Comment by azernik | Hacker News Reader

Comment by azernik | Hacker News Reader

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> It seems we ought to either believe companies are legally required to provide their service to all comers or they're not.

This is a false dichotomy. The law doesn't see "all comers" as equal; specifically, there are what's called "protected classes" in United States civil rights law. Businesses (and individuals while conducting certain kinds of business) are not allowed to discriminate on certain bases (e.g. race, religion, veteran status), but they are allowed to discriminate on others.

The issue where the wedding bakers' case was interesting was that it pit two values against each other - in one sense it was discrimination against a protected class (sexual orientation can be a protected class, depending on state law and interpretation of federal law), and in another it was compelling speech (again, depending on your interpretation of "speech") that had religious implications.

Reddit, on the other hand, is not acting against a protected class by banning e.g. /r/fatpeoplehate, /r/whiterights, or /r/incels. If the managements' ethics or customer backlash prompts them to, they can ban away. In some cases, if speech might be illegal in some ways (e.g. incitement to violence, harassment, or copyright infringement (yes, the fact that that is on the list is a bit ridiculous)) they are legally obligated to remove it.

> The law doesn't see "all comers" as equal

AlexB138 was asking whether are laws are ethical, not whether the laws were legal. Describing the laws in more detail doesn't really resolve the tension.

In other words, why are some classes protected while others aren't? Is there a principle that we should be applying impartially (as in Rawlsian justice)?

"why are some classes protected while others aren't?"

Let's be frank, a lot of the times, the idea of "protected classes" arises from the problems incurred by NOT protecting them. If something will cause problems in society, I think governments will tend to consider that thing with a great deal of care and caution. That said, your point is still well taken. We can see the problems that, for instance, having slavery caused in terms of bloodshed. It's more difficult to see the problems caused by, taking the original example, not making wedding cakes for the LGBTQ community?

So those laws are, at times, UNQUESTIONABLY ethical. I think it would be difficult to argue against the ethical foundation of the idea that in some cases, (again, slavery, Jim Crow, etc), protected class status is pretty good policy. (Certainly preferable to slavery, Jim Crow, etc.) The questions arise more when the stakes don't seem quite as high to the average person. (Taking from AlexB138's comment, the example of wedding cakes for instance.)

Maybe "protected class" is simply an idea that developed via "scope creep" over time? It starts out with everyone, quite rightly, saying "we're going to enshrine the rights of enslaved people into the Constitution so they can never again be assailed or threatened." But it develops over time into, "Well, you did it for blacks or women or whatever. So why not for nazis and pedophiles?" What you need to realize though, is that the average person, myself included, is going to think that is an extremely silly argument. Blacks and women, are not the same as nazis and pedophiles. Even if it's simply for the sake of making your argument, people will have a hard time with that equivalence being drawn.

I'm not saying you're wrong.

But I prefer to think of it as who is a protected class reflects who has the political power to make protected classes.

It's a model that generalizes well, even back to when Jim Crow laws decided who was protected. And I expect it will continue to reflect the changing conditions of future society.

I do think that equivalence is useful for the sake of argument. But it's useful because it forces people to think about why those categories should be treated differently, not because they should be treated the same.

I think a class gets protected when it's powerful enough to have popular support to demand that. The examples of Nazis and peadophiles show that it's not really a fundamental principal - Nazism is an ideology, much like a religion so shouldn't it get the same protection as religions? Peadophilia is a sexuality so shouldn't it be protected just like any other. Maybe it already is?

Well maybe religions should receive the same protections as Nazism, which is to say, not many beyond those which are provided for free expression in general.

Pedophilia is a special case versus other sexualities because pedophilic sex acts are criminal acts. Sure you can argue that all laws ultimately reflect common societal values which do change, but the justification for criminalizing pedophilia has some awfully deep roots -- namely in the idea that minors are incapable of certain types of consent, rendering pedophilia a form of assault.

Back in the day, one of the reasons people didn't like gay men was because they might molest their children. Eventually people realized that not all gays are child molesters, and now that association is gone. But the same misjudgment still exists, only it's been concentrated on an even narrower minority - peadophiles. I would expect the vast majority have never molested a child because it's such a difficult, risky, and cruel thing to do. Your immediate association of attraction to children with abuse of children is common but also a bigoted stereotype. We hardly know anything about peadophiles because the only ones who are known are the criminals. Nobody else can admit to such a preference without being persecuted. I think these are people who are still in need of legal protection but they haven't managed to achieve something like a gay rights movement to persuade people to stop hating them.

