He's specifically talking about outrage over the attitudes, as in how the execs handled this one incident. His entire point is that the attitudes displayed in this e-mail chain are unrelated to the larger wage-fixing scheme.
Of all the discussion forums on the internet, I'd expect HN to be one where it's possible to discuss things rationally and discuss individual aspects of an issue separate from the whole in a reasonable manner, without being called out for failing to express the proper quantity of outrage at every step. Of course, this is completely naive of me as it ends up being proven wrong over and over.
I get where you are coming from and appreciate the desire to keep things rational. But sometimes there is a time and place to get angry about things that are wrong. Everyone has their own issues, and I can see that this particular one wouldn't get everyone fired up, but it certainly flips my bits: they summarily fired and "made a public example" of a person for not following an illegal policy.
I can understand getting upset about this. I personally see it as a sort of "double dipping" on outrage in this case, but that's just a difference of opinion.
My main point here is simply that not getting outraged at the attitudes displayed here is far from giving these companies a pass on what they've done.
Of all the discussion forums on the internet, I'd expect HN to be one where it's possible to discuss things rationally and discuss individual aspects of an issue separate from the whole in a reasonable manner, without being called out for failing to express the proper quantity of outrage at every step. Of course, this is completely naive of me as it ends up being proven wrong over and over.