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Forums - Politics Discussion - Freedom of business

binary solo said:
I prefer to live in a society where freedom does not mean legally enabling bigotry in business practices. So I'm glad I live in a society where that is not allowed under the law.

Individual people are free to be bigotted arseholes in their own private lives, but when it comes to the work place and business environment that shit needs to be left at the door, and if you can't leave that shit at the door the law should make you leave that shit at the door.

A really good point that I have a very hard time to find a rubuttal for.

It would help if you would tell me what you would think of a so called "women quota" which would require a certain percentage of employees in a company to be female. That would inadvertently lead to cases where men who are equally or even better qualified than a female applicant to be rejected because of their gender. All in the name of fighting against discrimination against women.

This is a real scenario that has and is been discussed in Germany.



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The problem is that females and minorities have been oppressed for hundres of years. It's easy to claim that "Boom, equal rights. That's all it takes.  We freed the slaves and allowed women to vote, so they should be just as successful as I am now." but that's dismissing the notion that women and minorities start out from gererally lower societal standings, and it's historically diffcult to move up from one's birth class. Frankly, it's more about classism than gender or race, but such groups have been oppressed are more prominent in lower classes and have had far less education on average.

It does take some nurturing to get them on the same level, and that at times involves compromise and understanding from all sides.



Brii said:

The problem is that females and minorities have been oppressed for hundres of years. It's easy to claim that "Boom, equal rights. That's all it takes.  We freed the slaves and allowed women to vote, so they should be just as successful as I am now." but that's dismissing the notion that women and minorities start out from gererally lower societal standings, and it's historically diffcult to move up from one's birth class. Frankly, it's more about classism than gender or race, but such groups have been oppressed are more prominent in lower classes and have had far less education on average.

It does take some nurturing to get them on the same level, and that at times involves compromise and understanding from all sides.

Good point.

Do you think the policies we put in place for minorities to grow and be more excepted will be removed once they achieve maximum equality or do you think we will never achieve true equality?



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

Now that I think about it it's actually a really good angle. Never thought about it that way.

To make things equal that are unequal we must apply more force to the lower side of the scale, effectively giving it greater attention than the upper side. Or, "You can't make unequal things equal without applying unequal force".

It's beautifully mathematical^^ A language I can understand and get behind at.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

vivster said:
Brii said:

The problem is that females and minorities have been oppressed for hundres of years. It's easy to claim that "Boom, equal rights. That's all it takes.  We freed the slaves and allowed women to vote, so they should be just as successful as I am now." but that's dismissing the notion that women and minorities start out from gererally lower societal standings, and it's historically diffcult to move up from one's birth class. Frankly, it's more about classism than gender or race, but such groups have been oppressed are more prominent in lower classes and have had far less education on average.

It does take some nurturing to get them on the same level, and that at times involves compromise and understanding from all sides.

Good point.

Do you think the policies we put in place for minorities to grow and be more excepted will be removed once they achieve maximum equality or do you think we will never achieve true equality?

I honestly can't say. I'd like to think there will be a time where there don't need to be policies that give a boost to certain groups, but that's also asking for humans in general to be accepting and willing to compromise. Male or female, regardless of race. That might be a tall order. Right now, no one is willing to budge, and that just makes the situation worse. It's like denying a starving man an extra piece of food, even though you're full are at least less hungry. But you also don't want to feel guilt and blame for having been well-fed previously, so I do understand that hesitance and defiance. The blame is thrown around too much, and that makes people less willing to help and more inclined to find reasons that it's not their fault.

What's frightening for me is notions like your previous one (not trying to call you out, just an example!), where someone like me could have been considering distruptive to the dymanic, and therefore not hired, and therefore never bettered myself JUST because I am a woman. It creates a horrible cycle of being denied the ability to improve myself, while also being told it's my gender's fault. What if that happened to a female politician? Politics are primarily male dominated, after all.



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It's similar to many perplexing scenarios. There needs to be a point of exhaustion. Like can a bigot refuse all black people and jews just because? The people backing up this view say that the free market will punish them. Well, in a racist society, who will protect the victims if all the businesses refuse to sell them food or services?

 

Do we trust in society and the free market 100%? And if we don't, to what extend do we control things? Just like the whack jobs who say nobody should need insurance or a license, on one side, because it is government control and the whack jobs who think everything should be free and that the government should be in control of everything.

 

It's about striking a Balance!! A compromise. Unfortunately, it seems the inhabitants of todays world are too selfish to be able to compromise. We are watching the history of the downfall of man in all his/her selfishness. It has to be their way, 100%. Well, see the problem is, that then one person in the fight has to go away forever, don't they? Thus, war. So much war and violence.



vivster said:

Now that I think about it it's actually a really good angle. Never thought about it that way.

To make things equal that are unequal we must apply more force to the lower side of the scale, effectively giving it greater attention than the upper side. Or, "You can't make unequal things equal without applying unequal force".

It's beautifully mathematical^^ A language I can understand and get behind at.


That's a really good way to put it! Considering what I do for a living, I should think of better math analogies, but all of my analogies end up being about food for some reason...



gatito said:
You're not really likening putting a shirt on to changing your sexuality, could you start being attracted to men if you were asked to?

And what if I opened a business and told black people, jews and asians to stay away from it? You have the right to be a bigot and have a closed mind but not to discriminate as far as I'm concerned.


Actually, you do have the right to do whatever you want with your business, including the right to choose for what people you want to provide your service for



business should be able to refuse service to who ever that way its there business. that said they should be prepared for the backlash they will get for it. also i think people sending death threats to the businesses that do refuse service to certain people are also in wrong.



vivster said:

The same goes hand in hand with employment. Why would I as a business owner not have the right to decide who I employ? Who says I have to employ gays or women or handicapped people? Since when is getting employment a right?

Tell that to the US government. I've seen unqualified people keep their position to maintain quotas.



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