.
Even if Autodesk products just get replaced by a competitor's? And the environmental campaign were to conveniently ignore that? Just a hypothetical. It's certainly been done before.
Hence moral outrage is an effective tool for mass manipulation.
My intention was to clarify it as "moral" was mainly to contrast it to "legal" (which depending on jurisdiction I would assume it might not be).
And what is wrong with invoking morals? If people think that acting "sustainable" is important according to their morals, why not alert them that someone is deceiving them in that aspect?
If a competitor has put significant effort into actually being sustainable, while Autodesk is just using the term like that, publicizing it in this way just adds transparency for decision making. If a competitor is just as bad as Autodesk, publicizing it would just sensitize everyone to the problem and likely blow up into their face later.
Why do you think it would make a difference if a competitor pushes the message (as long as the message is true)?
> Why do you think it would make a difference if a competitor pushes the message (as long as the message is true)?
Because then it comes off as a cheap-shot to gain more clients and not an antifragile movement to make headway in the current climate disaster. It has the potential to corrupt and cause real long-term damage to such movements if they are only used as means to profit financially in the short-term. Again this is totally hypothetical in this case. I think vigilance is required even in what are facially "morally pure" causes.
I for one would welcome that. Companies that _actually_ act sustainable gaining headway over companies that don't sounds like a win-win to me.
> It has the potential to corrupt and cause real long-term damage to such movements if they are only used as means to profit financially in the short-term.
If they are only claiming to support the movement, and don't act according to it (like Autodesk does), that's what damages the movement. I don't see how a company that acts exactly like the movement wants to is damaging it.
To everyone trying to read all the text near the beginning but having the scrolling get wonky: you aren't supposed to read all of the text, it seems to just be in the background, and the only thing you are supposed to read is in the center of that... page... the part that goes "Autodesk describes 20 years..."
To make matters even worse, every time you scroll, it pushes a new page onto my history. Author is not making it easy to consume the info they are providing.
I encountered weird scroll boundaries between sections (could not have a section split halfway down my window, basically) but otherwise ran into no problems.
Aside from this, Joanie Lemercier is an artist who creates remarkable works with generative/procedural techniques, projection mapping, plotters, virtual reality, etc. https://joanielemercier.com/gallery/
I understand the frustration behind this, and it makes me angry as well.
But Autodesk shouldn't be the target of this anger, and this seems like a ton of effort just to vilify an incredibly small component of the problem. Instead, focus on the companies actually responsible, and the governments who both let them do this and refuse to make meaningful investments in deploying green technology.
> Autodesk is partly owned by fossil fuels investor BlackRock (8.3%).
This is straight-up propaganda. Blackrock, like Vanguard, owns a large portion of every public company. But, I bet they singled out Blackrock because Coal is a black-colored rock, and someone who wouldn't know any better may mistakenly think Blackrock is some company that specifically invests in non-green technology.
This site seems to be equal parts dishonest and confused.
Dishonest because they point out that Autodesk, a publicly traded company, has a portion of its stock owned by Blackrock, one of the world's largest investment companies. Not only does Autodesk have no control over who its investors are (anyone can buy stock!), but Blackrock owns pieces of lots of things, and is not primarily in the business of owning fossil fuel companies.
Confused because this is such a weird and unproductive way to go about advocating for fixing climate change. Let's think this out, since the activist chose not to. Suppose Autodesk does what he wants and says "we will not sell you Autodesk products." What will the mining company do? They have many options. They may hire a mechanical design company that already has Autodesk licenses to do the work for them. They may use a different CAD package. (The activist suggests this is an invalid point, but doesn't explain why; there are many CAD packages available and it's clear they can choose another one.) There is no endgame in which this writer's ultimate goal, even if it were wholly achieved, makes any positive difference to the environment. What's the point? It's a waste of time.
Advocate instead for systemic change that stops coal mining from being cost effective and will cause systemic diversion of capital away from coal and toward greener sources of energy. That can take the form of carbon taxes, or regulation on toxic mining effluents, or advocating for subsidies of green energy, et cetera. Each of those has an endgame that, if successful, makes a meaningful and positive impact on our planet's climate.
>Blackrock owns pieces of lots of things, and is not primarily in the business of owning fossil fuel companies. [...] Confused because this is such a weird and unproductive way to go about advocating for fixing climate change.
Blackrock and Vanguard are a promising, scary, and potentially very effective way to go about climate change change.
Blackrock has, in the past, taken a passive approach, not exerting its ownership to change the direction of companies. That is changing.
>Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity – a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.
>Given the groundwork we have already laid engaging on disclosure, and the growing investment risks surrounding sustainability, we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them.
As others have said, talk is cheap, we will see how they act on their new strategic direction. Maybe they continue to be their own version of a vampire squid or giant refrigerator perpetually keeping us unchanged and frozen in the past, or maybe they will be an NGO that both offers shared ownership of capital and votes wisely for the preservation of the planet.
Systemic change is an emergent property at the level above individual actions. If Autodesk chose not to supply a mining company, sure the mining company could go and find another software supplier. However, if multiple companies refuse to sell software to the mining company, then it becomes much harder for the mining company to acquire software and do their business. This would be an example of systemic change at the market level.
One of the radical freedom bits of open source software licensing is that anyone could use it no matter how heinous their goals are.
There are attempts to work around this like the JSON license "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.": https://json.org/license.html
A commercial company selling licenses, and therefore profiting off "bad things" is a bit less neutral, as this website shows.
But what if an OSS developer accepts a patchset from a "bad guy", what then? That contributed code has value... but we're getting into the whole "how was it created", which could invite comparisons to other scientific results produced in morally questionable ways, like through animal or involuntary human testing.
