6 ms·

Google age bias suit reaches California Supreme Court

32 points by grellas 16y ago

lionhearted 16y ago
Sometimes I wonder if laws like this actually increase discrimination. I had a professor who hired a female minority who had good qualifications and interviewed well, but turned out to be incompetent. He was fanatical about documenting everything, noted down when she made mistakes and actually tried a lot to help her fix them, but no luck, so he let her go, and then she sued. The suit was eventually dismissed, but he said it was very stressful and costly for him. So I wonder if situations like these make people say, "Screw it, I'm hiring someone that can't sue me if they don't work out." Not a good thing, but I think a very possible secondary effect of this sort of thing.
- timr 16y ago
  You're relying on a fallacy -- the law doesn't need to exist for the lawsuits to exist. Even if your professor's employee wasn't a minority, she could have sued for wrongful termination. Likewise, this guy could be suing for something other than age discrimination. In your example, the end result would be identical. Here, it sounds like the lower courts have determined that there's a basis for a trial, but Google is trying desperately to prevent a trial from taking place. Frankly, I'd like to see why.
  - lionhearted 16y ago
    > You're relying on a fallacy -- the law doesn't need to exist for the lawsuits to exist. Do you mean this particular law doesn't need to exist for lawsuits to exist? Because all lawsuits need grounds to bring suit. > Google is trying desperately to prevent a trial from taking place. Frankly, I'd like to see why. Because they have literally nothing to gain from being dragged into court, paying legal fees, with a chance of being forced to pay millions of dollars and getting their reputation bashed, but gain nothing if they win? I think anyone sane wouldn't want that scenario to happen, it's lose/lose for them.
    - timr 16y ago
      "Do you mean this particular law doesn't need to exist for lawsuits to exist? Because all lawsuits need grounds to bring suit." Yes, that's what I mean. Eliminating the protected class won't eliminate lawsuits from people who believe that they have been the victim of unfair discrimination, because people who believe they are unfairly fired can still file suits for wrongful termination. They just can't explicitly claim age/gender/religion/whatever as a basis. If I can provide evidence that Foogle, Inc. fired me without cause, I might possibly have grounds for a case of wrongful termination against them, regardless of my age, gender, etc. But if the law also says that I can't be fired for my age, then it suddenly becomes much more important that I can demonstrate that Foogle, Inc. has a pattern of firing people who reach their Nth birthday. Basically, eliminating the protected class just makes it harder for people who are legitimately being discriminated against to make their case. It doesn't really deter people who are simply irrationally angry or looking for a cheap payout. If we imagine a universe where age isn't a protected class, your professor's secretary would cause just as much trouble -- she'd still lose, and she'd still have her day in court while doing losing. Unfortunately, it suddenly becomes possible for Foogle to start firing people en masse at age N, simply by fictioning up a few bad performance reviews. But now nobody can prove it, because age isn't a protected class, and will be ignored by the court.
      - lionhearted 16y ago
        I understand your point - people can bring bad lawsuits for bad reasons anyways - but I'm not sure you got my point. If there's a special protected class that the process for laying off/firing is different from other people, then that might make you think twice about hiring someone from that. This won't make a difference for superstar people, and it won't make a difference for people in high demand. It only makes a difference for people at the margin - if there's two equally good candidates for a hard to measure role, and you're not sure if either of them will work out - wouldn't it be sensible to take the one that there's less chance of backlash for letting go if they don't work out? Now, you could mention that's against the law too, and you'd be right. But I'll give you a real life example of how this happens. There's specific laws in California about doing what's called a "condo conversion", that is, turning a rental property into a condominium and selling it. There were quite a few condo conversions from 1998 to 2008 in California. The law says the previous renter needs to get a payout - for people under age 55 or 60, the payout is something like $4000. For people over that age, the payout if $15,000 or so. (don't remember the exact numbers - just that the payout for people over a certain age was more than double) Now, if you were renting an apartment and considering doing condo conversions in a year or two once you had more money, would you ever rent that apartment to an elderly person? No, you wouldn't. Not because you're a jerk. Not because you hate the elderly. But because, well, why would you want to pay $15,000 to someone to leave an apartment after renting it for 10 months? Hell, they might pay less rent than $15,000 in the 10 months! You'd be better off leaving it unrented! And mind you, this is a legally protected right, the landlord can't even explain, "I'm thinking of doing a condo conversion, I'm happy to rent to you, but if you want this can you waive the mandatory payment? If not I might wind up giving you more money than you pay me in rent." That's not possible, this payment is a non-waiveable right in California. That law is to protect elderly people, thinking