I do think describing (American) law in more detail here did help resolve some tension, because it clarified an alternative between absolute tolerance and absolute prejudice.

I don't see why protected classes aren't an impartial standard? Admittedly, the inclusion of a particular class into the set of protected classes is perhaps a bit arbitrary, but it has the advantage of being simple while also addressing the common and egregious cases of injustice fairly well.

I fail to see the connection to Rawls, aside from an interest in "impartiality".

> I don't see why protected classes aren't an impartial standard? Admittedly, the inclusion of a particular class into the set of protected classes is perhaps a bit arbitrary, but it has the advantage of being simple while also addressing the common and egregious cases of injustice fairly well.

You're begging the question there. Unless there's an impartial standard for what constitutes a protected class, they're no more impartial than saying that people called Dave are allowed to break the law.

> In other words, why are some classes protected while others aren't?

Protected classes tend to be things about themselves that people either can't change (race, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family status, disability) or that it would be unconstitutional to force them to change (religion) and that people have been discriminated against on the basis of in the past.

I often wonder why religion is protectes, whereas political opinion isn’t... after all, both are opinions, often concerning the same subjects, and the difference is mainly nominal.

Would James Damore be spared if he claimed not that he thinks that women are whatever, but that he believes so?!

I think the answer here is that religion was much more fundamental to American identities in 1776 than it is today. In US history and still today in other countries there are lots of examples of people being violently persecuted for believing in a certain religion, much fewer for holding a political opinion.

You could make an argument that in the US people of different religions get along better than they used to and as a result religion no longer requires the Constitutional protections it currently enjoys. I would respond that as a society we probably have bigger fish to fry.

At that point in history, two wars fought over religion, the 30 Year's War and the French Wars of Religion were the first and third deadliest wars in European history (the Napoleonic Wars were second). They hardly could have avoided having their political thinking shaped by that.

Whether a god exists isn't something one can change either.

Sure, we can force people to at least act like they believe in a god (or not). But is it tyrannical to do so? Plausibly, yes.

That's only roughly true. Many missing classes exist Eg hair color (gingers are often mistreated), beauty (ugly people are discriminated against in hiring), height, intelligence.

Hair color is changeable. And society hasn't felt that ginger mistreatment has yet become an issue to tackle. There's no major organization lobbying for the rights of redheads (AFAIK). Maybe it's a problem but it sounds like it's isolated and not systemic - apologies if I'm minimizing the suffering of someone who's redheaded and has suffered.

Physical fitness, good hygiene, and dressing well can take most people within a standard deviation of being considered attractive. And in any case "beauty" is far more subjective than race or national origin.

Height is a trickier one but outside of discrimination against people with dwarfism (disability) I'm not sure there's been a pervasive, ongoing, systemic discrimination against tall people or short people. Correct me if I'm wrong about that. I've read occasional research studies about tall people getting more leadership jobs, but I don't know how rigorous those are.

Intelligence - hiring is about capability to do the job, not "intelligence" whatever that means. Employers can use whatever means they want to judge ability with the following conditions:

"...it is unlawful to use a test or selection procedure that creates adverse impact, unless justified. Adverse impact occurs when there is a substantially different rate of selection in hiring, promotion, or other employment decisions that work to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex, or ethnic group."

If an adverse impact occurs the employer can only continue to use that selection procedure

"...if the procedure is job-related and valid for selecting better workers, and there is no equally effective procedure available that has less adverse impact."[1]

That second one is (I believe) what makes it legal to put out casting notices asking for actors of a specific sex, age range, or sometimes race. But if an employer can't show that an IQ or aptitude test is job-related, and the test is found to have a disproportionate adverse impact, it can't be used.

1. https://www.onetcenter.org/dl_files/empTestAsse.pdf

I think understanding the logic of the law itself makes clear the ethical considerations in play when it was drafted. The general principle is, indeed, to allow businesses to make decisions about who they want to serve and how; but in view of the injustice and negative social effects springing from certain types of discrimination (particularly over race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation) the state decided to protect certain classes of people and expression from private businesses' power to decide whether to serve them.

minorities are protected because a simple majority suffices to oppress them. I think the abstract solution is probably more along the lines of exchanging simple majorities for near unanimous agreements.

