Freedom: Thanks for clearing that up – I read it to be something like “in a municipality in Florida…” – I thought he’d just left out a word. I cannot believe that a government body could get away with doing this.
It’s true that I minimized the importance of the word “private”, but this is a word with many definitions. Not all universities recieve public money. Someone who deals with the government, as you mention, may be a private firm – you clarify this, and in fact it does need clarification.
The fact Tracer knows many businesses are not, in fact, corporations is not all that relevant. I repeat my question: if business can discriminate against employers who smoke in the privacy of their own home for reasons of insurance, why should they not be able to genetically test prospective employees to ensure they aren’t likely to come down with a disease which would be expensive to treat?
I’m not saying the government should legislate my morality. I was responding to a specific question asked of me for that specific instance.
Are you planning on supporting that assertion, or are you just begging the question?
Umm, yeah, it is. Has “hypothetical alternative” become an insult while I wasn’t paying attention? If I were to say that for the Religious Right to promote contraception is a hypothetical alternative to dogmatically insisting on abstinence, would you take that as an indictment against contraception?
Glad to know you’re open to alternative points of view :rolleyes:.
I take it by “ineffective” you mean “doesn’t achieve what I want to happen”?
Weird_AL_Einstein:
Actually, I meant that in the opposite way you took it: not that people have the government follow their morality, but that they have their morality follow the government.
blur
You seemed to be using “OK” in the sense of “morally acceptable”. If you define “morally acceptable” in terms of what the law is, then you’re allowing the government to tell you what your morality is.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by The Ryan *
**
I see your point, and thats not what I was saying.
You do bring up a good question though. The government does try to set up, or at least reflect what is morally acceptable.
Personally, I like to think I have more morals than the government. 
The trouble is sdimbert that you’re giving the market a little more credit for being efficient than it actually is. In particular, we have the possible breakdown of two fundamental tenents:
[li]Consumers have perfect information[/li]
[li]Consumers act rationally.[/li]
Furthermore, assuming that the government’s objective is to achieve the best economic environment for continued growth (admittedly not necessarily an ideal assumption), the government will not have the same objectives as you.
People are not always best placed to evaluate compicated decisions - particularly ones that involve long-term consequences. Decisions involving insurance definitely fall into this category. This is borne in particular out of a lack of the specific education needed to evaluate that decision. They therefore may make sub-optimal decisions.
Sub-optimal decisions result in a sub-optimal allocation of resources and a sub-optimal economy. They introduce inefficiencies and reduce national output. They are a Bad Thing[sup]TM[/sup]
Further, if you don’t have insurance and you screw up, then the result may be something that the government has to pay for. Knowledge of this may entice people to go to the cheaper uninsured practitioners. Insured practitioners can’t compete. The result may be that the government has to foot a far larger bill.
Or if the government doesn’t bail out those who made bad decisions, you end up with a wasteheap of bad decision makers - you’ve developed an underclass that may have far-reaching social implications.
Externalities. They’re a bitch.
Saying that people need to be protected from themselves is one way of putting it, but I feel doesn’t really get to the nub of it. It’s more that the economy itself needs to be protected from sub-optimal decisions made as a result of one of the axioms of efficient markets breaking down.
As for the “why shouldn’t ScumCo employ only men?” scenario - I’d like to point out that my answer to David B was an expression of why he might not have the choice to boycott ScumCo and their ilk in the first place. After all, that was the crux of David’s argument as to why labour laws were unnecessary. If you feel that discrimination on the basis of sex, race etc are acceptable then that’s a whole other issue.
Also, note that ScumCo needn’t find that it is the employment of men that leads them to be able to charge the cheapest prices. It could simply be that they are the biggest guys around and hence have the lowest costs per widget. The owner may be a mysogenist who just thinks that a woman’s place is in the home. They would still be charging the cheapest prices. I note that effective monopolies do exist all over the place and customers don’t always have the choice to boycott those with unpleasant trading practives. Maybe there are three alternatives but one doesn’t employ women, one doesn’t employ black people and the third doesn’t employ left-handers. You can’t always get around people’s prejudices.