it's harder for them to move. But a result is that it's harder for them to rent in high transition areas. Okay, make a law prohibiting that too, but if someone gets five candidates for an apartment they're considering a condo conversion on, they don't want to rent to someone that they're going to have to pay more money to than they receive in rent. Hence, less housing de facto available for the elderly as a result of the de jure anti-discrimation law. So you might be doing more harm than good. > If we imagine a universe where age isn't a protected class, your professor's secretary would cause just as much trouble She wasn't a secretary, she was either an electrical engineer or a coder in assembly language. They were making systems to transfer energy to different power grids efficiently at a crowded train station back when he worked in industry. I do think it's funny you just assumed she was a secretary though when I just said my professor of technology hired a female minority who interviewed well with good credentials, but turned out to be bad at her job. Even in academia she could've been a researcher or lab technician or administrator.
- _delirium 16y ago
  If a large company has a statistically noticeable pattern of not hiring minorities, though, they'll likely get sued for that, instead--- especially if anyone's actually said anything in a discoverable memo like, "I'm hiring someone that can't sue me if they don't work out". (Smaller companies, of course, can get away with pretty much whatever they want as far as hiring decisions go, as long as they don't say something stupid in public, because their number of hires isn't enough for anyone to conclude a strong pattern.)
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I'm surprised that she would sue. After all, she must realize that she was treated fairly and that she's going to make it incredibly hard for the next female minority to get hired, who might be qualified and a nice person to boot. Stuff like that tends to linger, even if it is subconscious and against the law.
  - patio11 16y ago
    I'm surprised that she would sue She may have never heard criticism of her abilities in her entire life, was working for a boss who had nothing but positive feedback for her for an extended period of time, and then was suddenly canned with no warning for being incompetent. Every professor and teacher she's ever known is in unanimous agreement: she's awesome. Clearly, the boss must be racist.
  - lionhearted 16y ago
    Someone mentioned the same thing in class. Professor said that during a settlement negotiation, he asked, "Why are you doing this?" and she actually said: "I need the money, and don't know what else I could do." Her and her lawyer offered to settle for something like $6,000 but he refused it on principle and went on to win. Actually, it was kind of sad. He was really a sweet, kind, nice person, literally no temper at all but gently assertive, very balanced and helpful. The class I was in was a low-ish level technology class and we had quite a diversity of people in there. He helped everyone as much as they needed, assigned intelligent and fun assignments... really just a great guy.
  - roel_v 16y ago
    It's not in her interest in any shape or form to care about the next minority. It's perfectly rational for her to maximize her own profit.
robryan 16y ago
So if someone is a sub standard employee, either in their own output or in the team environment and their age could be a contributing factor are you unable to fire them? I mean a younger employee could also be slow or not on the same page as their coworkers and they would be being fired for the same reason.
- jrockway 16y ago
  Admittedly, it's a fine line to walk. That's why we're letting the most experienced judges in the state sort it out.
- _delirium 16y ago
  He seems to be claiming that it was mainly his age, which would be less permissible. In particular, as far as terminating him goes (as opposed to merely changing him to a different role), the reason Google gave that they couldn't find him any future role in the company was that he was a bad "cultural fit" for the company, which is a lot more vague and questionable-sounding than saying he was a "substandard engineer" or anything more performance-oriented like that. Reid is more or less alleging that "not a cultural fit" is a euphemism for "old guy", and he claims he has some statistics to back that up, showing that Google fired old people disproportionately often.
  - nailer 16y ago
    > Google gave that they couldn't find him any future role in the company was that he was a bad "cultural fit" for the company, which is a lot more vague and questionable-sounding I don't think it's vague at all: Google has a culture where everyone codes, there are no architecture astronauts, no enterprise crapware, less emphasis on documentation and meetings and even user experience, more on Making Stuff. I'm not making any judgement call on that, merely saying that it's a culture many people wouldn't fit in to, in particular ex-government employees.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      I agree that's reasonable, but that does seem rather more specific than "cultural fit". Something like, "at Google, all the engineers code, and so-and-so wasn't willing to code" seems like a pretty air-tight, neutral reason to fire someone, but it doesn't seem like it's the reason Google gave here.
skmurphy 16y ago
Some background in his wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientis... when they fired him it was nine days before the IPO and he lost out on $10M. The opinion from the appeals court is here http://www.gmsr.com/writing/scw-reid.pdf http://www.gmsr.com/writing/scw-reid.pdf he offered a statistical analysis of promotion and compensation that indicated a pattern of discrimination against older employees, Google did not offer their own statistical analysis. He has more than hearsay or "stray comments" driving the case.
