This is why a free society is evil. [Re: This is why HTML email is evil.]

[Ray Dillinger]

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