Since there's no objective universal definition of good and evil, how can you rely on your ability to use code under such a license? It doesn't matter what your project is - if the licensor wants to, they can find some way to describe it as evil. So, in my opinion, those licenses are themselves unethical.
I was reading on Autodesk's site a while ago about how they have software that can turn drone footage into 3d plots and use those plots to and estimate inventory based on the size of piles. They didn't explicitly say it was for coal, but after reading this "article/ thing" it seems like that is one of the biggest and most obvious use cases.
Also, as many others have pointed out, this site is bad. I wasn't quite sure initially this link was posted to call Autodesk's policies into light or as an example of terrible web design and scroll capture gone horribly wrong.
most of that drone related survey work is actually for things like gravel, or earth-moving processes for construction. It is also not particularly difficult or novel, and solved well by several different packages. For construction, it is often used to estimate the amount of soil fill / drainage rock, etc that is used or needed or removed during site modifications.
An example would be that if you need to haul away a lot of dirt, you pay per truck. Better estimating the amount of dirt means you don't accidentally book too few or too many trucks, this saves cost both in timing - avoiding delays, and in budgeting.
Absolutely correct. Coal is such a tiny, tiny portion of the "we need to figure out how much stuff is in this pile" market. Companies need that information both to keep their books in order (what's the dollar value of our inventory of gravel?) or to know whether they have adequate or excess supply of materials for their operations (do we need to slow down our procurement of sand?).
There are several companies in the market that use either drone footage or in some cases just a phone camera to estimate volumes of piles of stuff.
I bet Autodesk products are also used to design airplanes and cars which contribute to climate change. I bet they are also used to design plastic containers which also contribute to plastic pollution.
Software is a tool. It is the responsibility of the user not the writer of the software. If we get away from that principle, we would do ourselves great harm.
Do you want the word processor companies to be responsible for what people write? Do you want encryption software companies responsible for what people encrypt?
To the extent Autodesk software suite is a tool that is buy-once-and-use, that's true (sort of... they're still legally curtailed as a US company from selling directly to terrorists, etc.).
To the extent Autodesk is a service, it's up to the company whether they want to provide, for example, cloud services to fossil fuel prospectors or coal mining operations.
I don't want Autodesk to become political, they provide a tool, not a (political) ideology. I'm sure Autodesk products have been used to design bombs, weapons, great polluting machines and what not - but it has also been used for some truly inspiring stuff.
Autodesk is like a hammer, it's not the hammer manufacturer's fault in how their product is used. Do we want hammers to be restricted to only those whose political ideologies align with ours? The dangerous part is, we already see essential services such as payment processors taking political stances (blacklisting customers based on their political beliefs).
Autodesk's PR response is awful, to be completely honest if they were going to go down this route, they should have just remained quite. Their real mistake was to have a commitment to environmental impact. It could have been re-worded to have a green company infrastructure and to actively support green projects with tools and grants. We should all look to change ourselves before trying to change other people - lead by example and others will follow.
This logic does not hold up. Let's say you sell hammers, and a person walks into your store and says 'I'd like one hammer please — I'm going to go bash my friend's skull in'. Would you sell it to them?
> This logic does not hold up. Let's say you sell hammers, and a person walks into your store and says 'I'd like one hammer please — I'm going to go bash my friend's skull in'.
In this case, you've equated two things because they can both cause some amount of harm, but have ignored the quantity of harm, the existence and quantity of positive benefits, and the presence of stated intent.
The point is that all the good of Autodesk's products in non-mining industries is great but when a company like someone who makes mining equipment comes along Autodesk should treat them as they're someone who says they're going to use the software to bash their friend's planet in.
No it's not. doctorhandshake wasn't even making an analogy. They were applying OP's rule (we shouldn't dictate business based on political beliefs) to a hypothetical in order to demonstrate its negative moral outcome.
It's very possible (I'd argue probable) that operating a single, large-scale coal mining operation causes more total harm than bashing a single person's skull in with a hammer.
> existence and quantity of positive benefits
Coal as an industry is unnecessary at the scale it exists at today, so any added efficiencies in that industry due to the use of Autodesk products most likely count as a harm rather than a positive benefit.
> presence of stated intent
From the press releases on the page linked by the OP, it seems that Autodesk is well aware of the activities of the coal companies using their software, to the point that they use it as a selling point for their products. Perhaps the first moment they began selling to those companies they were unaware, but at this point they have explicitly advertised to the public that they know what those companies are doing.
If Autodesk had not profited from sales to these types of people, would they be in a position--or even exist--to provide their helpful technology for more noble efforts?
> Do we want hammers to be restricted to only those whose political ideologies align with ours?
Do you want a hardware store to have a "free fertilizer for white supremacists" sign?
Sorry for the extreme example. Point I'm trying to make is, at a certain point, yes, we want to restrict things based on political ideology, and always have.
The question is where and how to draw that line, and, the process we currently use to do that is public discussion, civil society, and democratic government.
So I think it's perfectly appropriate to talk and think about this.
> That would be explicitly promoting an ideology through
> commercial action, which is pretty much the opposite of
> what I see the OP advocating for.
Exactly. There is a major difference between neutrality and support.
But let's re-imagine this. The person walks into the hardware store and expresses aloud "I plan to use this for dubious purposes". Then this person has expressed illegal intent and the store owner should inform the authorities, if nothing else for their own safety.
> Who is this "we"?
Somebody who believes they are in the category of being a "good" person. Almost everybody believes they are in this group, not matter what "side" they are on.
> But let's re-imagine this. The person walks into the hardware store and expresses aloud "I plan to use this for dubious purposes". Then this person has expressed illegal intent and the store owner should inform the authorities, if nothing else for their own safety.
I agree, though I'm not sure I have good words to describe an operating principle that would allow one to sell a hammer to an coal company but would allow one to deny a hammer to someone declaring their intent to commit assault with it.
You could say something like "I will sell to anyone for any lawful purpose", but then you get into questions like "what about lawful behavior that I consider to be a grave wrong?". The devil is in the details.
In general, I think the solution is free association. The problem I see is that there are some very cynical third parties out there attacking their ideological foes at an economic level, by using social manipulation to direct other people's free associations in a coordinated manner to push those foes out of normal economic life altogether.
I say these third parties are cynical, because if Autodesk did stop working with the coal industry these third parties would defend Autodesk's right to "free association" in that choice, but those same third parties would happily use force of law to ban Autodesk from doing business with the coal industry if they could.
>> Who is this "we"?
> Somebody who believes they are in the category of being a "good" person. Almost everybody believes they are in this group, not matter what "side" they are on.
This pretense of consensus is one such rhetorical device of the social manipulators.
The point I’m trying to make is that because these things are complicated, I think that discourse around them is valuable. And “we” - members of a relatively democratic society and citizens of a relatively democratic government - are a part of that discourse, although I suppose we can choose to remove ourselves from it if we want.
As I’m pretty sure that every person has moral beliefs of one kind or another, and politics is a tool for enforcing consensus on human society (even if it’s a negative consensus not do do something - like, not limit speech), thus, on one level or another I think it’s fair to say that every person has a series of moral and political beliefs - an ideology.
So if someone doesn’t want the government to place any restrictions on who can buy what, that is a political ideology they would like to see established in law.
I suppose maybe certain Buddhists or people with a very well developed philosophy of deliberate disengagement from human society may not fit the bill.
But otherwise, I stand by my “we” statement which, I hope it’s now clear, isn’t a rhetorical trick about consensus, unless that consensus is that human beings live in societies and believe things and societies figure out ways to create rules based on some of those beliefs.
Fair. It was not the best example. The comment below creates a better thought-experiment.
For the purposes of the discussion “we” is everyone. Or all US citizens if you prefer to focus on a political entity.
Even total libertarians want to restrict others from restricting them, no?
I don’t think that last bit is a challenging statement. Think about it. I’m pretty sure pretty much everyone believes there should be some sort of law, though there’s disagreement about what laws should be. And any law is ultimately an expression of a political belief. Politics in the sense of society deciding how to regulate itself.
I think manufacturer responsibility is a function of both the purpose/use of the product and their removal from the particular nefarious uses.
For example, if a company makes nuts and bolts, it is true that they can be used to make bombs or oil rigs, but they are also used to make hairdryers and ovens and many other things. Additionally, nut and bolt manufacturers usually do not sell directly to the end users of their products, they sell through a long supply chain. If a supplier sells nuts and bolts to an oil company or arms manufacturer, that supplier is more responsible than the bolt manufacturer because they are the final step in selling to the business of dispute.
If the company makes nuts and bolts which are only useful for making bombs, then the manufacturer responsibility increases because they know what their product is going to be used for. Basically, if you can answer the question "what is this product going to be used for?" before you distribute it, you inherit responsibility for that use, because you could have chosen not to have distributed it, and therefore prevented that use of the product.
In the case of Autodesk, their products have a wide variety of uses, but they supply directly to their customers, so they know who they are selling to and therefore what each particular license will be used for, and therefore they incur some responsibility.
Assuming that Autodesk refusing to do business with the coal industry has any effect, the only immediate effect would likely be an increase in energy costs, which would disproportionately affect the poor. Whether it would actually result in reducing greenhouse gas emissions seems more questionable to me.
Making "green"[1] energy more competitive is not the same thing as making it cheaper. Yes, providers my switch to more green energy if the cost differential is not as great, but that doesn't mean that the consumer sees any real benefit.
For the consumer not to be impacted, the critical step would be for the actual cost of "green" energy to go down. This is done by allowing coal and "green" energy to compete in a relatively unregulated manner[2].
[1]Scare quotes are in place to remind people that we are using a binary label to describe the ecological impact of an energy source, when in fact that ecological impact would be better described in scalar or vector terms.
[2]yes, I know the energy sector is heavily regulated.
Do we want hammers to be restricted to only those whose political ideologies align with ours?
Yeah, why not? If you're a hammer manufacturer, then you should absolutely concern yourself with whether or not you're dealing business with ethical consumers.
I think if you commit yourself to your ideal, you're either going to end up being complicit in some really nasty stuff, or end up drawing a very arbitrary "line" where you stop being apolitical.
> If you're a hammer manufacturer, then you should absolutely
> concern yourself with whether or not you're dealing
> business with ethical consumers.
What if their idea of ethics doesn't align with your idea of ethics? What if all left/right wing people are banned from using a tool? Or some other arbitrary internal measure of ethics? You're only willing to follow along with this line of thinking whilst it aligns with your interpretation of ethics.
> [..] you're either going to end up being complicit in some
> really nasty stuff, or end up drawing a very arbitrary
> "line" where you stop being apolitical.
Being neutral doesn't make you complicit. The moment you take action (for either good or bad purposes), then you become complicit.
We should all look to change ourselves before trying to change other people - lead by example and others will follow.
This is an epic false equivalence that tries to suggest everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice. That's obvious nonsense. People who are good asking people who are bad to stop what they're doing is quite reasonable, especially on an objectively measurable topic like the environmental impact of mining.
Honestly, the suggestion that software shouldn't be treated as a political issue is something I never thought I'd see being argued in a relatively intelligent and enlightened community like HN. Software runs the world. It's obviously political. From governments embargo'ing the sale of strong encryption to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from being used to design nuclear weapons how could you possibly imagine software as "just a tool"? Of course it isn't.
>> We should all look to change ourselves before trying to change other people - lead by example and others will follow.
> This is an epic false equivalence that tries to suggest everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice. That's obvious nonsense.
That's obvious nonsense. Where does GP suggest that everyone an equal impact or an equal voice? Nowhere. What is wrong with asking people to follow the same maximes they are requesting others to follow? Don't we all expect the police to uphold and follow the law exactly because they ask others do the same.
> Honestly, the suggestion that software shouldn't be treated as a political issue is something I never thought I'd see being argued in a relatively intelligent and enlightened community like HN.
No, it's just that your definition of "intelligent enlightenment" is bring drown every aspect of life in politics.
I'm so fucking sick of this garbage, please fuck off.
The examples go beyond the abstract issue of whether or not software is an apolitical tool. According to the linked article, Autodesk has been greenwashing for marketing while profiting off of the coal industry. The argument here is not whether software should be apolitical, but whether Autodesk specifically should cease greenwashing if it's not going to take actions that are in line with its marketing materials around the environment. The other layer, of course, is the specific pressure to restrict access to Autodesk tools to the coal industry, which is a trickier and more political question regardless of how important.
There's the big gap between what's done and what should be done. As you say, software has been politicized, "From governments embargo'ing the sale of strong encryption to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from being used to design nuclear weapons" it's not being treated as a tool but it should be, these restrictions that you mention are nonsensical and should stop.
If someone really, really wants to treat their software as political and restrict how their software can be used, that's their right, I don't like it but that's permissible - however, if someone (like Autodesk in this example) wants to treat their software as an apolitical tool that's free to use for any purpose, good or bad, by all people, good or bad, then that is also their right, absolutely morally permissible and to my mind morally preferrable to trying to politicize the tool and trying to limit its use.
> This is an epic false equivalence that tries to suggest
> everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice.
The message "improve yourself before improving others" is really such a controversial thought? Winning hearts and minds is really the most effective method for making large impactful social changes.
Idealistically, equality across the board. But various social dynamics mean that yes, some people do have more social influence than others. But I'm not entirely sure what your point is here...
> People who are good asking people who are bad to stop what
> they're doing is quite reasonable, especially on an
> objectively measurable topic like the environmental impact
> of mining.
I think where this generally breaks down is that Autodesk is not "good" or "bad", it should be (and is acting like) a neutral body. The people within it are political, the activist is political, you're political, I'm political, but Autodesk itself is not. We shouldn't want companies to become political, the company's best interests (generally to maximize profit) does not align with those of the average person.
As political entities we can influence politics, where regulation could prevent mining that destroys the environment. In terms of efficiency, rather than convincing * every * commercial 3D tool to drop support for them and then somehow stop them using open source tools or developing their own, this method seems better. It also allows for an open discussion in the public sphere, rather than bypassing the democratic process.
> Honestly, the suggestion that software shouldn't be
> treated as a political issue is something I never thought
> I'd see being argued in a relatively intelligent and
> enlightened community like HN.
Now you have. I do like the way that an argument that opposes your own must be unintelligent and unenlightened. I remember a time when diversity of opinion was celebrated.
> Software runs the world. It's obviously political.
I'll remember to ask my smart-bulb what it thinks of Trump (/s). It's not obvious at all that software (or the company selling it) is political. I think there are very good arguments for companies not to be political.
> From governments embargo'ing the sale of strong encryption
The politicians obviously act politically.
> to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from
> being used to design nuclear weapons how could you
> possibly imagine software as "just a tool"?
Companies acting in such a way might be acting politically, or they might have a special version that they sell specifically at a higher price. Companies can act politically, but out of all the licenses I read, very few have a political position on nuclear weapons.
The question is, do you really want every company to take a political stance on everything? Say for example you are an environmental activist, do you want banks to take a political stance supporting oil companies (which they do), and therefore ban you from using their services?
The truth is, what you actually want is companies (software or not) to be political when it aligns with your interests. When it doesn't, then what?
"It's not the hammer manufacturer's fault in how their product is used" is a philosophy that took a pretty huge hit when physicists were called upon to solve the problems of the first atomic bomb.
A companies purpose is to make money for its shareholders. If the companies goal becomes anything else, decisions become extremely arbitrary.
Perhaps Autodesk should stop supporting car manufacturers who produce internal combustion engines. Perhaps Autodesk should stop support modeling single-use products. Perhaps Autodesk should only support its products being used in countries with "democracy". Perhaps Autodesk should open source all of their software, otherwise Autodesk could be a front for the NSA.
/s
If people want actual change in the world, the correct solution is to try to shame large companies, smaller companies will just take their place. Instead work on technologies that make "unethical" practices obsolete.
>> A companies purpose is to make money for its shareholders.
As a blanket statement that is false. The purpose is whatever the founder(s) wants. If shares are sold then agreements have to be made which may or may not involve changing the purpose.
Autodesk (as an entity) and every other thing on this planet that relies on the ecosystem to remain more or less as it is has a responsibility to do their part to oppose climate change. It's that simple.
There should be a site like this for every corporation and government that is significantly contributing to environmental degradation.
This reeks of an astroturfing campaign by an activist fund in support of getting control of the board, as a means to strip the company of its assets and the quality of life the employees enjoy. This isn't earnest. Cui bono?
Yeah... why are they singling out a certain software development company, in the first place? Trying to shut the coal mining industry down by pressuring one of the software suppliers with an organized mob rage campaign makes no practical sense, from an environmental activist perspective.
