Comment by misslibby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by misslibby | Hacker News Reader

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> This is an odd sentiment and I don't know what to make of it. I'm assuming you don't think only non-liberals can create a hostile work environment, so what do you mean?

You claimed it would be easy to create non-toxic workspaces. So I assume you think you only have to fire the non-liberal people. How else do you imagine things to go down? It is also usually the liberals who complain loudly about allegeddly toxic workplaces (while somehow never creating any workplaces themselves - why are all business owners evil, when there seem to be so many good people around?).

Racism - yes I know you had all sorts of struggles. But I think you are lying when you claim black people could not hold jobs. In the beginning, black people were deported to the US to work. Also I don't think racism is at the core of your country, that is just the modern "Critical Race Theory" bullshit. It is not built around racism. People would rather be left alone.

Here is how you are REALLY wrong, though:

> No one is owed the right to be a company owner

Exactly the opposite: everybody should have that right. That means freedom. Nobody is owed a job, though - who should be obligated to provide that job?

If everybody can be a company owner, so can black people. Are you sure even black company owners would discriminate against black employees? There are many places with predominantly black population in the US, are there really no black owned businesses there?

And you know bloody well that most companies and organisations discriminate in favor of black people these days. You are really overly dramatic in your retelling of the story of racism. The sad thing is that in that way, the real issues are also not being addressed.

> because this country already tried solving it with the market.

I'm sure you misrepresent the actual history very badly here. "The market" would allow black people and also liberals who only love people to create companies and create all the non-toxic work environments they can dream of.

What would be stopping them? Would EVERY bank deny them a credit? Even good people like you, who want to help black people. Aren't there hundreds of millions like you - what would stop you from giving money to black businesses (for example via Kickstarter)?

> But I think you are lying when you claim black people could not hold jobs.

We're done here. You do not know sufficient history to make this conversation worth my time. I can't bridge the gap if we're not working from the same collection of facts, sorry.

> What would be stopping them? Would EVERY bank deny them a credit?

Yes. That's literally what happened. Entire towns and states that would loan zero money to a black person. And we have no evidence that but for the law we wouldn't go right back to that.

> I can't bridge the gap if we're not working from the same collection of facts, sorry.

I wonder what your sources are? For sure black people were able to work throughout history.

> Yes. That's literally what happened. Entire towns and states that would loan zero money to a black person. And we have no evidence that but for the law we wouldn't go right back to that.

Towns and states are not in the business of giving out loans, and nobody is entitled to a loan. But good people like you would have been able to give loans to black people. I don't think your idea of history is accurate at all.

> I wonder what your sources are?

A pretty decent public school education. I'm not going to be able to quote you sources because I didn't write down cites for four years of high school. But like I said, not working from the same collection of facts. I wonder what your sources are, because you're pretty off-the-bead from the commonly-taught knowledge of US history in the US (and seem to be basing a lot of beliefs about how America should run its affairs on that information).

Black people were, obviously, able to work. Sharecropping came in right after slavery left. We're not talking about work in general; we're talking about work in a corporate environment. American firms mostly simply did not hire black people until the law forced them to (especially to skilled-labor jobs). And the evidence that this restriction was primarily based on racial prejudice is overwhelming.

> nobody is entitled to a loan

Hey, you're right! Although as of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, borrowers are entitled to have their skin color ignored when they request a loan.

In addition, nobody is entitled to own a business. They can certainly work for themselves (being a contractor is a thing, gig economy is a thing, short-term work is a thing), but the privilege of incorporating, of creating the legal fiction of a "company," of having one's personal assets and fortunes divorced from the errors and risks of one's corporation... That's a privilege that carries several societal obligations. Nobody is owed that legal protection, especially if they aren't interested in abiding by the law of the land.

I'm operating under the assumption that you don't have an issue with the notion that being a company owner requires one to be responsible for tax law compliance, or EPA toxic-waste compliance, or securities / exchange reporting compliance. Is there something special about equal opportunity compliance that you take issue with? If not, suffice to know the government's right to impose it extends from the same right that imposes EPA law and tax law.

> American firms mostly simply did not hire black people until the law forced them to (especially to skilled-labor jobs). And the evidence that this restriction was primarily based on racial prejudice is overwhelming.