Sure when certain classes aren’t protected, other classes roadhaul them and keep them from integrating into schools and neighborhoods? From the end of slavery through Jim Crow, until the civil rights movement there was a big experiment of not protecting anyone, and it failed. Even after you got explicit redlining, and now redlining through other means.

It’s not as though there’s a lack of data for outcomes here, and it’s weighed against slippery slope fallacies and “what if’s.”

>This is a false dichotomy.

That's not right. What you said about US law and protected classes is correct, but just because something is made law does not mean people should believe it or not. Gay marriage was illegal: people questioned that law and now it is being changed in many places. The user you replied to is not necessarily wrong nor making false statements; they just disagree with the status quo you described.

>The law doesn't see "all comers" as equal; specifically, there are what's called "protected classes" in United States civil rights law.

This is the real false dichotomy, and why civil rights law as written is total garbage. Creating "protected groups", which by definition are artificially defined and socially polarizing gives certain people more rights than others. This is incredibly counterproductive and entirely wrongheaded. Those who argue that the existance of "protected classes" in law are a rationale for discrimination, rather than defending the logic and morality of "protected classes" themselves are missing the point.

Virtually all reasonable, fair-minded people want a society where everyone is equal and everyone enjoys the same civil liberties. Its irrelevant that various Civil Rights Acts were intended to protect "vulnerable" groups - intentions never matter. What matters are the actual, tangible results of the law. Ignoring this fact and pretending that intentions are what matters is what leads us to where we are today. The truth is that it wouldn't be difficult to word a Civil Rights Act that used neutral language to prevent the violation of anyone's civil rights, by any party, for any reason. This has already been done, most recently in Iceland. The people of Iceland were concerned about the continuing wage gap between men and woman, and so they passed a law that mandated equal pay for all people working the same jobs. They didn't slice and dice the population into artificially created catagories, or specify anything about men, women, "theys", or 25 different genders and races. They simply said that a company has to pay the same salary for the same job, no matter who the person was.

At the end of the day, we need to move to a place where we all view each other as equals (though not the same). Laws that artificially divide us and codify those divisions into law will just continue to ensure that we never move toward a society where this is the case.

   Virtually all reasonable, fair-minded people 
   want a society where everyone is equal

I have never met a reasonable, fair-minded person who wanted a society where everyone is equal. Let me quote [1]:

"[W]ith the possible exception of Barbeuf (1796), no prominent author or movement has demanded strict equality. Since egalitarianism has come to be widely associated with the demand for economic equality, and this in turn with communistic or socialistic ideas, it is important to stress that neither communism nor socialism [...] calls for absolute economic equality."

The most famous 20th century defender of equality has been Pol Pot who justified his crimes by his wish to create the "perfectly equal state".

I refer once again to the article [1] for an overview of the problems with making the concept of equality precise, beyond populism. I suggest reading equality of a narrative device, intended for drastic simplification that appeals to the masses. Comparable narrative simplifications are for example concepts like god, last judgement, Karma etc in the religions. They are extreme simplifications of complex social processes.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/

Equal in the eyes of the law - possessing the same legal rights and civil liberties. This is literally the opposite of a state seeking "equal outcomes".

I believe a lot of this disconnect is between people who view equality as equality of opportunity and those who believe that equality is actually the equality of outcome.

I stronly recommend the article Equality [1] in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It's a great overview article that maps out the different approaches to equality, how they are incompatible with each other, and gives great links for further reading.

It's not long, maybe 15 minutes, and worth pondering deeply, and repeatedly.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/

This dichotomy gets brought up a lot, but if you start thinking about the details here, the distinction isn't as clear as people make out.

If everyone were given equal opportunity to achieve good outcomes for themselves, the only way we could end up with inequality of outcomes is if people choose to have worse outcomes than others. But why would anyone ever choose bad outcomes?

People try to explain this by saying some people are "lazy" or "impulsive" and thus make suboptimal choices, but does this really make sense? If a significant portion of society is consistently making suboptimal choices, are there societal changes we could make to convince more people to make better choices?

If we think there are societal changes we could make that lead more people to make better choices, then can we really say those people had "equal opportunity" to make those choices before the change?

