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Comment by miltonlost | Hacker News Reader

But whatabout being laid off, whatabout company bankruptcy, and whatabout becoming disabled? MY god, we're talking about at-will employment being a threat to a human's life insurance and salary, and you bring up NON at-will issues? Those are fundamentally different swords than an at-will employment one.

Is your manager going to disable your body? How is this even remotely close to a manager being able to fire you for whatever? You're just ignoring the whole "at-will".

I'm not talking about a "sword" of any possible negative thing happening to you. Why not bring up asteroids? Or another plague? Or just suddenly a REAL sword beheads me? THe "sword" is solely the at-will. Learn how metaphors work.

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It's the same sword: loss of income and healthcare. Semantic games aside, if the premise is that we shouldn't accept the risk of losing income/healthcare due to poor performance/internal politics, why would you accept losing income/healthcare due to layoffs (which also involve poor performance/internal politics)? It's fine to argue "people should be shielded from the risk of losing their income/healthcare", but you can't arbitrarily decide when it's fine to apply that principle.

Dying by lightning is like dying of cancer only a tad more unlikely.

Your argument sucks at base level.

THAT'S LITERALLY NOT THE PREMISE. AND IT'S NOT THE SAME SWORD. So much whataboutism and changing definitions to fit your needs. And also, you keep forgetting the more important thing: SOMEONE IS SWINGING THE SWORD AND WHY.

> It's fine to argue "people should be shielded from the risk of losing their income/healthcare", but you can't arbitrarily decide when it's fine to apply that principle.

You keep deleting key parts, like "people should be shielded from the risk of losing their income/healthcare from manager's whims". It's not arbitrary.

>You keep deleting key parts, like "people should be shielded from the risk of losing their income/healthcare from manager's whims". It's not arbitrary.

And a layoff aren't caused by "manager's whims"?

1. Layoffs are usually not "you manager fires you on the spot for whatever reason and with no severance/compensation"

2. Layoffs are usually a less common occurrence than firing people. While the US sucks at labor laws in general, there's at least the WARN act for mass layoffs

3. Layoffs are when multiple people are let go at the same time, which is a distinct category from firing a single person

4. Hence there are often separate negotiations and separate clauses in the union contracts regarding firing a single person (one category) and laying off multiple people (a separate category)

Why the hell you're arguing (in extremely bad faith) against labor protections is beyond anyone's understanding

>1. Layoffs are usually not "you manager fires you on the spot for whatever reason and with no severance/compensation"

>Why the hell you're arguing (in extremely bad faith) against labor protections is beyond anyone's understanding

I'm not sure why you're focusing so hard on the "no severance/compensation" part, when from the start I said that "some notice/severance would be justified". Is it because I said that at-will employment "seems... fine?", and you can't get over that, despite my subsequent statements?

Until we get to the bottom of this, I don't think it's worth it for me to engage with any of your other points.

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