Re: This is why a free society is evil. [Re: This is why HTML email is evil.]
At 9:40 AM -0500 12/15/00, auto58194@hushmail.com 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!
Depends on your definition of a free society, free economy. In my definition, free society, free economy property holders are free to use the power derived from their property in order to protect their property and also to advance their own agenda.
I don't know if your example involved a claim the Personnel Dept. bimbo was acting as an agent of the company's property holders or not, but that's just the advancing agenda situation.
The reason the company now prohibits all sorts of activities, and the reason the Personnel Commissar is inspecting offices, is because of _externalities_ like lawsuits, harassment charges, etc. In a free society, these externalities would vanish.
I suspect you'd be happier if property holders didn't hire people prone to making decisions advancing their own individual agendas. Unfortunately, it's hard to find perfect people and it's still the decision of the property holder to hire them and allow them to make decisions without supervision.
You seem to fundammentally misunderstand the situation. The reason the Personnel Commissar is ordering sensitivity training, workshops, and is requiring that posters of Brittny Spears be removed from office walls is because government and lawyers have made companies liable in various ways for "discriminatory" or "sexist" or suchlike behaviors. One of my fellow engineers at Intel had a large poster of the famous early 80s porn star, "Seka," on his walls--she was, in this poster, clothed, albeit skimpily. Some of the secretaries clucked, and retaliated by putting up Chippendales calendars, including full frontal nudity. Would such things be tolerated today? Nope. And not because of the personal choices of a particluarl Personnel bimbo. Nope, the fear is of lawsuits. This was my point about a free society.
Even so, a property holder is equally free to protect their property by deciding that firing an individual accused of an action is less of a cost than the legal actions and/or bad press that might otherwise result. Firing actions don't have to be rational and property owners are free to be gutless.
You're really missing the point, aren't you? Go back and think about the issues more deeply. --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
On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Tim May wrote:
The reason the company now prohibits all sorts of activities, and the reason the Personnel Commissar is inspecting offices, is because of _externalities_ like lawsuits, harassment charges, etc. In a free society, these externalities would vanish.
Nope, the fear is of lawsuits.
Do you posit that people should not be free to file lawsuits? Why do you regard harassment charges as external? Basically the goal of a business owner is to have people capable of both producing and working together. If you have two workers who are both productive but who can't work together (for example, one guy who makes dirty jokes and sends porn movies around, and one woman who takes mighty offense and brings charges against anyone who acts like that) you have to decide which one to get rid of. As more and more women are in the workforce, the possible cost in productivity from such obnoxious behavior rises; If the company is allowing the guy to be offensive on company time or using company email accounts, they wind up offending a large part of their workforce. They stand to lose a lot of other productive employees by keeping one productive jerk on board. And this is a completely separate issue from the legal liability. The legal liability, again, is not an externality: The company has to allow its resources to be used in this way in order to become liable. The company could, to be fair, refuse to allow its resources to be used to file the suits -- but that could not stop the suits from being filed on personal time, any more than refusing to allow company resources to be used to spread porn can stop a jerk from spreading porn on personal time.
the Personnel Commissar is ordering sensitivity training, workshops, and is requiring that posters of Brittny Spears be removed from office walls is because government and lawyers have made companies liable in various ways for "discriminatory" or "sexist" or suchlike behaviors.
The personnel commissar is ordering sensitivity training, workshops, etc, specifically to get rid of troublemakers, keep the workplace running smoothly, and enhance the bottom line. When employees won't work smoothly together, the company suffers. If the company allows its stuff to be used for obnoxious behavior, the company becomes liable for obnoxious behavior. These are not externalities, these are just reflections of having a more diverse workforce. Someone cracking "honky" jokes doesn't cause much of a problem in an all-black workplace. But if half your workforce is white, One guy cracking those same racist jokes can rip the place apart and destroy productivity. As business owner, your choice if you want people being productive again is to get rid of half your workforce or get rid of one guy. The choice is usually easy. We're seeing the same kind of thing as the proportion of women in the workplace continues to rise. Bear
At 11:54 AM -0800 12/15/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Fri, 15 Dec 2000, Tim May wrote:
The reason the company now prohibits all sorts of activities, and the reason the Personnel Commissar is inspecting offices, is because of _externalities_ like lawsuits, harassment charges, etc. In a free society, these externalities would vanish.
Nope, the fear is of lawsuits.
Do you posit that people should not be free to file lawsuits?
Yes, in these cases, they should _NOT_ be able to file lawsuits. -- If an employee doesn't like the calendar that another employee has on his desk, she can talk to others in the company. Maybe they'll have it removed. But she CANNOT use the courts to intervene in a matter of how the company's owners deal with their property. -- and so on, for other examples I could construct. Lawsuits should only be "allowed" when some matter of law is involved.
Why do you regard harassment charges as external? Basically the goal of a business owner is to have people capable of both producing and working together. If you have two workers who are both productive but who can't work together (for example, one guy who makes dirty jokes and sends porn movies around, and one woman who takes mighty offense and brings charges against anyone who acts like that) you have to decide which one to get rid of.
Sure, one of them may have to go. Such was it 20 years ago, such was it 100 years ago. But the court system and EEOC sorts of offices were not involved until in recent decades. Whether I as a business owner allow "girlie calendars" on the walls of my shop is no business of the State.
As more and more women are in the workforce, the possible cost in productivity from such obnoxious behavior rises; If the company is allowing the guy to be offensive on company time or using company email accounts, they wind up offending a large part of their workforce. They stand to lose a lot of other productive employees by keeping one productive jerk on board.
Such "possible cost in productivity" issues are matters for the business owners to decide upon, not the courts, and not regulatory agencies.
And this is a completely separate issue from the legal liability. The legal liability, again, is not an externality: The company has to allow its resources to be used in this way in order to become liable. The company could, to be fair, refuse to allow its resources to be used to file the suits -- but that could not stop the suits from being filed on personal time, any more than refusing to allow company resources to be used to spread porn can stop a jerk from spreading porn on personal time.
I give up. Reading your stuff here makes me realize why it is hopeless to argue with those infected with legalitus. You will make a fine lawyer. Meanwhile, I have decided life is too short to waste it by reading your legalisms, so I am must put you in my filter file. --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
participants (2)
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Ray Dillinger -
Tim May