Thanks everyone for the very interesting conversation, I made this site and am still working on this project.
Another interesting read that confirms that none of the policies are actually enforced, and autodesk attempts at "sustainability" is just PR as a smoke screen. CEO is actually misleading customers, employees and investors.
Yes, coal is bad. Yes, we have to replace it. But, at a minimum, be frank about who you are, and what's your end game. Otherwise we can think this is a hit piece by the competition.
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadThey're the biggest investment company by NAV, so of course they're going to be invested in fossil fuels. This is the same blackrock that says they would begin to exit certain investments that "present a high sustainability-related risk" earlier this year[1], so I'm not sure why the hate.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-14/blackr...
I'm still in the camp of "I'll believe it when I see it".
> Fink doesn’t own that $7 trillion of assets, he manages it as a fiduciary for others, and it is obviously wise for him to say that this initiative is client-driven. But it’s also helpful for him if that’s true. This letter will get attention, and if BlackRock’s biggest and most vocal clients think it’s bad then they might take their money from BlackRock and give it to some other, less environmentally committed manager.
Or the investors don't actually think that it _is_ good, just that it _looks_ good to publish such a statement (and not actually enforce it), the same way that Autodesk is just parading "sustainability" as a marketing statement.
Scrolling worked fine for me. I'm using chrome on a samsung phone if anyone is interested :)
I will bet that a large number of green energy plants (solar, wind, etc) are designed using Autodesk tools, and a large amount of sustainable manufacturing as well.
Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing. Autodesk probably has provided services and tools which make this coal mine more efficient than it would have been otherwise, too - many of their products are designed to make engineering and manufacture more efficient.
I do agree, though, that their PR department and their actual response to the issues have been poor. I am thankful that we don't judge ever business merely by their PR; most are not that good.
disclaimer: I do not work for autodesk but I do own some small amount of autodesk stock because I like their products and use Fusion360 for free as a hobby machinist and woodworker.
We're literally talking the end of life on this planet as we know it. The companies you mention are also complicit in creating the upcoming climate-caused world wars and their executives should similarly be held responsible.
If you think this position is extreme, you are not paying attention.
Software as a service gives technology companies incredible power, and it is possible that in a world of potential existential risk to humanity, it is power they should leverage. Possible. I have no idea if it is a good idea.
What I do think is more problematic, is when the company goes out of their way to help develop the tools specifically for questionable industries, which is exactly what they are highlighting in the linked PDF (which is still a hotlink to Autodesk servers...).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology
[2]https://www.wassenaar.org/app/uploads/2019/12/WA-DOC-19-PUB-...
It is great when companies act, but it is not sufficient. If we are to solve the climate crisis, we need to put in place government regulations and price incentives to solve it. It is the only thing that has ever worked and we are not trying it.
None of these individual actions stopped white-only rule in South Africa. Nor did anyone involved in the process think it would. But it was part of a worldwide movement that did ultimately lead to US sanctions and the end of apartheid.
In fact, one of the things that encourages government action is seeing that the change being suggested has become mainstream. Businesses boycotting the oil and gas industries could be an effective part of that.
There's plenty of opportunities for money to be made by abandoning fossil fuels. Russia and Saudi Arabia might disagree, as well as the Kochs and their friends.
I agree that accountability is a good thing, and we need to be doing more as a society to protect the planet. But at some point one has to come to terms with the idea that they're building a generic tool and simply can't be responsible for how others use it.
(I'd argue the blame primarily belongs on the plant itself, those who buy coal from it, and the government that allowed it to operate.)
they're building a generic tool and simply can't be responsible for how others use it
AutoDesk is undoubtedly aware of its sales with a massive coal plant, unless they are a horribly run and incredibly lucky company. Beyond that, it seems like AutoDesk has gone as far as promoting their involvement in developing the excavators, no?
Would you sell hammers to a sweat shop?
Edit: Another good comparison point would be the Great Depression. Was that a (temporary) "end of life as we know it", in your view?
It seems just as likely to me that the economic deprivation caused by an end (or dramatic reduction of) fossil fuel consumption would also lead to world wars (and likely vast ecological destruction). How does one effectively weigh those risks against each other?
As trust in the government has withered away and civil society (along with God in the public sphere) has perished, business in America remains booming, perhaps it is time to rethink corporations as amoral capitalist rational actors, but as moral agents that must coexist within society as a whole, not just the market. So we will see more and more cases where businesses are forced to take corporate responsibility seriously, and not just perform acts of woke capitalism.
More than that, I don't want companies selling products to get to decide if I can use them based on what my business is. A product for sale should be available to all, regardless of why you don't like me today. If you don't like making money from me, you can always set up a MFFAM policy: Morons Funding the Fight Against Morons. (So named by Nearly Free Speech). Basically take the profit from my purchases to work against me, but don't deny my purchases.
Anyway, even if you won't sell to me directly, I could likely setup a straw purchase, which is just wasting resources.
I can't resist pointing out the irony in your concern over the health of the software ecosystem, when it is the health of the our ecosystem that we depend on for life that's being discussed : ).
Which is not necessarily a critique of your comment, but, in a way you could argue that you just successfully argued against yourself ; ).
edit: read a few lines down on the wikipedia article and it says the factors for determining bad faith are:
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark;
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, if the domain name owner has engaged in a pattern of such conduct; and
> Whether the registrant registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or
> Whether by using the domain name, the registrant has intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, internet users to the registrant's website, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark.
I think he should be fine
Edit: looks like it's from an independent designer based in Europe.
Hence moral outrage is an effective tool for mass manipulation.
And what is wrong with invoking morals? If people think that acting "sustainable" is important according to their morals, why not alert them that someone is deceiving them in that aspect?
If a competitor has put significant effort into actually being sustainable, while Autodesk is just using the term like that, publicizing it in this way just adds transparency for decision making. If a competitor is just as bad as Autodesk, publicizing it would just sensitize everyone to the problem and likely blow up into their face later.
Why do you think it would make a difference if a competitor pushes the message (as long as the message is true)?
Because then it comes off as a cheap-shot to gain more clients and not an antifragile movement to make headway in the current climate disaster. It has the potential to corrupt and cause real long-term damage to such movements if they are only used as means to profit financially in the short-term. Again this is totally hypothetical in this case. I think vigilance is required even in what are facially "morally pure" causes.
> It has the potential to corrupt and cause real long-term damage to such movements if they are only used as means to profit financially in the short-term.
If they are only claiming to support the movement, and don't act according to it (like Autodesk does), that's what damages the movement. I don't see how a company that acts exactly like the movement wants to is damaging it.
To make matters even worse, every time you scroll, it pushes a new page onto my history. Author is not making it easy to consume the info they are providing.
But Autodesk shouldn't be the target of this anger, and this seems like a ton of effort just to vilify an incredibly small component of the problem. Instead, focus on the companies actually responsible, and the governments who both let them do this and refuse to make meaningful investments in deploying green technology.
> Autodesk is partly owned by fossil fuels investor BlackRock (8.3%).
This is straight-up propaganda. Blackrock, like Vanguard, owns a large portion of every public company. But, I bet they singled out Blackrock because Coal is a black-colored rock, and someone who wouldn't know any better may mistakenly think Blackrock is some company that specifically invests in non-green technology.
Dishonest because they point out that Autodesk, a publicly traded company, has a portion of its stock owned by Blackrock, one of the world's largest investment companies. Not only does Autodesk have no control over who its investors are (anyone can buy stock!), but Blackrock owns pieces of lots of things, and is not primarily in the business of owning fossil fuel companies.
Confused because this is such a weird and unproductive way to go about advocating for fixing climate change. Let's think this out, since the activist chose not to. Suppose Autodesk does what he wants and says "we will not sell you Autodesk products." What will the mining company do? They have many options. They may hire a mechanical design company that already has Autodesk licenses to do the work for them. They may use a different CAD package. (The activist suggests this is an invalid point, but doesn't explain why; there are many CAD packages available and it's clear they can choose another one.) There is no endgame in which this writer's ultimate goal, even if it were wholly achieved, makes any positive difference to the environment. What's the point? It's a waste of time.
Advocate instead for systemic change that stops coal mining from being cost effective and will cause systemic diversion of capital away from coal and toward greener sources of energy. That can take the form of carbon taxes, or regulation on toxic mining effluents, or advocating for subsidies of green energy, et cetera. Each of those has an endgame that, if successful, makes a meaningful and positive impact on our planet's climate.
Unlike this effort.
Blackrock and Vanguard are a promising, scary, and potentially very effective way to go about climate change change.
Blackrock has, in the past, taken a passive approach, not exerting its ownership to change the direction of companies. That is changing.
>Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. Last September, when millions of people took to the streets to demand action on climate change, many of them emphasized the significant and lasting impact that it will have on economic growth and prosperity – a risk that markets to date have been slower to reflect. But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.
>Given the groundwork we have already laid engaging on disclosure, and the growing investment risks surrounding sustainability, we will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them.
https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry...
As others have said, talk is cheap, we will see how they act on their new strategic direction. Maybe they continue to be their own version of a vampire squid or giant refrigerator perpetually keeping us unchanged and frozen in the past, or maybe they will be an NGO that both offers shared ownership of capital and votes wisely for the preservation of the planet.
There are attempts to work around this like the JSON license "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.": https://json.org/license.html
A commercial company selling licenses, and therefore profiting off "bad things" is a bit less neutral, as this website shows.
But what if an OSS developer accepts a patchset from a "bad guy", what then? That contributed code has value... but we're getting into the whole "how was it created", which could invite comparisons to other scientific results produced in morally questionable ways, like through animal or involuntary human testing.
Ethics is hard.
Also, as many others have pointed out, this site is bad. I wasn't quite sure initially this link was posted to call Autodesk's policies into light or as an example of terrible web design and scroll capture gone horribly wrong.
An example would be that if you need to haul away a lot of dirt, you pay per truck. Better estimating the amount of dirt means you don't accidentally book too few or too many trucks, this saves cost both in timing - avoiding delays, and in budgeting.
There are several companies in the market that use either drone footage or in some cases just a phone camera to estimate volumes of piles of stuff.
Software is a tool. It is the responsibility of the user not the writer of the software. If we get away from that principle, we would do ourselves great harm.
Do you want the word processor companies to be responsible for what people write? Do you want encryption software companies responsible for what people encrypt?
To the extent Autodesk is a service, it's up to the company whether they want to provide, for example, cloud services to fossil fuel prospectors or coal mining operations.
https://gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-au...
http://autodesk.earth/#Change
Autodesk is like a hammer, it's not the hammer manufacturer's fault in how their product is used. Do we want hammers to be restricted to only those whose political ideologies align with ours? The dangerous part is, we already see essential services such as payment processors taking political stances (blacklisting customers based on their political beliefs).
Autodesk's PR response is awful, to be completely honest if they were going to go down this route, they should have just remained quite. Their real mistake was to have a commitment to environmental impact. It could have been re-worded to have a green company infrastructure and to actively support green projects with tools and grants. We should all look to change ourselves before trying to change other people - lead by example and others will follow.
