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Comment by stickfigure | Hacker News Reader

The hiring vs mating issue is perhaps simpler than you picture. US federal discrimination law only applies to companies with more than 15 people. If we regularly married 15+ people at a time, we might very well put legal restrictions on your mating choices. The more personal the decision, the more agency you get.

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wow, interesting. Why does it only apply to companies with more than 15 people? Is it the idea that you're more likely to have family help (and only family being willing to help) when your company (more small business than traditional startup) is this small?

If you are starting a small company you either pick people you already know (whoever those might be) or maybe a few random experts with very specific skillsets. There is no place for you to actively discriminate someone that would have maybe been a better pick, just because you didn't like their skin color or gender... Or if you still do it comes at your own loss.

> if you still [discriminate] it comes at your own loss.

This applies to companies of any size.

A job contract is naturally a relationship between two entities: employee and employer.

Sure, some people in some countries have tried (sometimes successfully) to undermine this principle, but it's akin to forcing people to marry in groups.

While (modern? ideal?) marriage is a peer-to-peer relationship, the relationship between employee and employer is unbalanced, more like pet-owner.

Societal restrictions on contracts are a way to balance this. Virtually all societies have some form of this, outside utopian ultra-liberal hellholes.

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