Even if that was the case, which I don't think was universally true, either, it doesn't mean companies should be forced to hire people based on race. It seems more likely black people simply took a longer time to work their way up, as a lot of them started from a "lower" starting point in terms of education and resources.

You shouldn't trust your school education too much, btw. It is obvious that many schools and teachers also push an agenda.

In any case, there were laws mandating segregation (admittedly I only just learned that those Jim Crow laws were actually only in place in the South), which were eventually abandoned. Blaming free markets for that seems completely misguided.

And why do you think of companies as white run businesses that would discriminate against black people? For sure there were also black run businesses, or they gradually emerged once they became legal.

Even today we see a lot of businesses who are racist against white people, and businesses that advertise with being "black owned" - so discrimination based on skin color still seems to be pretty normal and accepted.

> Hey, you're right! Although as of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, borrowers are entitled to have their skin color ignored when they request a loan.

How would that even work? It's a bullshit law that leads to bullshit lawsuits, would be my expectation. And probably also to loans that should not have been handed out, because people fear the lawsuits.

And no, owning a business does not make you exempt from the law. But laws are debatable. Pouring toxic waste into the environment impacts other people. Your hiring decisions do not. It is not nearly in the same category of regulations. People should not be forced to hire people they don't want to hire, period. If you don't like some hiring decisions, you are free to start your own business and hire the people that you think should be hired.

> Pouring toxic waste into the environment impacts other people. Your hiring decisions do not.

This is the crux of our disagreement. I can say nothing to this other than you are wrong and have failed to grasp American history and the effects of the law of averages.

What does it have to do with the law of averages?

It certainly has nothing to do with American history. It is a fundamental principle.

I don't think you've actually stated the fundamental principle in question.

Meanwhile, the ERA and EEA have basically everything to do with American history. We tried letting people self-organize into not being racist and misogynistic (and later, homophobic). They did not. And because denying people an opportunity to work or own property or start a business based on race (or, for that matter, gender or sexual orientation) is counter to the principles of equality America pursues, we tied the right to own a corporation to respecting those principles. America has never recognized a "right to incorporate," or a "right to be one's own boss;" it's neither enshrined in the Constitution nor mentioned in the Declaration of Independence (you could loosely lump it under "pursue happiness," but there's plenty of things in that category that aren't fundamental rights, so it' a weak justification at best).

(Law of averages: there were outlier cases of local areas where black people experienced more equitable treatment. Tulsa Oklahoma, until the white folk in town burned down the black businesses. But on average, black people could expect to be treated worse than white people in business opportunities, discriminated against taking out loans to start their own companies, and discriminated against in employment. For answers to "Why didn't they just form their own businesses / fix the situation amongst themselves," besides the notion of 'separate but equal' proving completely unworkable after several generations of trying it, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre for examples of what happened when black folks tried to self-organize to get ahead.

In short: we outlawed all that crap for a reason... A long, bloody, mutliple-generations-tried-private-solutions-it-didn't-work reason).

Other countries have different histories of racism (or misogyny or homophobia) so arrived at different conclusions. The law is path-dependent.

(TBH, you seem pretty hung up on what my country does in this regard for someone who isn't even beholden to these laws).

The principle is that nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ.

Right to be one's own boss: it is called freedom. It doesn't have to be written in the constitution with those exact words. I don't think the US is a socialist country just yet.

And your narrative of letting people self-organize seems wrong. There were laws mandating segregation. That is not self-organization, but government interference.

Obviously murdering people and burning down businesses is and should be illegal.

> The principle is that nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ.

Why?

> Right to be one's own boss: it is called freedom.

That has never been any kind of guaranteed right. And, I cannot stress this enough, you can do that and be compliant with all of these laws if you just work for yourself and don't have many employees. Most of these laws don't even kick in for firms under a certain size.

> There were laws mandating segregation.

So once those laws were rendered unenforceable, why do you think they then needed an Equal Rights Act in addition? Check the history.

> Obviously murdering people and burning down businesses is and should be illegal.

Of course, and it was, but if the law is unenforced it might as well not be.

That's why the federal government stepped in, because the states were not protecting the rights of citizens.

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