From: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM)
Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 01:08:10 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Freedom Forum report on the State of the First Amendment
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.93.980111010436.141E-100000@shirley>
Message-ID: <4qm4ie46w165w@bwalk.dm.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:
> > Why there is even discussion on this point on a list whose membership is
> > composed mainly of market anarchists is beyond me,
>
> Since when has a crypto anarchist been a market anarchist?

You can't realy be one without the other. You can't be a little bit statist.
You can't be a little bit pregnant.

> > the NAP and rights of
> > association should clearly define the answer to this question, no
> > agression is involved in the act of firing or declining to hire people
> > based on their colour/nationality or any other factor whatsoever.
>
> Ok a for instence,  if I was your boss and I sated that I would fire you
> unless you would go *u-hum* cave exploring with me[1].  Such situations
> have occured in the past, would you support them.

If the sole owner of a business has a female secretary brought into his
office, pulls down his pants, and orders her to kiss his dick; and fires her
for refusing; then he's engaging in behavior that's been viewed for centuries
as one of the occupational hazards for working women and nothing out of the
ordinary. Of course if the "sexual harasser" happens to be governor bill
clinton, then he can do no wrong; if the boss himself works for a corporation
thrn we have an agency problem: she can complain to his boss, or the board of
directors, or the shareholders, that he's harming the business by firing a
valuable employee over his own sexual problems. If the secretary sues him in
the US, she might win some money, turn most of it over to her lawyers, and
never find another job; etc. Wouldn't it be easier to say that if you don't
like your present job for any reason (including your boss making amorous
advances, or too little pay, or the color of the paint on the walls of your
office), you should look for another one?

> To me a person with that amount of power is uneceptable.

You'd rather give his power to the employee or to the state? Don't forget
that this power is balanced by the employee's right to get up and leave.

Would you have preferred the model popular in the medieval europe, where
the boss was forced to care for the worker (peasant) if he got too old/sick to
work, but the worker/peasant couldn't get up and leave just because he felt
like it?  Apparently that involved the boss's right to fuck the peasant and
his family any time he pleased (ever heard of droit de segnor?)

> > the model is ethically right in that it allows businesses
> > and individuals to behave as they please as long as it harms no other
> > person,
>
> So allowing someone to stave to death because thay have the wrong collour
> of skin, or unwilling to get up close and personal with the boss, is not a
> form of harm.

Given the choice, some people indeed would rathe starve to death than work.
However all modern societies provide some sort of marxist safety net: those
who are too sick/old to work, or can't find work, or perhaps unilling to work
are given some of the wealth taken away by the state from those who have it
(mostly from those who do work).  This redistribution of wealth is another
contraversial issue, but it has very little connection to the question of
an employer's right to discrminate on criteria other than bona fide
occpuational qualifications.

Indeed, if all the employers in the world conspired not to hire redheads,
they still wouldn't starve; they'd get welfare (dole, whatever it's called
in ozland), and the more enterprising ones would start businesses of their
own and hire their fellow redheads. As US blacks once did that and were
in much better shape than they are now.

> Immagion there is a truck rolling out of conrol in your direction,
> keeping silent may harm you by preventing you from jumping out of the way,
> but this is not an agressive act, it is a passive one: I have declined to
> warn you.

The inaction that you've described is highly unethical, but hardly illegal.
Likewise racial discrimination is very unthical, and I'd generally try not to
deal with anyone who practices it, but it shouldn't be illegal.

> [1] Not that I am thay way enclined.

We know, you prefer kangaroos.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps