Just goes to show that anti-discrimination laws are a ridiculous imposition of arbitrary social demands onto private contracts. We now have an enormous rule book on how people are allowed to exercise their contracting rights with other consenting adults, when the only rule that should apply is whether the terms are mutually agreed upon.
Please don’t be so reductive. Many of us out here are pretty happy that our employers can no longer fire us on the basis of things like sexuality, religious views, or because we got pregnant.
But that's not the premise. The premise is whether we respect the right of employers to offer people jobs that let them discriminate based on sexuality, religious views, pregnancy, etc, or we do not respect that right, and use the force of law to restrict the right of consenting adults to reach any agreement they want.
In a free society without these anti-discrimination laws, you could still find an employer that offers terms of employment that bars them from doing these things. The question is whether you're willing to tolerate other people choosing differently, and yea I guess some people like limiting other people's choices when they find them ideologically repulsive. I contend that people are only harming their society by rejecting freedom.
You're absolutely right. Any impingement on an employer's right to discriminate is ridiculous.
That's why we were much more free when we had company towns with company stores and company scrip and when attempts to unionize were countered by well-trained private police.
Thousands of people die in the US every day. The most important factor for reducing the death rate is economic development.
Productivity, wages and life expectancy were rising much faster in the late 19th century, when the right to freely contract was not violated, than today, when we have hundreds of thousands of regulations instituted by nanny-states telling us what and we cannot do with other consenting adults.
Occupational licensing alone costs the economy over $184 billion a year by some estimates:
And what is all this centralization and Big Brother control getting us? We have a highly regulated medical system, largely subsidized at the expense of the taxpayer, and captured by highly regulated opioid-manufacturing pharmaceutical giants pushing opioids to the vulnerable, through licensed doctors, and creating the worst opioid epidemic in history:
>>when attempts to unionize were countered by well-trained private police.
No, attempts to blockade company premises were countered by well-trained private police. Do you know what strikers did to "scabs" who crossed to picket lines? Replacement workers needed hired protection, so that their contract freedom wouldn't be violated.
I wrote all that and this is the only response you have to me? I guess you have everything figured out, and there's no need to consider any viewpoints opposed to yours.
>>So, which is it? Are you stupid or evil? Or maybe both?
You're not going to get anywhere being so close-minded and prejudicial.
>>you think that people actually are capable of understanding the terms they are about to agree in any non-trivial case
I think a court of law should decide whether a person provided informed consent to a contract. A jury, with time to deliberate on the specific circumstances of a case, and resorting to a large body of legal precedents that constitutes common law, is better positioned to issue a just decision than any other body that I can think of.
I do not think these matters should be dealt with by populist legislation that makes blanket judgments about a huge number of diverse contracts between a diverse array of private individuals.
