Totally agree. They're the law right now, and if you're looking to change that, there is a process to do so. I haven't heard any explanation of how removing them would improve America other than "it would take us back to how things were before, which was better," which is a non-starter.
...And you will be fought every step of the way, as the people who got the laws first passed were fought every step of the way. Of course, I hope you fail, as I've never heard an explanation of how repealing those laws would improve things.
The explanation is simple: freedom. People forget that when they curb the freedom of their employers, they also curb their own freedoms at the same time. They make sure that they can never escape from the hamster wheel. Of course most people are happy as long as other people are not better off than they themselves, so being stuck in the hamster wheel doesn't bother them that much.
More freedom also means more potential businesses who have to compete for workers, which is good for the workers. If businesses have to compete, they'll try to make things as nice as possible for the workers.
The argument that things would become what they "were before" doesn't make that much sense. In a poor economy, things are poorly, no matter what socialist laws try to prevent it (worker protection only helps you if you have a job, for example). There is no reason that by abandoning some law from the 50 years ago, the economy would fall back to the state of the 80ies. Also maybe the 80ies weren't actually so bad. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I keep hearing that in the old days, people could afford to buy houses and feed a family on a single salary.
I'm sure you can get better explanations and economic theories. You have never heard an explanation because you have never looked for it or listened to one, not because none exist.
Or do you also respect the freedom of employees to engage in collective bargaining, the freedom of employees to negotiate a closed shop with the company, the freedom to engage in solidarity and political strikes, the freedom to carry out secondary boycotts, and so on.
Most of those are prohibited by law, where 100 years ago they were legal. And they didn't require a special law to enable those powers, because they grew out of the right to quit one's job.
> If businesses have to compete, they'll try to make things as nice as possible for the workers.
Which is why businesses don't like to compete, and will form cartels and informal agreements to prevent competition.
> I'm too lazy to look it up, but I keep hearing that in the old days, people could afford to buy houses and feed a family on a single salary.
We also had a lot higher tax rate on the wealth. And stronger union power. If you're going to lazily cherry pick history, then there are a lot of cherries to pick from.
Everybody can start a company - or should be allowed to, that is the point. Socialist rules making it difficult prevent people from becoming independent.
> Or do you also respect the freedom of employees to engage in collective bargaining, the freedom of employees to negotiate a closed shop with the company, the freedom to engage in solidarity and political strikes, the freedom to carry out secondary boycotts, and so on.
People should be free to do that, but "employers" should also be free to fire them if they do.
> Which is why businesses don't like to compete, and will form cartels and informal agreements to prevent competition.
That works by government intervention and freedom would prevent it.
> We also had a lot higher tax rate on the wealth. And stronger union power. If you're going to lazily cherry pick history, then there are a lot of cherries to pick from.
I am not the person who claimed things were so bad in the past that we must not go back.
This is a country of over three hundred million people. Independence past a certain degree is intractable.
I recommend if you don't like the rules and are too lazy (as you've self-described) to do the hard work to change them, you should consider changing countries. After all, your remedy for employees who don't like working for employers who break the Equal Employment Act is they should change companies.
If that solution seems unpalatable, meditate upon why it is inappropriate to suggest that employees who don't like being discriminated against should just use the remedy of changing employers.
What socialist like you keep forgetting is that somebody has to provide the jobs that you claim the rights to. If nobody provides the jobs, you can make laws all you want, people still won't have jobs.
We've been running that experiment for upwards of a century.
It turns out there are a couple motivating factors for why people form companies, including:
1. There's something they want to do and they need a lot of people to do it
2. They want to make a lot of money
3. They want to set their own work conditions
Socialist policies don't really impact motivation 1 (in fact, they can enhance it; one way American firms are hamstrung relative to their international peers is they have to pay directly for healthcare for their employees, whereas other countries treat that as a national-level responsibility that doesn't come asymmetrically out of various firms' pocketbooks). And motivation 2 is still satisfied if they're making $10 million instead of $10 billion, so long as $10 million is the number you're making when you're "winning the game." Motivation 3 is still very much a liberty that every company owner has, with only a few curtailments (not really any more than the notion that my driver's license gives me liberty to drive on public roads, even though I'm not allowed to drive on the left side of a divided road directly into oncoming traffic).
People have been predicting "socialism will kill the desire to make work for people" for decades as myriad nations have developed stronger government support for citizens' needs, and it hasn't happened. Sooner or later, one has to accept the evidence is against the "socialism kills jobs" hypothesis.
The US has more socialist policies in place right now than ever before, and unemployment is under 4%.
Most companies don't need lots of people. And setting their own work conditions is exactly what is at stake - which also impacts workers, as it also limits their choice of companies to work for. I also doubt wanting to make a lot of money is as common as you think - you can do that more easily in some corporate jobs these days, without the risk.
I don't know the extent of socialism in the US, but it certainly isn't a socialist country yet. Yes, we have run the experiment in the past, and all socialist countries failed spectacularly.
There is no such thing as free health care. Whether companies pay directly or via taxes doesn't really make a difference. The system in the US seems weird in various ways. All the "free health care" systems in other countries seem to be struggling a lot, by the way. None of them is really a proven solution as of now.
