Re: This is why a free society is evil. [Re: This is why HTML email is evil.]
Tim May wrote:
In a free society, free economy, then employers and employees are much more flexible. A solid contributor would not be fired for something so trivial as having a porn picture embedded in some minor way. Hell, a solid contributor probably wouldn't be fired even for sending MPEG porn movies to his buddies!
... and Tim goes on to attribute this to lawsuits of types that he asserts wouldn't happen in a free society. It's not that cut and dried - in a free society, solid contributors are often fired for non-economic reasons, and one reason such people are _not_ fired is also fear of lawsuits. Stupidity may be stupid, but it's not rare, and there are lots more opportunities for random decisions to get made. One friend of mine was having lunch with her boss and a male coworker that she got along well with, (back in the 70s) and the boss asked if they were going out. "No, Bob, Charlie and I are both gay"; she and her coworker were both fired that week. It wouldn't happen today, at least here in San Francisco, partly because of changing attitudes in society (or at least because people got used to it), and partly because the boss would worry about losing other productive workers or customers, but also because the boss would get sued or harassed by _some_ city or state agency whose job is harassing businesses. But there's much of the country where it could happen. An employer might also be concerned about the effects of a hostile atmosphere on the productivity of other employees, not just the lawsuitishness of those employees - in a free society you have more flexibility to make decisions about how to handle situations. Sometimes companies don't deal with personnel-relationships problems until hit on the head with a two-by-four made of compressed lawyers. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
At 6:26 PM -0800 12/15/00, Bill Stewart wrote:
Tim May wrote:
In a free society, free economy, then employers and employees are much more flexible. A solid contributor would not be fired for something so trivial as having a porn picture embedded in some minor way. Hell, a solid contributor probably wouldn't be fired even for sending MPEG porn movies to his buddies!
... and Tim goes on to attribute this to lawsuits of types that he asserts wouldn't happen in a free society. It's not that cut and dried - in a free society, solid contributors are often fired for non-economic reasons,
I didn't say that contributors are not fired for non-economic reasons. Maybe they're not putting out for the boss, maybe he doesn't like people who supported Gore. Whatever. Not for anyone but the property owners to deal with.
and one reason such people are _not_ fired is also fear of lawsuits.
Depending on the terms of an employment contract (most have none), employees are employed at will. In a free society, that is.
Stupidity may be stupid, but it's not rare, and there are lots more opportunities for random decisions to get made.
One friend of mine was having lunch with her boss and a male coworker that she got along well with, (back in the 70s) and the boss asked if they were going out. "No, Bob, Charlie and I are both gay"; she and her coworker were both fired that week.
In a free society, so what?
It wouldn't happen today, at least here in San Francisco, partly because of changing attitudes in society (or at least because people got used to it), and partly because the boss would worry about losing other productive workers or customers,
Which is as it should be....
but also because the boss would get sued or harassed by _some_ city or state agency whose job is harassing businesses. But there's much of the country where it could happen.
Because we don't live in a free society. Which was my point. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: 1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
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Tim May