Thread by @GeniesLoki

Let me teach you a nonstandard dirty rhetorical trick: People really don't like to admit that they have done something morally bad, so it is *really* useful to argue in such a way that they can cast their behaviour as an honest mistake.

A lot of the time when trying to untangle concepts or explain issues, I ignore the fact that a lot of the behaviour in the relevant space is bad faith. This is me using that trick.

I don't do this unless I think it's plausible that there is also confused usage / honestly mistaken behaviour out there, but by framing mistakes as the main problem rather than ethics, I give people the ability to save face as they mend their ways.

I rarely expect people will mend their ways as a result of this unless they were actively mistaken, but it removes a way to derail the conversation, and gives people who were genuinely mistaken a way to change behaviour. This shifts the norms, removing plausible deniability.

Treating people as having the potential to be better than they are is almost always a good move, and will often cause them to rise to the occasion - sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly.

This doesn't of course apply to landlords (and only applies partly to bosses) because you don't actually have enough power over them to get them to change their behaviour through rhetoric in the first place.