This is called a "Faulty analogy" or "False analogy": https://examples.yourdictionary.com/false-analogy-examples.h..., https://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definit...
In this case, you've equated two things because they can both cause some amount of harm, but have ignored the quantity of harm, the existence and quantity of positive benefits, and the presence of stated intent.
It's very possible (I'd argue probable) that operating a single, large-scale coal mining operation causes more total harm than bashing a single person's skull in with a hammer.
> existence and quantity of positive benefits
Coal as an industry is unnecessary at the scale it exists at today, so any added efficiencies in that industry due to the use of Autodesk products most likely count as a harm rather than a positive benefit.
> presence of stated intent
From the press releases on the page linked by the OP, it seems that Autodesk is well aware of the activities of the coal companies using their software, to the point that they use it as a selling point for their products. Perhaps the first moment they began selling to those companies they were unaware, but at this point they have explicitly advertised to the public that they know what those companies are doing.
* Edited to fix line breaks
Do you want a hardware store to have a "free fertilizer for white supremacists" sign?
Sorry for the extreme example. Point I'm trying to make is, at a certain point, yes, we want to restrict things based on political ideology, and always have.
The question is where and how to draw that line, and, the process we currently use to do that is public discussion, civil society, and democratic government.
So I think it's perfectly appropriate to talk and think about this.
That would be explicitly promoting an ideology through commercial action, which is pretty much the opposite of what I see the OP advocating for.
> Point I'm trying to make is, at a certain point, yes, we want to restrict things based on political ideology, and always have.
Who is this "we"?
> commercial action, which is pretty much the opposite of
> what I see the OP advocating for.
Exactly. There is a major difference between neutrality and support.
But let's re-imagine this. The person walks into the hardware store and expresses aloud "I plan to use this for dubious purposes". Then this person has expressed illegal intent and the store owner should inform the authorities, if nothing else for their own safety.
> Who is this "we"?
Somebody who believes they are in the category of being a "good" person. Almost everybody believes they are in this group, not matter what "side" they are on.
I agree, though I'm not sure I have good words to describe an operating principle that would allow one to sell a hammer to an coal company but would allow one to deny a hammer to someone declaring their intent to commit assault with it.
You could say something like "I will sell to anyone for any lawful purpose", but then you get into questions like "what about lawful behavior that I consider to be a grave wrong?". The devil is in the details.
In general, I think the solution is free association. The problem I see is that there are some very cynical third parties out there attacking their ideological foes at an economic level, by using social manipulation to direct other people's free associations in a coordinated manner to push those foes out of normal economic life altogether.
I say these third parties are cynical, because if Autodesk did stop working with the coal industry these third parties would defend Autodesk's right to "free association" in that choice, but those same third parties would happily use force of law to ban Autodesk from doing business with the coal industry if they could.
>> Who is this "we"?
> Somebody who believes they are in the category of being a "good" person. Almost everybody believes they are in this group, not matter what "side" they are on.
This pretense of consensus is one such rhetorical device of the social manipulators.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colo...
The point I’m trying to make is that because these things are complicated, I think that discourse around them is valuable. And “we” - members of a relatively democratic society and citizens of a relatively democratic government - are a part of that discourse, although I suppose we can choose to remove ourselves from it if we want.
As I’m pretty sure that every person has moral beliefs of one kind or another, and politics is a tool for enforcing consensus on human society (even if it’s a negative consensus not do do something - like, not limit speech), thus, on one level or another I think it’s fair to say that every person has a series of moral and political beliefs - an ideology.
So if someone doesn’t want the government to place any restrictions on who can buy what, that is a political ideology they would like to see established in law.
I suppose maybe certain Buddhists or people with a very well developed philosophy of deliberate disengagement from human society may not fit the bill.
But otherwise, I stand by my “we” statement which, I hope it’s now clear, isn’t a rhetorical trick about consensus, unless that consensus is that human beings live in societies and believe things and societies figure out ways to create rules based on some of those beliefs.
For the purposes of the discussion “we” is everyone. Or all US citizens if you prefer to focus on a political entity.
Even total libertarians want to restrict others from restricting them, no?
I don’t think that last bit is a challenging statement. Think about it. I’m pretty sure pretty much everyone believes there should be some sort of law, though there’s disagreement about what laws should be. And any law is ultimately an expression of a political belief. Politics in the sense of society deciding how to regulate itself.
For example, if a company makes nuts and bolts, it is true that they can be used to make bombs or oil rigs, but they are also used to make hairdryers and ovens and many other things. Additionally, nut and bolt manufacturers usually do not sell directly to the end users of their products, they sell through a long supply chain. If a supplier sells nuts and bolts to an oil company or arms manufacturer, that supplier is more responsible than the bolt manufacturer because they are the final step in selling to the business of dispute.
If the company makes nuts and bolts which are only useful for making bombs, then the manufacturer responsibility increases because they know what their product is going to be used for. Basically, if you can answer the question "what is this product going to be used for?" before you distribute it, you inherit responsibility for that use, because you could have chosen not to have distributed it, and therefore prevented that use of the product.
In the case of Autodesk, their products have a wide variety of uses, but they supply directly to their customers, so they know who they are selling to and therefore what each particular license will be used for, and therefore they incur some responsibility.
For the consumer not to be impacted, the critical step would be for the actual cost of "green" energy to go down. This is done by allowing coal and "green" energy to compete in a relatively unregulated manner[2].
[1]Scare quotes are in place to remind people that we are using a binary label to describe the ecological impact of an energy source, when in fact that ecological impact would be better described in scalar or vector terms.
[2]yes, I know the energy sector is heavily regulated.
