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Comment by naeemtee | Hacker News Reader

> Why would anyone be upset at a company shooting themselves in the foot?

You've stabbed at the hilariously backwards logic behind the "employer discrimination" crowd. If a company choses to discriminate against able-bodied people because of factors irrelevant to their performance, that just means more pickings for their competitors.

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Except the competitors are trying to mimic other successful companies hiring practices, i.e. why we have such a horrible interview situation right now, because everyone is copying the interview processes from everyone else (not literally everyone, but enough that it's an issue).

There's not enough companies out there taking a Moneyball approach out there, and it'll take some major visibility of a booming company that is pretty much preaching how much of a good deal and competitive advantage they have from hiring these people before we might seeing a shift back to it, but the brainwashing of 'younger thinks outside of the box and saves us money!' is strong.

You're completely discounting the possibility that the 'brainwashed' crowd is correct. Are you willing to entertain the idea that you're wrong? What evidence would it take and are you willing to allow a world to exist such that the evidence could be attained? In other words, are you willing to live in a world in which a company might openly state that part of the reason for their success is age discrimination? And could they even acknowledge this publicly without it negatively impacting their success?

This is why I keep trying to point out that moral arguments are fine. You feel age discrimination is unjust. You feel we should legislatively subsidize a demographic which is usually more wealthy, fine. But if you're going to make an economic argument, that it's better for the employer, then you've lost me. Because I don't believe you know that. And even if you did know that it's unclear why we should legislate it.

> are you willing to live in a world in which a company might openly state that part of the reason for their success is age discrimination?

Actually, yes. I'd rather they admit it than achieve pretty much the same effect through loophole means.

> And could they even acknowledge this publicly without it negatively impacting their success?

I'm not sure in which way you mean this. Are you presupposing that they would be successful by discriminating by age, or do you mean that the public shouldn't be free to condemn or boycott them for stating what they did (without taking action against them), or do you just mean without being punished by the government for it? I'm okay with the latter.

I suspect you'll find a correlation between age bias and economic success for businesses. That may be a positive or negative correlation. And that may vary across cultures, industries, etc. Maybe old Mexican women are statistically just as good at nursing as young white women, but maybe old American white men are not.

I'm not presupposing age discrimination would be successful, I'm suggesting that no corporation, economist, or politician would likely be willing to publicly acknowledge that age discrimination is good for business.

The question is, if it could be proven that hospitals who hire more old white American male nurses make less money than hospitals who hire old Mexican female nurses, what differential outcomes would you be willing to accept? Would a company policy discouraging hiring old white men be okay?

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