The Ryan - we’re patiently trying to explain why such employer rights are ineffective and unworkable in the real world. Please don’t attack Kimstu in that way. Furthermore I find it extremely ironic that you are accusing her of stating things without backing them up(!) whilst at no point backing your own points up. Or, for that matter, even stating a position in the first place. If you’ve got an argument to make, then make it. Don’t just take one line from somebody else’s post and say “that’s what you say” in response.
pan
Why?
You are joking, I hope. Please tell me you’re joking.
What bit of my last post didn’t you understand? Could you at least pull part of it out and say “I don’t get/agree with this bit”? Don’t you get any of it?
“Why?” The explanation is right there, dammit!
Dude…my bad
must’ve been an inadvertent double-click on the scrollbar or something…i didn’t even see it
I hadn’t completed my first cup of coffee yet…mea culpa, and please don’t hurt me too much. Let me, um, catch up on my reading 
Smoking unlike sex, race, or most others listed here is a choice and a addiction. This is a very clear diffrence.
Even if the smoker could refrain from smoking on the job - he would be most likely suffering from withdrawal till he gets his next fix.
I must add that discrimination is not bad - we use this skill everyday to make choices (we select product A over product B, Contractor A over Contractor B, etc.).
Sterotyping is just using knowleage of simularities in groups to help make decisions - that’s not wrong either (that’s why you have a mind).
It is only all the PC thinking that makes it wrong.
I think it’s important too to remember why these laws are currently in place. Governments do not make laws on a whim; they are mindful of the electorate and thus tend to propose laws which they expect to find favour with “all of the people some of the time”, or “some of the people all of the time”. In practice, governments not being psychic, this means that there must be a clear demand for the legislation before it happens. In other words, there was, at some point, a significant sector of the population agitating about discrimanatory hiring practices.
Nevertheless, the market failed to respond to this pressure, possibly because a lot of the people who were angry about discrimination had little economic power (as you might expect from people who can’t get work), possibly because consumers had little information, possibly because the practice was so widespread that it became practically impossible to boycott, possibly because the responsible companies had no direct relationship with the consumer (if a steel company discriminates, how do you avoid using their steel?).
Government is slow moving, but the problems which may have been raised as much as 10 years beforehand still had not been addressed when it enacted legislation to prevent discrimination. The fact that these laws were necessary is evidence that the market-led solution had already failed.
An interesting and well-made point, amrussell
I think you give people, in general, both too much and not enough credit:
A) Too much
Government is people. They frequently respond to situations with what is best for them personally, be it a politically savvy move or something that just makes their everyday life easier. I (and others, I’m sure) can recall instances of spending millions in tax dollars merely because the end of the fiscal year was at hand and we needed to spend our budget down. All in all, I’d say we made some pretty sub-optimal decisions. Your separation of “government” and “the rest of the people” is a flawed argument, in that the two are really no different in their reasoning and methods. One prominent example is GW and his plan for drilling oil. There are two groups of people he has to worry about, from a political POV: oil business, and environmentalists (to generalize). He views it as more politically savvy to please the oil industry than the environmentalist lobby. No doubt Ralph Nader would have a difference of opinion, and we might see different policy had he been elected.
B) Not enough:
What “specific education” is required for individual consumers to make decisions? The decision-makers within government organizations are quite often lacking in specific education, relying on suggestion from others. Those decision makers aren’t any better.
Further, assuming there is such, why do you remove the individuals responsibility for obtaining this education for themselves? Many individuals are fairly bright, indeed they post here 
Those people are the ones who will organize other consumers, just as they are the ones who find followers for their other causes, such as political activists, etc.
Actually, I think this is getting away from the original point, somewhat. But…
In what way do you mean “the government has to pay for” screw-ups? Are you suggesting that a person who suffers a botched surgery will end up on welfare, or a similar situation in which tax dollars are required to support the individual in question, where had there been insurance a malpractice suit could have provided the necessary money to support that person?
I don’t understand why we expect “the government” to be in the business of protecting us from ourselves, of which this scenario is a good example. If I sign a waiver of liability, why should it automatically be assumed that I was unknowingly exploited by a Bad Person[sup]TM[/sup]. Is it not my responsibility to know what I’m getting myself into, to assign accountability to those providing me services?
