Practices like these are going to ruin your business the same way being sexist, or racist will. Either you hire the best person for the job, or you’ll be beaten by companies that do.
But businesses have been making bad business decisions to justify nepotism, racism, sexism, any other kind of ism you can imagine since the history of business and I haven't ever heard of competition actually punishing any of them for it. Markets just aren't that efficient. The job that two different people for the same job might do just isn't big enough (or, really, isn't predictable enough) to matter. For every position (yes, even CEO) there are hundreds of thousands of people who would do a roughly indistinguishable (at the time of hiring) job.
It's just that culture and regulation change, so the people running businesses and the laws they have to follow change, so business practices improve.
If everyone is discriminating against you, like Jim Crow South, it doesn't really matter how much you make, because you can't go and find a different job easily.
But if discrimination is limited, and the job market for this particular job and in this particular area favors employees, then it's a self-correcting problem - people will just walk. And if an effective boycott is possible and will take care of it, why go through the slower and more resource constrained court system?
I don't actually particularly care about whether the boycott would work or not, in a sense of preventing the affected company from hiring more people. What I care about is remedying the material harm that is caused to people discriminated against.
If you are looking for a job, and they tell you that you needn't apply because of your race/gender/..., but there are thousands more equivalent jobs in your market that don't have such restrictions, there's no substantial harm to you - you can just pick any of those other jobs. If this particular business can hire enough bigots (or just people who don't care) to keep them running - so what? It still doesn't harm you. So it becomes a matter of principle, and from that perspective, I think freedom of speech and association is a more important principle than private non-discrimination, and so for the lack of measurable harm, the former should be preferred.
It's not just about jobs, too - same principle applies to services. if you have 100 bakers around you that aren't bigoted, and one who is, they cannot cause any meaningful amount of harm to anyone but themselves, by driving customers away.
Of course, if other businesses take note and start discriminating too, at some point, there are enough of them that your ability to get a job or service is hampered - you can't just go elsewhere (not easily, at least). Where and when that happens, discrimination should become illegal - but localized to the affected area and/or industry.
Think of it as anti-monopoly legislation. There are many shady practices that we don't punish businesses for until they are in a market dominant position (either by themselves, or through collusion with other businesses, which sometimes can be implicit). Same principle - shady or not, it shouldn't be prohibited unless it clearly harms someone.
So the kind of analysis that's necessary to determine whether legal anti-discrimination measures are needed or not is rather different from what anti-monopoly watchdogs usually do.
But yes, something like that in principle. A government institution that keeps track of various metrics and accepts individual reports, aggregates them, and determines which fields, industries, locations etc need anti-discrimination enforcement with teeth. Presumably with some sort of due process where this can be challenged etc, but ultimately, the decision should be made on the basis of whether there is discrimination or not, and not on whether it's intentional or not.
Based on the statistics that we have, it's definitely a problem, at least in the tech sector.
You have lost all credibility with that statement.
Further, your statement goes a step further and seeks to normalize and legitimize discrimination. You're saying that it's perfectly ok for this to happen, borderline encouraging it by removing any and all penalties for the action.
The onus is not on me to show harm. The onus is on you to demonstrate why your statement should be taken seriously, and why there is no harm. And simply being able to find another job before you starve to death is NOT evidence that there is no harm.
Discrimination is already legal in many contexts - private individuals can discriminate in most countries, private membershib clubs can discriminate in many places etc. Furthermore, even in areas where discrimination is illegal (e.g. public accommodation), there's generally a very limited list of traits on which it is illegal - race, religion, gender etc. Anything not on that list is not illegal to discriminate on - for example, it is perfectly legal to refuse to serve someone on the basis of their political view in US.
Do you believe that all forms of discrimination should be illegal, including private and personal? Do you realize the implications of that?
And yes, the onus is, in fact, on you to show harm. That's how legal system works in most cases. I don't see why it should work any differently here. Do you really want to people to be able to just claim discrimination on the basis of any random thing, and demand that the other party prove the lack of discrimination?
Do you have any examples of this? Many, if not most, large firms actively seek diversity.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ratings-fumble-for-nfl-surprises...
Perhaps we need to examine the popular conception of what constitutes "sexism". This is right up there with the idea "more blacks = more diverse".