- georgieporgie 16y ago
  Thank you for providing significantly more information than a professional journalist did.
- nailer 16y ago
  > offered a statistical analysis of promotion and compensation that indicated a pattern of discrimination against older employees How could statistics possibly indicate causality?
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    I don't think he has to prove causality, it is more that if he manages to sow enough doubt that he was wrongfully terminated by showing that in the statistics he is an outlier that it will bolster his case.
    - nailer 16y ago
      That saddens me. The law should be based on fact and reason.
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        The law is based on fact and reason. Judges are there to interpret the law and apply it to real life situations which are gray instead of black or white.
btilly 16y ago
I wasn't around Google 8 years ago. But I can verify that today Google is perfectly fine for older workers. The guy who sits next to me is in his 50s. Absolutely nobody doubts his abilities. Nor does he have any complains about how he is treated. And the last guy I helped interview who got hired (I'm not sure for what team, hopefully for ours), is of similar vintage and I believe will work out well. The one warning I'll give to older programmers who want to come to Google is that everyone codes here. There is an attitude that some people get after decades in the working world. That attitude is, "I'm so senior and experienced that it makes no sense for me to actually do something so menial as write code." If you have that attitude, then Google won't have a place for you. There is no such thing as a non-coding software architect here. But if you have experience, ability, understand algorithms, and are willing to code, then Google can be a very friendly place indeed. People here are very aware of the difference between one year of experience 10 times, and 10 years of experience. The former has no place here. The latter is highly valued. And 20 years of experience is even more highly valued. (Disclaimer: I'm only 40, and have only been in the software world a dozen years.)
- mhansen 16y ago
  Can you elaborate on the difference between 1 years of experience 10 times, and 10 years of experience? I don't follow. Do you mean 10 separate one-year projects in different technologies?
  - philk 16y ago
    What he means is the difference between someone who's been a programmer for ten years but has learned very little (and done the same easy stuff over and over) and someone who's been a programmer for ten years and has done really impressive stuff and learned a lot.
    - nailer 16y ago
      When I was involved in the Unix world I used to see this a lot: someone with 'x years of experience' who knew the 5-10% of the system they work with day to day really well, with no understanding, no interest, and no awareness of the rest of the system.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
garply 16y ago
Let me ask a possibly unpopular question because the answer is not immediately obvious to me: Why are there laws against age discrimination? For example, if I want to fill my company with pretty young women, competent or otherwise, why should the law prohibit me from doing so?
- exit 16y ago
  similarly, why shouldn't an electorate act in its own self interest by empowering a government which prohibits you from doing so?
- shabda 16y ago
  If there are laws against discriminating on racial grounds, why should there be no laws against discrimination on age?
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  Let me ask a possibly unpopular question because the answer is not immediately obvious to me: Good enough reason. Here's an explanation I've heard: Yes, it's your business, your property, and in most things you're free to do as you like with it. But it doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can have a business and a good life because you live in a particular society, so you have some obligations back to that society. That can take the form of, well, taxes (for example), but also as special protections for select groups of people.
  - kiba 16y ago
    I don't think an "obligation" or obeying the law is necessary a good qualifier. Let look at this way. Each law we made will have potential side-effects, which is most likely to be negative. Thus, the law of unintended consequence. For example, a business deciding who to hire might decide on only the merit/performances of employees. However, this end up with lot of white people, because white people are disproportional represented in the tech industry. Any minority in the tech industry have to swim against lot of talented white people. So what we end up with is a firm with mostly white people. However, discrimination against race is prohibited in our law and it looks like the firm is engaged in favoring white people over other type of colors. So people either sue the firm for racial discrimination, or the firm decided a quota of people from each race to hire. Thus, we end up with the strange situation of a color-blind company being sued for discrimination that it never engaged in, or forced to take a racist route to avoid lawsuits. So we better be careful of how we make our laws. A law with good intentions and made with great moral conviction may end up doing the opposite. "It is a saying among Divines, that Hell is full of good Intentions, and Meanings." -- 1654 R. Whitlock Observations on Manners of English 203