The “underclass” already exists, and when you do away with the current one, a new underclass will spring forth. A social underclass is relative to the average. Many already perceive themselves or others to be part of the underclass. This has not changed in the all of human history, nor is it likely to change in the future. It’s our nature.
Actually, I heard Ted Kennedy say it best. In a half-heard radio report, I heard that Bush and/or the GOP was supporting a “Patient Bill of Rights” deal that set caps on the amount of money that could be awarded, saying they don’t want to be in the business of making lawyers wealthy. Teddy then said it was atrocious that GW wouldn’t support legislation to protect “the little guy” from big bad greedy HMO’s. First, I want to know who this little guy is that needs so much protection, and why his lawyer needs so much of his settlement (which is presumably why Teddy doesn’t want caps). Also, why do we have this notion that business is designed specifically to exploit said little guy?
You’re not protecting the economy from sub-optimal decisions per my first paragraph. You’re just eliminating one section of bad-decision-makers in favor of another. Every group is going to make sub-optimal decisions.
Every person within the market is partly responsible for it. Hell, purchasing any given product is an economic decision, if a small one. Buying Oscar Meyer hotdogs as opposed to Armor hot dogs is an economic decision, perhaps a sub-optimal one.
When? I mean really, in what circumstances is it actually not possible to engage in a boycott? Maybe there are some, and I just can’t think of them, in which case I may support some kind of legislation.
Indeed, I’m not 100% anti-legislation of any kind. I would support mandatory malpractice insurance for surgeons engaging in “serious” surgery (open-heart as opposed to boob-jobs), by way of example. But I like to keep it to a minimum, and I agree that government is best which governs least.
Yes, but do you need widgets?
Given the scenario and the alternatives you describe, I figure the left-handers will lose out, basically because theirs isn’t currently a popular cause. You can usually get around peoples prejudices if you’re willing to suffer a little inconvenience. The question is, are “left-handers rights” worth the inconvenience of not having widgets? Engage in a boycott, and if enough people agree with you, a widget manufacturer who conforms to your requirements will come along, because you have created the demand. Otherwise, by continuing to purchase these widgets you are just as guilty of oppressing the left-handed as the person who will not hire them.
Kabbes, interesting points.
Beelzebubba, great job of answering them.
Boy oh boy… there be some smart folk’ around here.
Kabbes, you speak, generally, of it being the role of government to protect people from themselves. Or, perhaps more to the point, to protect the rest of us from the dipsticks.
I think that Beelzebubba’s point about there always being someone around to make the wrong decision is a good one. Robert Heinlein wrote (I’m paraphrasing), “The only sin lies in hurting other people. Hurting yourself isn’t sinful; just stupid.” I think that the only conscionable role of government is to stop individuals from hurting one another - any attempt to stop people from hurting themselves is misguided, in the way and doomed to fail.
Heinlein also wrote (again, a paraphrase) that, “The only true capital crime is stupidity.” I see this as a corolary to the above point; in short, we’re all in this together, so play nice. But, don’t expect me to go out of my way to make up for your stupidity.
I think I may have a unique perspective on this issue; I am an employer in the Marketing Research industry. So, I see how the market moves and reacts to social pressue, and I am stuck in the absurd world that employers are forced to live in.
I too have a fairly unique perspective. I’m an insurance actuary and I used to be a pensions actuary. Which means that I have a pretty good idea just how complicated these decisions can be.
These kinds of complex financial decisions are considered beyond most people’s field of expertise. They are therefore open to being bamboozled. This is a particular problem in the pensions/insurance field because the consequences of bad decisions are particularly severe and far reaching. As such, advisors must abide by strict codes and be accountable for their advice and companies must comply with regulations intended to level the playing field of information.
This is just one sector in which government intervention is necessary to “save people from themselves”. Except that the phrase isn’t really accurate and it certainly isn’t fair. People aren’t expected to be an expert in all things. For example, the average qualification period post-degree to become an actuary in the UK is about 7 years. It just isn’t reasonable to expect a layperson to have a sufficient grasp in esoteric pensions issues to evaluate some of the decisions a pensions actuary has to make. However the government wants people to take out pensions. So regulation exists to make sure pension schemes don’t rip people off.
“Stupid” just doesn’t cut it. We can’t all be experts at everything.
pan
ps in retrospect I’m not sure how much this is strictly on topic. But I’ve typed it all out now so I’m bloody well going to post it.
The Ryan replied to me: *“Workplace rights entail the right to have hazardous or unappealing hobbies/practices in your off-hours, including smoking, as long as you are performing your job satisfactorily.”
Are you planning on supporting that assertion […]? *
Why of course, since you asked so nicely! Naturally, it is still a very debatable question exactly what the scope of workplace rights should be, and there are differences among different states and other jurisdictions. I hope, and am probably pretty safe in assuming, that nobody took the above remark to mean that I think there is a uniform legal standard of workplace rights that automatically makes discriminating against smokers illegitimate. Obviously, that’s not so, or this debate wouldn’t even have been started.
But there’s a very good case to be made that the principle of opposing employment discrimination, which is a significant aspect of government regulation at all levels, should apply not only to race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disability, age, and sexual orientation, but other types of employees’ personal beliefs and practices as well. The Illinois Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act that 2nd Law mentioned is an excellent example of this broader application, as are the ACLU’s activities opposing not-for-cause drug testing, as well as their defense of workers fired for off-the-job cross-dressing. In my view (and I apologize if I didn’t make that qualification clear enough earlier, though I think most people got it), the rights that employees should have to workplace privacy definitely prohibit discrimination based on off-the-job activities that don’t affect job performance, and that includes smoking.
*“I completely agree with Xerxes and kabbes that the argument ‘employers should be able to discriminate however they want and consumers should simply counteract that by selective boycotts’ is a hypothetical alternative”
Umm, yeah, it is. Has “hypothetical alternative” become an insult while I wasn’t paying attention?*
No no, the insulting part was “far-fetched libertarian tripe” and “ineffective and unworkable”. Dear me, if people can’t figure out which part of my post is the insult, I must be losing my touch.
*“that’s ineffective and unworkable in the real world.”
I take it by “ineffective” you mean “doesn’t achieve what I want to happen”? *
Nope, I mean that it doesn’t achieve what the people who are advocating it say they want to happen, namely, discouragement of bigotry and discrimination in employment. Other posters have given lucid reasons why this is so. In brief, the anti-discriminatory pressure that could realistically be exerted by consumer boycotts if employers could discriminate at whim is simply nowhere near as effective as the threat of a lawsuit on the grounds of violating anti-discrimination laws. I’m impressed (though not surprised) that David B. is attempting singlehandedly to bring this kind of ethical pressure to bear on employers he disapproves of, but I don’t kid myself that it could usefully take the place of legal redress. I’m aware that this legal redress is indeed often abused, more’s the pity, but that’s not an adequate reason for throwing out the whole system.
After all, do you have time to examine the employment practices of every company you do business with, and every supplier they do business with, to figure out which ones meet your egalitarian standards, and to organize and promote boycotts of the ones that don’t? Do you imagine that most other consumers have that kind of time or ability either? “Ineffective and unworkable” is a mild description of this proposal as a general solution to employment discrimination.
Feel free to continue responding with more wide-eyed libertarian generalities about “smart individuals who are capable of making decisions and taking action for themselves,” if you like, but don’t imagine that it’s an adequate substitute for a convincing argument about consumer pressure vs. legislative clout in the real world. (That goes double for the wide-eyed libertarian generalities about how the government’s decisions are no better than the average individual’s would be. Government bureaucrats do indeed often make stupid, misguided, and/or improperly-influenced decisions, more’s the pity. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the average bureaucrat specializing in a particular area of government regulation is much better informed about that subject than the average consumer, and thus in many ways better qualified to make decisions about it. If you don’t believe that specialized knowledge and training in a subject make one more competent to work with that subject, I’ve got a passage of medieval scientific Sanskrit I’d like you to translate for me.)
Beelzebubba: Is it not my responsibility to know what I’m getting myself into, to assign accountability to those providing me services?