> Most companies don't need lots of people. And setting their own work conditions is exactly what is at stake
Great, if they don't need lots of people the Equal Employment Act shouldn't be a problem for them. There's a minimum size on enforcement of the law.
I really think you're overestimating how difficult it is to avoid creating a hostile work environment. You just follow up on reports. That's what you do. There's a whole standardized process to it and every company does it. The fact that Tesla failed to follow it (and failed so hard a jury originally awarded over $100 million in punitive damages, a number speaking to their outrage and disgust at what was allowed to occur) makes Tesla an outlier here.
Point blank: do you think the goal it is trying to achieve is correct but the method is flawed, or do you think the goal (changing, by law, the environment so that an entire demographic of Americans have any hope of having a job without harassment based on unchangeable characteristics they have) is wrong?
> You just follow up on reports. That's what you do.
And then you simply fire the non-liberals involved? Hostile work environment is usually people not getting along. I don't think that is usually easy to solve. You probably have some bias thinking about racists and what not. But even if you just choose to believe all liberal complaints, that enables people to exploit the system. An example would be female execs who seem to always file for "sexism" when they are fired, because why not.
> Point blank: do you think the goal it is trying to achieve is correct but the method is flawed, or do you think the goal (changing, by law, the environment so that an entire demographic of Americans have any hope of having a job without harassment based on unchangeable characteristics they have) is wrong?
I think nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ (with their own money - for tax payer money, different rules are necessary). And I don't trust governments to know better how to run companies than the people owning the companies.
> And then you simply fire the non-liberals involved?
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?
> I think nobody should be forced to employ somebody they don't want to employ (with their own money - for tax payer money, different rules are necessary).
As you've mentioned you don't live in the United states, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you don't know our terrible history with racism. The short version is that we had to pass laws after trying myriad other things because, as a principle of a nation where all men are created equal, it was unacceptable that there were entire regions of the country where one simply could not maintain employment if one had the wrong skin color.
It was an ugly fight. They shut down public education in some places during the fight. In some places blood was drawn during the fight.
But in the end, we the people said no.
And that declaration of "no" is tied to a privilege, not a right: the privilege to own a company, which is a legal construct licensed by the government. No one is owed the right to be a company owner, and if one wants to own a company, there are societal obligations they shoulder. Obeying the Equal Rights Act and the Equal Employment Act are such obligations (again, once the company is big enough!), right alongside "obey zoning laws" and "don't dump toxic waste in a river."
It is fundamentally naive to believe this is a problem the market will solve, because this country already tried solving it with the market.
> 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.
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.
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.
> People forget that when they curb the freedom of their employers, they also curb their own freedoms at the same time.
Freedom to what, in this context?
> If businesses have to compete, they'll try to make things as nice as possible for the workers.
This is the "capitalism will solve it" argument which proved so untrue we passed the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Act. It turns out that, no, even when it's economically obvious that catering to a minority population would be valuable, you can have 100% of a town refusing to do so because racism is more important to them than money. That creates entire regions of the country that are no-go zones if your skin color is wrong, and we decided that's not acceptable.
> There is no reason that by abandoning some law from the 50 years ago, the economy would fall back to the state of the 80ies.
I'm not concerned about what the economy would do; I'm concerned about whether it would be harder to keep a job free of daily torment if you're the wrong skin color than it is now. My mistake; the law in question isn't 50 years old, it's a 1970s law.
> I'm too lazy to look it up, but I keep hearing that in the old days, people could afford to buy houses and feed a family on a single salary.
If you can find some evidence that the passage of the ERA modified that, feel free to present it. But I'm pretty sure to explain why that changed, you're looking for Reagan-era deregulation (and the economic shift from a manufacturing economy, where unions were strong, to a service economy, where few unions existed).
> You have never heard an explanation because you have never looked for it or listened to one, not because none exist.
Interesting and unsupported hypothesis. But I don't expect you to bring me anything new because you've already declared you're "too lazy to look it up," so I think this conversation thread has ended.
The freedom to work in the way they want. To escape the hamster wheel, for example by starting their own company with the conditions they prefer.
> This is the "capitalism will solve it" argument which proved so untrue we passed the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Act.
It didn't prove untrue. The early days of capitalism where marked by a previous population explosion and abandonment of the feudal system, with lots of people pouring into cities looking for work. That is why there was a lot of poverty.
> That creates entire regions of the country that are no-go zones if your skin color is wrong, and we decided that's not acceptable.
Pretty sure there are lots of No-Go zones for people with the wrong skin color today. At least if your skin color is white.
> I'm concerned about whether it would be harder to keep a job free of daily torment if you're the wrong skin color than it is now.
So you think there wouldn't be any businesses run by black owners? Why not?
> But I'm pretty sure to explain why that changed, you're looking for Reagan-era deregulation
So the economy was better in the past, but your argument was that it was worse?
> Interesting and unsupported hypothesis.
Well everybody who HAS heard explanations knows they exist, so the reason you have not heard of them must be that you wilfully denied their exoistence.
...And you will be fought every step of the way, as the people who got the laws first passed were fought every step of the way. Of course, I hope you fail, as I've never heard an explanation of how repealing those laws would improve things.