32 points by grellas 16y ago

Sometimes I wonder if laws like this actually increase discrimination. I had a professor who hired a female minority who had good qualifications and interviewed well, but turned out to be incompetent. He was fanatical about documenting everything, noted down when she made mistakes and actually tried a lot to help her fix them, but no luck, so he let her go, and then she sued. The suit was eventually dismissed, but he said it was very stressful and costly for him. So I wonder if situations like these make people say, "Screw it, I'm hiring someone that can't sue me if they don't work out." Not a good thing, but I think a very possible secondary effect of this sort of thing.

timr 16y ago
You're relying on a fallacy -- the law doesn't need to exist for the lawsuits to exist. Even if your professor's employee wasn't a minority, she could have sued for wrongful termination. Likewise, this guy could be suing for something other than age discrimination. In your example, the end result would be identical. Here, it sounds like the lower courts have determined that there's a basis for a trial, but Google is trying desperately to prevent a trial from taking place. Frankly, I'd like to see why.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > You're relying on a fallacy -- the law doesn't need to exist for the lawsuits to exist. Do you mean this particular law doesn't need to exist for lawsuits to exist? Because all lawsuits need grounds to bring suit. > Google is trying desperately to prevent a trial from taking place. Frankly, I'd like to see why. Because they have literally nothing to gain from being dragged into court, paying legal fees, with a chance of being forced to pay millions of dollars and getting their reputation bashed, but gain nothing if they win? I think anyone sane wouldn't want that scenario to happen, it's lose/lose for them.
  - timr 16y ago
    "Do you mean this particular law doesn't need to exist for lawsuits to exist? Because all lawsuits need grounds to bring suit." Yes, that's what I mean. Eliminating the protected class won't eliminate lawsuits from people who believe that they have been the victim of unfair discrimination, because people who believe they are unfairly fired can still file suits for wrongful termination. They just can't explicitly claim age/gender/religion/whatever as a basis. If I can provide evidence that Foogle, Inc. fired me without cause, I might possibly have grounds for a case of wrongful termination against them, regardless of my age, gender, etc. But if the law also says that I can't be fired for my age, then it suddenly becomes much more important that I can demonstrate that Foogle, Inc. has a pattern of firing people who reach their Nth birthday. Basically, eliminating the protected class just makes it harder for people who are legitimately being discriminated against to make their case. It doesn't really deter people who are simply irrationally angry or looking for a cheap payout. If we imagine a universe where age isn't a protected class, your professor's secretary would cause just as much trouble -- she'd still lose, and she'd still have her day in court while doing losing. Unfortunately, it suddenly becomes possible for Foogle to start firing people en masse at age N, simply by fictioning up a few bad performance reviews. But now nobody can prove it, because age isn't a protected class, and will be ignored by the court.
    - lionhearted 16y ago
      I understand your point - people can bring bad lawsuits for bad reasons anyways - but I'm not sure you got my point. If there's a special protected class that the process for laying off/firing is different from other people, then that might make you think twice about hiring someone from that. This won't make a difference for superstar people, and it won't make a difference for people in high demand. It only makes a difference for people at the margin - if there's two equally good candidates for a hard to measure role, and you're not sure if either of them will work out - wouldn't it be sensible to take the one that there's less chance of backlash for letting go if they don't work out? Now, you could mention that's against the law too, and you'd be right. But I'll give you a real life example of how this happens. There's specific laws in California about doing what's called a "condo conversion", that is, turning a rental property into a condominium and selling it. There were quite a few condo conversions from 1998 to 2008 