It’s not the responsibility of individuals to manage social policy exclusively by means of their own activities in the private sphere, i.e., as consumers. Nor is it humanly feasible to assume the responsibility of knowing everything about “what you’re getting yourself into” so that you can “assign accountability” to everyone, e.g., to the manufacturer of the farm equipment that was used to harvest the grain to make the cereal that you’re considering buying in your supermarket. As a representative democracy with a constitutional mandate to manage social policy, that’s what we have government for.
sdimbert: *I think that the only conscionable role of government is to stop individuals from hurting one another - any attempt to stop people from hurting themselves is misguided, in the way and doomed to fail. *
Leaving aside the romantic notion that government has no right and ultimately no power to “stop people from hurting themselves” (the evidence doesn’t suggest that licensing drivers and banning drunk driving, for example, are misguided and futile), how do you figure that discrimination against employees on the basis of their private lives isn’t a case of individuals “hurting one another”?
IMHO, the ultimate flaw in the reasoning of those who subscribe to this sort of “Sovereign Employer” theory, where an employer should be perfectly free to discriminate in hiring for any reason whatever, is a confusion between the workplace and the truly private sphere. Private enterprise is definitely not the “public sphere”, i.e., the realm of government action, but it’s also not the same as the “private sphere”, i.e., the realm of personal life where individual rights are sovereign. We regulate lots of things about the workplace that we would not regulate if they were truly in the private sphere.
If you enjoy building birdhouses, for example, you can work on them twenty-two hours a day, seven days a week, with unpleasant chemicals in a poorly ventilated area, for no compensation whatsoever, and it’s none of the government’s business. If you hire an employee to help you, though, you damn well have to conform to existing labor laws about wages and hours and workplace health and safety. Similarly, in your private associations you may discriminate against smokers, cross-dressers, Asians, women, or whoever to your heart’s content, and nobody can make you be friends with them or even smile at them if you don’t like it. In the workplace, however, you don’t have the luxury of choosing your associates according to your own personal whim. Any employer who can’t live with that should simply stay in the real private sphere and not attempt to run a business.
A side issue: How do you proponents of the “Sovereign Employer” theory feel about an employer’s being allowed to discriminate at whim, not just with respect to employees, but with respect to consumers? Should a racist lunch-counter proprietor, for example, be free to refuse to serve black customers? If not, why do you distinguish between the two types of discrimination?
Of course they should! Just like everybody else! Or don’t you believe in equality?
Coupla things:
People hurt themselves when they misuse automobies. They also hurt others. The efforts of the government to prevent them from hurting others are admirable. The attempts to prevent them from hurting themselves are “misguided, in the way and doomed to fail.”
For example, a Drunk Driver is a danger to himself and others. But, if a man drives while under the influence without hurting anyone, he will probably suffer no consequences. This is reasonable. But, when the government decides to stop all drivers heading North on the West Side Highway of Manhattan at 7:30 on a weeknight, this is unreasonable. I know I am confusing issues here, but this is a confusing issue: Someone already posted that, “the best government is the one that governs least.” That’s all I’m saying about Drunk Drivers.
In regards to your second question, how does my discriminating against others hurt me, that goes back to the idea that the marketplace will punish wrong-doers.
I recently read the excellent book, Hotel by fiction master Arthur Hailey (no, not Alex Hailey, Arthur Hailey). Among other things, it deals with a Hotel in New Orleans coming to the realization that not permitting Blacks is bad business. Mind you, this was long after the law required them to rent rooms to Blacks. But it isn’t law or government that forces Hailey’s high-class hotel to allow Blacks; it is market pressure in the form of a large convention threatening to walk-out.
Yes. We do. But we shouldn’t. That’s my point.
And I ask again, why?!? If my employee doesn’t mind working in unhealthy conditions (just as I don’t), why should anyone have the right to tell the two of us what to do?
I predict that such a proprietor will find himself quickly without customers. If not, then the government is wasting our money enforcing policy that the majority of Americans (represented here by uncaring consumers) don’t give a hoot about.
Let’s assume for a minute that the case you describe occured in your hometown and the local law didn’t do anything. Would you leave work to picket the jerk’s store? Would you donate money to a campaign to lobby local government to shut him down?
