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by misslibby 1164 days ago
> You just follow up on reports. That's what you do.

And then you simply fire the non-liberals involved? Hostile work environment is usually people not getting along. I don't think that is usually easy to solve. You probably have some bias thinking about racists and what not. But even if you just choose to believe all liberal complaints, that enables people to exploit the system. An example would be female execs who seem to always file for "sexism" when they are fired, because why not.

> Point blank: do you think the goal it is trying to achieve is correct but the method is flawed, or do you think the goal (changing, by law, the environment so that an entire demographic of Americans have any hope of having a job without harassment based on unchangeable characteristics they have) is wrong?

I think nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ (with their own money - for tax payer money, different rules are necessary). And I don't trust governments to know better how to run companies than the people owning the companies.

1 comments

> And then you simply fire the non-liberals involved?

This is an odd sentiment and I don't know what to make of it. I'm assuming you don't think only non-liberals can create a hostile work environment, so what do you mean?

> I think nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ (with their own money - for tax payer money, different rules are necessary).

As you've mentioned you don't live in the United states, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you don't know our terrible history with racism. The short version is that we had to pass laws after trying myriad other things because, as a principle of a nation where all men are created equal, it was unacceptable that there were entire regions of the country where one simply could not maintain employment if one had the wrong skin color.

It was an ugly fight. They shut down public education in some places during the fight. In some places blood was drawn during the fight.

But in the end, we the people said no.

And that declaration of "no" is tied to a privilege, not a right: the privilege to own a company, which is a legal construct licensed by the government. No one is owed the right to be a company owner, and if one wants to own a company, there are societal obligations they shoulder. Obeying the Equal Rights Act and the Equal Employment Act are such obligations (again, once the company is big enough!), right alongside "obey zoning laws" and "don't dump toxic waste in a river."

It is fundamentally naive to believe this is a problem the market will solve, because this country already tried solving it with the market.

> This is an odd sentiment and I don't know what to make of it. I'm assuming you don't think only non-liberals can create a hostile work environment, so what do you mean?

You claimed it would be easy to create non-toxic workspaces. So I assume you think you only have to fire the non-liberal people. How else do you imagine things to go down? It is also usually the liberals who complain loudly about allegeddly toxic workplaces (while somehow never creating any workplaces themselves - why are all business owners evil, when there seem to be so many good people around?).

Racism - yes I know you had all sorts of struggles. But I think you are lying when you claim black people could not hold jobs. In the beginning, black people were deported to the US to work. Also I don't think racism is at the core of your country, that is just the modern "Critical Race Theory" bullshit. It is not built around racism. People would rather be left alone.

Here is how you are REALLY wrong, though:

> No one is owed the right to be a company owner

Exactly the opposite: everybody should have that right. That means freedom. Nobody is owed a job, though - who should be obligated to provide that job?

If everybody can be a company owner, so can black people. Are you sure even black company owners would discriminate against black employees? There are many places with predominantly black population in the US, are there really no black owned businesses there?

And you know bloody well that most companies and organisations discriminate in favor of black people these days. You are really overly dramatic in your retelling of the story of racism. The sad thing is that in that way, the real issues are also not being addressed.

> because this country already tried solving it with the market.

I'm sure you misrepresent the actual history very badly here. "The market" would allow black people and also liberals who only love people to create companies and create all the non-toxic work environments they can dream of.

What would be stopping them? Would EVERY bank deny them a credit? Even good people like you, who want to help black people. Aren't there hundreds of millions like you - what would stop you from giving money to black businesses (for example via Kickstarter)?

> But I think you are lying when you claim black people could not hold jobs.

We're done here. You do not know sufficient history to make this conversation worth my time. I can't bridge the gap if we're not working from the same collection of facts, sorry.

> What would be stopping them? Would EVERY bank deny them a credit?

Yes. That's literally what happened. Entire towns and states that would loan zero money to a black person. And we have no evidence that but for the law we wouldn't go right back to that.

> I can't bridge the gap if we're not working from the same collection of facts, sorry.

I wonder what your sources are? For sure black people were able to work throughout history.

> Yes. That's literally what happened. Entire towns and states that would loan zero money to a black person. And we have no evidence that but for the law we wouldn't go right back to that.

Towns and states are not in the business of giving out loans, and nobody is entitled to a loan. But good people like you would have been able to give loans to black people. I don't think your idea of history is accurate at all.

> I wonder what your sources are?

A pretty decent public school education. I'm not going to be able to quote you sources because I didn't write down cites for four years of high school. But like I said, not working from the same collection of facts. I wonder what your sources are, because you're pretty off-the-bead from the commonly-taught knowledge of US history in the US (and seem to be basing a lot of beliefs about how America should run its affairs on that information).

Black people were, obviously, able to work. Sharecropping came in right after slavery left. We're not talking about work in general; we're talking about work in a corporate environment. American firms mostly simply did not hire black people until the law forced them to (especially to skilled-labor jobs). And the evidence that this restriction was primarily based on racial prejudice is overwhelming.

> nobody is entitled to a loan

Hey, you're right! Although as of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, borrowers are entitled to have their skin color ignored when they request a loan.

In addition, nobody is entitled to own a business. They can certainly work for themselves (being a contractor is a thing, gig economy is a thing, short-term work is a thing), but the privilege of incorporating, of creating the legal fiction of a "company," of having one's personal assets and fortunes divorced from the errors and risks of one's corporation... That's a privilege that carries several societal obligations. Nobody is owed that legal protection, especially if they aren't interested in abiding by the law of the land.

I'm operating under the assumption that you don't have an issue with the notion that being a company owner requires one to be responsible for tax law compliance, or EPA toxic-waste compliance, or securities / exchange reporting compliance. Is there something special about equal opportunity compliance that you take issue with? If not, suffice to know the government's right to impose it extends from the same right that imposes EPA law and tax law.

> American firms mostly simply did not hire black people until the law forced them to (especially to skilled-labor jobs). And the evidence that this restriction was primarily based on racial prejudice is overwhelming.

Even if that was the case, which I don't think was universally true, either, it doesn't mean companies should be forced to hire people based on race. It seems more likely black people simply took a longer time to work their way up, as a lot of them started from a "lower" starting point in terms of education and resources.

You shouldn't trust your school education too much, btw. It is obvious that many schools and teachers also push an agenda.

In any case, there were laws mandating segregation (admittedly I only just learned that those Jim Crow laws were actually only in place in the South), which were eventually abandoned. Blaming free markets for that seems completely misguided.

And why do you think of companies as white run businesses that would discriminate against black people? For sure there were also black run businesses, or they gradually emerged once they became legal.

Even today we see a lot of businesses who are racist against white people, and businesses that advertise with being "black owned" - so discrimination based on skin color still seems to be pretty normal and accepted.

> Hey, you're right! Although as of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, borrowers are entitled to have their skin color ignored when they request a loan.

How would that even work? It's a bullshit law that leads to bullshit lawsuits, would be my expectation. And probably also to loans that should not have been handed out, because people fear the lawsuits.

And no, owning a business does not make you exempt from the law. But laws are debatable. Pouring toxic waste into the environment impacts other people. Your hiring decisions do not. It is not nearly in the same category of regulations. People should not be forced to hire people they don't want to hire, period. If you don't like some hiring decisions, you are free to start your own business and hire the people that you think should be hired.