in California. The law says the previous renter needs to get a payout - for people under age 55 or 60, the payout is something like $4000. For people over that age, the payout if $15,000 or so. (don't remember the exact numbers - just that the payout for people over a certain age was more than double) Now, if you were renting an apartment and considering doing condo conversions in a year or two once you had more money, would you ever rent that apartment to an elderly person? No, you wouldn't. Not because you're a jerk. Not because you hate the elderly. But because, well, why would you want to pay $15,000 to someone to leave an apartment after renting it for 10 months? Hell, they might pay less rent than $15,000 in the 10 months! You'd be better off leaving it unrented! And mind you, this is a legally protected right, the landlord can't even explain, "I'm thinking of doing a condo conversion, I'm happy to rent to you, but if you want this can you waive the mandatory payment? If not I might wind up giving you more money than you pay me in rent." That's not possible, this payment is a non-waiveable right in California. That law is to protect elderly people, thinking it's harder for them to move. But a result is that it's harder for them to rent in high transition areas. Okay, make a law prohibiting that too, but if someone gets five candidates for an apartment they're considering a condo conversion on, they don't want to rent to someone that they're going to have to pay more money to than they receive in rent. Hence, less housing de facto available for the elderly as a result of the de jure anti-discrimation law. So you might be doing more harm than good. > If we imagine a universe where age isn't a protected class, your professor's secretary would cause just as much trouble She wasn't a secretary, she was either an electrical engineer or a coder in assembly language. They were making systems to transfer energy to different power grids efficiently at a crowded train station back when he worked in industry. I do think it's funny you just assumed she was a secretary though when I just said my professor of technology hired a female minority who interviewed well with good credentials, but turned out to be bad at her job. Even in academia she could've been a researcher or lab technician or administrator.
_delirium 16y ago
If a large company has a statistically noticeable pattern of not hiring minorities, though, they'll likely get sued for that, instead--- especially if anyone's actually said anything in a discoverable memo like, "I'm hiring someone that can't sue me if they don't work out". (Smaller companies, of course, can get away with pretty much whatever they want as far as hiring decisions go, as long as they don't say something stupid in public, because their number of hires isn't enough for anyone to conclude a strong pattern.)
jacquesm 16y ago
I'm surprised that she would sue. After all, she must realize that she was treated fairly and that she's going to make it incredibly hard for the next female minority to get hired, who might be qualified and a nice person to boot. Stuff like that tends to linger, even if it is subconscious and against the law.
- patio11 16y ago
  I'm surprised that she would sue She may have never heard criticism of her abilities in her entire life, was working for a boss who had nothing but positive feedback for her for an extended period of time, and then was suddenly canned with no warning for being incompetent. Every professor and teacher she's ever known is in unanimous agreement: she's awesome. Clearly, the boss must be racist.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  Someone mentioned the same thing in class. Professor said that during a settlement negotiation, he asked, "Why are you doing this?" and she actually said: "I need the money, and don't know what else I could do." Her and her lawyer offered to settle for something like $6,000 but he refused it on principle and went on to win. Actually, it was kind of sad. He was really a sweet, kind, nice person, literally no temper at all but gently assertive, very balanced and helpful. The class I was in was a low-ish level technology class and we had quite a diversity of people in there. He helped everyone as much as they needed, assigned intelligent and fun assignments... really just a great guy.
- roel_v 16y ago
  It's not in her interest in any shape or form to care about the next minority. It's perfectly rational for her to maximize her own profit.

