I’m assuming you’re referring to my analogy with protecting the president, rather than my claim “Avoiding the threat in the first place to avoid its costs is a reason to cancel the event”, which seems obvious given the risk that they will follow through on the threat (although you may have stronger reasons in the opposite direction.)
Protecting the president has costs and is avoiding the action of letting the president go unprotected, which you would prefer if there were no threats or risks of threats. How does “Avoiding the action because you know you’ll be threatened until you change course is the same as submitting to the threat” apply to cancelling but not this? I guess you can look at bodyguards as both preventative and retaliatory (they’ll kill attackers), but armoured vehicles seem purely preventative.
EDIT: One possible difference from purely strategic threats is that the people threatening to cancel you (get you fired, ruin your reputation, etc., which you don’t have much control over) might actually value both making and following through on their threats to cancel as good things, rather than see following through as a necessary but unfortunate cost to make their future threats more persuasive. What do they want more, to cancel problematic people (to serve justice and/or signal virtue), or for there to be fewer problematic people? If the former, they may just be looking for appropriate targets to cancel and excuses to cancel them, so you’d mark yourself as a target by appearing problematic to them.
I’m not sure this is that different from protecting the president, though, since some also just value causing harm to the president and the country.
I’m assuming you’re referring to my analogy with protecting the president, rather than my claim “Avoiding the threat in the first place to avoid its costs is a reason to cancel the event”, which seems obvious given the risk that they will follow through on the threat (although you may have stronger reasons in the opposite direction.)
Protecting the president has costs and is avoiding the action of letting the president go unprotected, which you would prefer if there were no threats or risks of threats. How does “Avoiding the action because you know you’ll be threatened until you change course is the same as submitting to the threat” apply to cancelling but not this? I guess you can look at bodyguards as both preventative and retaliatory (they’ll kill attackers), but armoured vehicles seem purely preventative.
EDIT: One possible difference from purely strategic threats is that the people threatening to cancel you (get you fired, ruin your reputation, etc., which you don’t have much control over) might actually value both making and following through on their threats to cancel as good things, rather than see following through as a necessary but unfortunate cost to make their future threats more persuasive. What do they want more, to cancel problematic people (to serve justice and/or signal virtue), or for there to be fewer problematic people? If the former, they may just be looking for appropriate targets to cancel and excuses to cancel them, so you’d mark yourself as a target by appearing problematic to them.
I’m not sure this is that different from protecting the president, though, since some also just value causing harm to the president and the country.