And if we think there aren't any societal changes we could make that lead people to better choices, then what we are saying is that there is inevitably some portion of people who will not achieve good outcomes within our system. And if that's true, is it really a good system for humanity as it exists?

> But why would anyone ever choose bad outcomes?

Because what they want doesn't correlate with what's in demand at that point in time?

I mean, someone might want to study English Literature at degree level, then find a job based on those skills. However, if those skills weren't in demand at that point (because everyone wanted people with STEM degrees or programmers or what not), then their outcome would likely be worse than someone who studied computer science.

Did both of these people have equal opportunities? Sure, they could have both gone into one field or another (assuming a theoretical situation where their intelligence was roughly equal and the degrees cost about the same). But they didn't, and their outcomes weren't equal. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and one choice wasn't necessarily 'suboptimal' either.

And how about a few others?

Someone going to one city over another is a choice, and the consequences could be very different based on that choice. That doesn't mean there necesarily wasn't equality of opportunity.

Same for things like what job you choose (assuming they're 'equal' on a technical level), who your friends are, what hobbies you have, etc. You can probably think of thousands of examples where people are making choices that lead to inequal outcomes, simply because either the market demand is different, attitudes are different or random factors in the world are different between them.

Choices don't necessarily have to be 'suboptimal' to have different outcomes.

>But they didn't, and their outcomes weren't equal. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and one choice wasn't necessarily 'suboptimal' either.

It's easy to say their unequal outcomes are "not necessarily a bad thing" when you're a STEM graduate living in San Francisco on a $200k, not quite so reassuring when you're an English Lit graduate struggling to make a living as a barista.

And when you look at that massive difference in outcomes and say "well you chose skills that aren't in demand" then what you are saying is "you made the wrong choice if you wanted a good life".

EDIT: Or alternatively, to finish the analogy, you're saying "some people just inevitably want to study English Lit even though our society doesn't value it, guess it sucks to be them!".

So what's the alternative? The government sets wages across all industries to be exactly the same? That doesn't feel too meritocratic...

But hey, if you need another few, what if:

You have two jobs to choose from, both make you happy and both pay the same. The outcome won't be identical in both cases, since you'll meet different people, work in a different location and do different work.

Or how about the obvious extreme between a job that pays well and nothing? Let's assume everything ends up on basic income and that works out. Fair enough.

But now assume one of those people wants to become an entrepreneur and sets up a startup that ends up becoming a billion dollar corporation while the other one sits at home and watches Netflix all day.

Their opportunities may be the same, but the outcomes won't be. Is that a bad thing? I doubt many people would say it is, especially given how both have enough to live on and both are enjoying their life doing what they want to do.

Or heck, how about another example? Imagine two people are looking for a romantic partner at the same time. They may have the same opportunities (in terms of access to the other gender, wealth, location, etc) but simply by genetics (aka one potentially being more attractive than the other) or interests (more attractive people from one gender might have one interest and not another) they won't have equal outcomes.

You will never get 'equality of outcome', simply because a system that aims for that would be ridiculously unfair, completely non market based and likely verging on a dystopia.

Firstly, I'm talking about big ticket economic injustice here. I'm not interested in small detail differences, and I'm definitely not talking about relationships (and honestly I find it kind distasteful to talk about them in such a commodified way).

My argument is not equality of outcome is better, but that the dichotomy is not that coherent. If people truly have equal opportunity to choose good outcomes they will do so.

If they do not, they are either being influenced by society towards bad outcomes, in which case we should consider changing society, or they are influenced by innate aspects of themselves towards bad outcomes, in which case our society is structured in a way that privileges certain innate traits.

>That doesn't feel too meritocratic...

Well honestly, I'm not as sold on the idea of "meritocracy" as most people here. I think the idea that some people "deserve" worse lives than others is pretty distasteful.

When people say different outcomes are necessary to motivate people and produce better outcomes overall, I can at least understand that argument. I don't personally agree: I think in reality most people are far more motivated by a sense of purpose and achievement than material wealth (beyond essentials). But the argument does at least have the goal of producing the best outcomes.

But when people start to elevate this inequality to morality, and say that "inequality is good" and that some people "deserve" worse lives because they have less "merit", I think that framing discards the goal of achieving the best outcomes, and I find that misguided and self-serving at best, and evil at worst.

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