Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

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It's not a matter of hatred in the vast majority of the cases, but convenience and profits. In a society where discrimination on the basis of disability is permitted, you may find that as people with disabilities cannot get a taxi or get on an airplane: the disability makes such a service more expensive to run and capitalism and profit maximization eliminates it naturally, no hate needed. Perhaps at some point an enterprising entity decides to break into the market of providing services for people with disabilities, at three times the cost of a normal fare. That would be somewhat better, but still not ideal.

I know this would happen because I moved from a country without anti-discrimination laws to a country with. I encountered more people on wheelchairs in the public during my first month in the latter than the previous 20-something years in the former. In the absence of anti-discrimination laws, all avenues for participation of people with disabilities in the society, even things as simple as going grocery shopping, was all but non-existent. As far as I know it still is like that in the old country. Not because people hate everyone needing a wheelchair: people are reasonably nice and thoughtful in the old country too. But in the absence of laws forcing accommodations, no accommodations are made, with obvious results.

> I moved from a country without anti-discrimination laws to a country with

Maybe the country you moved to was also rich and with a functioning free-market economy?

Capitalism naturally incentivizes entrepreneurs to seek and serve niche markets while doing everything to accept and accommodate potential customers.

In contrast, planned, state-run economies don't care in the slightest and just do the bare minimum required by law. Here is your job to jump through the hoops and manage to give them your money.

> Maybe the country you moved to was also rich and with a functioning free-market economy?

Yes, but the economy of the old country, while poorer, was not exactly state-run. All grocery stores were private businesses created by entrepreneurs. Same with taxis. Yet neither accommodated people with disabilities. It was not like grocery stores were owned by the government and those who ran them were disinterested government employees. They were private businesses who made their own decisions and still they did not accommodate people with disabilities.

I find it strange that people seem to think serving people with disabilities at "three times the price" is reasonable. In this so called free market economy, disabled people likely wouldn't have money to pay for those services because nobody would employ them. It would also likely be much more difficult for them to start their own businesses. There would be essentially no customers, so it wouldn't be a profitable business model.

Regulation is important, regulation literally creates and shapes the markets and allows people to participate in society where they would otherwise be unable to

Everything has a cost. Serving special needs may costs more. A rich society can decide and afford to cover that cost and that is perfectly fine. A developing economy on the other hand, may decide to impose that cost on its businesses, thus unwittingly weakening itself.

Regulation is not free and doesn't magically make our wishes come true. It just moves costs around, hiding them and often preventing the free market from minimizing them.

There is no such thing as a free market without regulation. Governments create money, they regulate it. Without the regulation of how business is conducted and how things are transacted there would be no market, do you realize that?

Who said anything about a complete lack of regulations?

Generally in rich countries, it is not "the society" that covers the cost. For example, government does not give money to grocery stores to create ramps and accessible bathrooms—they fine the stores that don't have them. That's the core of accessibility regulations in rich countries, like ADA in the US.

The difference between rich countries, the government forces the businesses to accommodate people with disabilities at the cost to the business. In poor countries, at least the one I came from, they leave it to the businesses to make that decision themselves. The result is that in rich countries are much more accessible than poor countries.

I don't know if your model (where "the society", which I guess means the government pays for this stuff) is tested in any jurisdiction. If it has, I would appreciate a link to an article about the results. But the model where businesses are forced by regulations to cover the costs works very well, as evidenced by how accessible US is thanks to ADA.

The money always comes from the citizens, no matter who pays. If the government pays - it is taken through increased taxes. If the business pays - it is taken through increased prices. But it's always the people's money - lifted from you and me.

The difference is whether the whole society pays (via taxes or higher overall prices at the till because of the higher cost of doing business) or the person needing the extra service does. In the countries without anti-discrimination laws, those in discriminated groups (like people with disabilities) tend to have a much lower quality of life—they cannot get hired, even if they get hired they earn much less, they cannot access services, even if they can they must pay much more. In the societies that have these sorts of regulations, the whole society bears the extra cost, so everyone's individual burden is lower and manageable.

My point still stands—unless the society via regulations forces businesses to accommodate groups like people with disabilities, those groups will be excluded from society, as they are in my old country.

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