Yeah, why not? If you're a hammer manufacturer, then you should absolutely concern yourself with whether or not you're dealing business with ethical consumers.
I think if you commit yourself to your ideal, you're either going to end up being complicit in some really nasty stuff, or end up drawing a very arbitrary "line" where you stop being apolitical.
> concern yourself with whether or not you're dealing
> business with ethical consumers.
What if their idea of ethics doesn't align with your idea of ethics? What if all left/right wing people are banned from using a tool? Or some other arbitrary internal measure of ethics? You're only willing to follow along with this line of thinking whilst it aligns with your interpretation of ethics.
> [..] you're either going to end up being complicit in some
> really nasty stuff, or end up drawing a very arbitrary
> "line" where you stop being apolitical.
Being neutral doesn't make you complicit. The moment you take action (for either good or bad purposes), then you become complicit.
This is an epic false equivalence that tries to suggest everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice. That's obvious nonsense. People who are good asking people who are bad to stop what they're doing is quite reasonable, especially on an objectively measurable topic like the environmental impact of mining.
Honestly, the suggestion that software shouldn't be treated as a political issue is something I never thought I'd see being argued in a relatively intelligent and enlightened community like HN. Software runs the world. It's obviously political. From governments embargo'ing the sale of strong encryption to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from being used to design nuclear weapons how could you possibly imagine software as "just a tool"? Of course it isn't.
> This is an epic false equivalence that tries to suggest everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice. That's obvious nonsense.
That's obvious nonsense. Where does GP suggest that everyone an equal impact or an equal voice? Nowhere. What is wrong with asking people to follow the same maximes they are requesting others to follow? Don't we all expect the police to uphold and follow the law exactly because they ask others do the same.
No, it's just that your definition of "intelligent enlightenment" is bring drown every aspect of life in politics.
I'm so fucking sick of this garbage, please fuck off.
If someone really, really wants to treat their software as political and restrict how their software can be used, that's their right, I don't like it but that's permissible - however, if someone (like Autodesk in this example) wants to treat their software as an apolitical tool that's free to use for any purpose, good or bad, by all people, good or bad, then that is also their right, absolutely morally permissible and to my mind morally preferrable to trying to politicize the tool and trying to limit its use.
> everyone has an equal impact and an equal voice.
The message "improve yourself before improving others" is really such a controversial thought? Winning hearts and minds is really the most effective method for making large impactful social changes.
Idealistically, equality across the board. But various social dynamics mean that yes, some people do have more social influence than others. But I'm not entirely sure what your point is here...
> People who are good asking people who are bad to stop what
> they're doing is quite reasonable, especially on an
> objectively measurable topic like the environmental impact
> of mining.
I think where this generally breaks down is that Autodesk is not "good" or "bad", it should be (and is acting like) a neutral body. The people within it are political, the activist is political, you're political, I'm political, but Autodesk itself is not. We shouldn't want companies to become political, the company's best interests (generally to maximize profit) does not align with those of the average person.
As political entities we can influence politics, where regulation could prevent mining that destroys the environment. In terms of efficiency, rather than convincing * every * commercial 3D tool to drop support for them and then somehow stop them using open source tools or developing their own, this method seems better. It also allows for an open discussion in the public sphere, rather than bypassing the democratic process.
> Honestly, the suggestion that software shouldn't be
> treated as a political issue is something I never thought
> I'd see being argued in a relatively intelligent and
> enlightened community like HN.
Now you have. I do like the way that an argument that opposes your own must be unintelligent and unenlightened. I remember a time when diversity of opinion was celebrated.
> Software runs the world. It's obviously political.
I'll remember to ask my smart-bulb what it thinks of Trump (/s). It's not obvious at all that software (or the company selling it) is political. I think there are very good arguments for companies not to be political.
> From governments embargo'ing the sale of strong encryption
The politicians obviously act politically.
> to companies EULA'ing their products to stop them from
> being used to design nuclear weapons how could you
> possibly imagine software as "just a tool"?
Companies acting in such a way might be acting politically, or they might have a special version that they sell specifically at a higher price. Companies can act politically, but out of all the licenses I read, very few have a political position on nuclear weapons.
The question is, do you really want every company to take a political stance on everything? Say for example you are an environmental activist, do you want banks to take a political stance supporting oil companies (which they do), and therefore ban you from using their services?
The truth is, what you actually want is companies (software or not) to be political when it aligns with your interests. When it doesn't, then what?
In general I agree, but it's much harder to do that if the other people are already (deceptively) acting like the are a good example.
Perhaps Autodesk should stop supporting car manufacturers who produce internal combustion engines. Perhaps Autodesk should stop support modeling single-use products. Perhaps Autodesk should only support its products being used in countries with "democracy". Perhaps Autodesk should open source all of their software, otherwise Autodesk could be a front for the NSA.
/s
If people want actual change in the world, the correct solution is to try to shame large companies, smaller companies will just take their place. Instead work on technologies that make "unethical" practices obsolete.
As a blanket statement that is false. The purpose is whatever the founder(s) wants. If shares are sold then agreements have to be made which may or may not involve changing the purpose.
There should be a site like this for every corporation and government that is significantly contributing to environmental degradation.
Another interesting read that confirms that none of the policies are actually enforced, and autodesk attempts at "sustainability" is just PR as a smoke screen. CEO is actually misleading customers, employees and investors.
Feel free to ask me any question or precision.
- who owns this page
- what's their proposal for replacing coal
As such, hard pass.
Yes, coal is bad. Yes, we have to replace it. But, at a minimum, be frank about who you are, and what's your end game. Otherwise we can think this is a hit piece by the competition.