[sneak]

Yes. Discrimination in hiring with regard to personal viewpoints (ie adult decisions, not built-in traits) is one of the best ways we have to shape society for the better.

As private entities, we have freedom of association - including freedom to shun certain groups. Use it!

[ivell]

Once we start that, we cannot control if it is going to shape the society for the better or worse. Should feminists be prevented from joining a company? How about pro-choice rights activists? And one persons better society would be totally different from the other person's better society.

We should aim to reduce discrimination not encourage it for select causes.

[sneak]

> Should feminists be prevented from joining a company?

Depends on the views of those doing the hiring.

Should you be allowed to not hire racists?

You are literally arguing against freedom of association. We get to choose with whom we do business! That is our right, as well as the status quo today.

I don’t hire smokers or ex cops, as I think they are unintelligent and assholes, respectively.

If it were legal I would never hire a practicing theist or anyone ex-military, as they are signs to me of low intelligence and poor moral character.

You have the right as a free person to discriminate against any non-protected group in service of your company and business.

Someone’s opinions are fair game for evaluation. Think Windows is better than Linux on servers? Keep moving. Think being a culture warrior in the US is a prudent move? Same deal.

All other things being equal, I prioritize people who have lived in multiple countries over people who haven’t. This necessarily means I am discriminating against those who have not.

There are a million attributes we can use to make hiring decisions. It’s not only legal, it’s prudent.

[godelski]

For anyone not understanding this comment and similar ones try this for me: replace "speech" with "encryption" and "Nazis" with "pedos and terrorists".

Here's the thing, authoritarians use abhorrent groups to justify authoritarian laws. It creates a power creep. Even well meaning rulers will push for more autocratic power with the justification that they can do more good with it. But unless you can place strong guarantees that no malicious ruler can come to power, you should evaluate powers as if they are the ones wielding it.

It's the entire concept of Turnkey Tyranny. A thing we are actively watching being exploited in America and across Europe. Because you can't prevent a malicious ruler from gaining power in a free society, but you can greatly limit their ability to do harm. But this can't be done with myopia.

[_heimdall]

Would you say the same for other types of discrimination?

And how can you so clearly differentiate between what is and is not an adult decision vs a built-in trait?

[lenkite]

What is a "built-in trait" ?

[myrmidon]

In my view, this whole stance is completely indefensible, and it frankly shocks me every time I hear this from the progressive side of the political spectrum.

You want to introduce additional discrimination at every workplace in order to get rid of viewpoints you don't agree with?! This is honestly closer to Nazi ideology than the actual Nazi would probably be that you want to discriminate against.

How would you ever prevent policies like this from being leveraged against minorities? How could you ever make sure that you are never gonna be a "Catholic church against Galilei" equivalent?

You do realize that such a policy would've been used like 30 years ago to exclude every pro-LGBT person from hiring, after being used against anti-racial-segregation advocates in the decades before and everyone in favor of womans voting rights well into the 20th century?

If you want some totalitarian society that enforces state-sanctioned viewpoints I would kindly ask you to build your own, preferably as far away as possible, because that stands diametrally opposed to the principles the US was founded on.

[sneak]

Please continue to tell me how my refusing to hire cigarette smokers, functioning alcoholics, Floridians, people who don’t read books, or people who are overtly rabid about US patriotism is the same as embracing Nazi ideology. I’m quite curious about your logic here.

[myrmidon]

I'm not throwing around the Nazi analogy lightly here:

Discrimination against outgroups/dissenters/opposition was basically the central domestic tenet under the Nazi Regime ("Gleichschaltung"), aiming to root out opposition and dissent in any form. A lot of this happened long before setting up extermination camps.

In my view, every person is free to pick who they work or associate with, but hiring discrimination achieves little and opens the door for extremely harmful abuses of this very mechanism.

People are not really gonna stop drinking, smoking or rabidly patrioting just because you won't hire them, they're just gonna hate "your" class of people more, and behave the same way towards groups they don't like.

A society where every progressive person refuses to hire rednecks is also a society where every redneck refuses to hire colored people, immigrants, LGBT people/advocates, feminists.

Not only that, but the majority of society was very obviously wrong about the merit of a lot of viewpoints in the past, and the system you advocate for would have a much harder time admitting/fixing such mistakes in viewpoint valuation (slavery, apartheid, sexism, religious intolerance, racial discrimination, LGBT discrimination just to name a few).

I'm quite happy to continue this discussion, but "what are the similarities of this to Nazi tenets" is the least interesting aspect to me.

[sneak]

I’m not a government and I have no legal authority to build extermination camps. It’s not the same thing.

> A society where every progressive person refuses to hire rednecks is also a society where every redneck refuses to hire colored people, immigrants, LGBT people/advocates, feminists.

Yes, I’d like to live in that world. Freedom of association is a good thing, and a powerful force to shape the world for the better. If idiots want to kneecap their businesses, they should be allowed to.

[dotancohen]

  > ie adult decisions, not built-in traits

What if my neighbor was born gay (can't help it), but I just decide that I want to try gay this week? Is it fine to discriminate against me, but not him? I made an adult choice this week.

[HumanOstrich]

ಠ_ಠ