Most of us wouldn’t, because we can think of better things to do with our time and money. But, the government is happy to spend our money in this way. If we truly believed he was doing wrong, we would drive him out of business through boycott, which, last time I checked, cost a lot less than legislation.
Instead, the government spends our money on laws to prevent him from making such a poor decision - preventing him from hurting himself.
kabbes
What this comes down to is saying that if one person’s actions harm another, the latter can stop the former from performing that action. While at first glance this seems like a tenable moral position, in many situations it leads to a conclusion which I find immoral. For instance, suppose I want to build my own bookcase instead of buying one that the local carpenter has made. Suppose that it takes me 10 hours to build the bookcase, but it would have only taken the carpenter two hours. This is a sub-optimal situation, right? We both would have been better off if I had bought a bookcase the carpenter had built. So does the carpenter have the right to force me to buy the bookcase?
What way?
I wasn’t accusing her of not backing something up. She made a statement that could have been simply a statement of her feelings which was just agreeing with the OP, not arguing in support of it (what I meant by “begging the question”; I couldn’t think of anything more precise). Or a claim to some rational principle (in which case she should back it up). I was trying to find out which it was. From her response below, I gather it was the former. Any sense of “accusation” which you may have perceived was due to a lack of eloquence on my part, not a presence of malice.
If you wish to dispute any of my statements, go ahead, and we can debate those points. A blanket statement that I have not backed my points up is not conducive to real debate. As for my position, I believe that I have made it adequately clear. Is there anything in specific you wish clarified?
As a capitalist, I, when told that people do not have the power to make some change to marketplace, take that as evidence that it is because that change would make the marketplace less efficient. For instance, janitors do not have the power to demand that they be paid $20/hour because paying janitors that much would be inefficient.
If people didn’t know about it, doesn’t that imply that it isn’t very important?
So they had monopolistic-like power? As I said before, I consider that a special case.
If there’s only one steel company, that’s a rehash of the previous point. If there are several, you can insist that the people you buy from not use the steel from the company you disagree with.
Like Kimstu, you are using “failed” in a sense I simply don’t accept. If you think that I care that you think that these solutions “failed”, then you just don’t understand my position. As far as I’m concerned, saying that the free market “failed” because it didn’t result in what you wanted makes as much sense as saying that democracy “failed” because the person you wanted to win lost.
Kimstu
Let’s see. I want 0.25 a gallon gas. The legalization of abortion has not lead to .25 a gallon gas. Since I advocate the legality of abortion, and it not achieved what I want to happen, by your definition it is ineffective and unworkable.
Perhaps you meant to say “I mean that it doesn’t achieve what the people who are advocating it say is its purpose.” If so, could you show me evidence that David B has said that the purpose of legalization of discrimination is to eliminate discrimination? That’s certainly not my position. For me, the purpose of the legalization of discrimination is to make discrimination legal. For you to say that this won’t work makes no sense to me. If we legalize discrimination, how could that possibly not result in discrimination being legal?
All these arguments about how legalizing discrimination would make things “less efficient” are completely irrelevant to me. To me, it is immoral for the government to tell people what to do like this. The fact that it may help the economy doesn’t make it any more moral.
But if you really think that private pressure is impotent, go to a supermarket and try to find a can of tuna that doesn’t have the words “dolphin safe” on it. Or go to a movie theater and try to find an unrated film.
It is also a mild description of using high-octane gas to combat hair loss. However, I am not proposing either.
Huh? Have I ever said anything of the sort?
The issue for me is not simply who is qualified to make a decision, but who has the right to make a decision. Someone who has a PhD in nutrition may be better qualified than me to decide what I should eat, but that doesn’t give him the right to dictate to me what I should eat.
You say this as if a statement of fact somehow translate into a statement of morality. Just because something is done doesn’t mean it’s moral.
Of course! If someone wants to reduce their customer base for absolutely no reason whatsoever, that’s their business. What makes you think that we would think differently of this type of discrimination?
The Ryan, your last post is brilliant.
Correct.
Again, right on target.
Hear, hear!!
Again, and again, your points are solid, reasonable and, above all, common-sensical. One of the most offensive notions of the Modern Era is that government is much too complicated for “regular” citizens to understand. Feh.