robryan 16y ago

So if someone is a sub standard employee, either in their own output or in the team environment and their age could be a contributing factor are you unable to fire them? I mean a younger employee could also be slow or not on the same page as their coworkers and they would be being fired for the same reason.

jrockway 16y ago
Admittedly, it's a fine line to walk. That's why we're letting the most experienced judges in the state sort it out.
_delirium 16y ago
He seems to be claiming that it was mainly his age, which would be less permissible. In particular, as far as terminating him goes (as opposed to merely changing him to a different role), the reason Google gave that they couldn't find him any future role in the company was that he was a bad "cultural fit" for the company, which is a lot more vague and questionable-sounding than saying he was a "substandard engineer" or anything more performance-oriented like that. Reid is more or less alleging that "not a cultural fit" is a euphemism for "old guy", and he claims he has some statistics to back that up, showing that Google fired old people disproportionately often.
- nailer 16y ago
  > Google gave that they couldn't find him any future role in the company was that he was a bad "cultural fit" for the company, which is a lot more vague and questionable-sounding I don't think it's vague at all: Google has a culture where everyone codes, there are no architecture astronauts, no enterprise crapware, less emphasis on documentation and meetings and even user experience, more on Making Stuff. I'm not making any judgement call on that, merely saying that it's a culture many people wouldn't fit in to, in particular ex-government employees.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    I agree that's reasonable, but that does seem rather more specific than "cultural fit". Something like, "at Google, all the engineers code, and so-and-so wasn't willing to code" seems like a pretty air-tight, neutral reason to fire someone, but it doesn't seem like it's the reason Google gave here.

skmurphy 16y ago

Some background in his wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientist%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_%28computer_scientis... when they fired him it was nine days before the IPO and he lost out on $10M. The opinion from the appeals court is here http://www.gmsr.com/writing/scw-reid.pdf http://www.gmsr.com/writing/scw-reid.pdf he offered a statistical analysis of promotion and compensation that indicated a pattern of discrimination against older employees, Google did not offer their own statistical analysis. He has more than hearsay or "stray comments" driving the case.

georgieporgie 16y ago
Thank you for providing significantly more information than a professional journalist did.
nailer 16y ago
> offered a statistical analysis of promotion and compensation that indicated a pattern of discrimination against older employees How could statistics possibly indicate causality?
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I don't think he has to prove causality, it is more that if he manages to sow enough doubt that he was wrongfully terminated by showing that in the statistics he is an outlier that it will bolster his case.
  - nailer 16y ago
    That saddens me. The law should be based on fact and reason.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      The law is based on fact and reason. Judges are there to interpret the law and apply it to real life situations which are gray instead of black or white.

btilly 16y ago

I wasn't around Google 8 years ago. But I can verify that today Google is perfectly fine for older workers. The guy who sits next to me is in his 50s. Absolutely nobody doubts his abilities. Nor does he have any complains about how he is treated. And the last guy I helped interview who got hired (I'm not sure for what team, hopefully for ours), is of similar vintage and I believe will work out well. The one warning I'll give to older programmers who want to come to Google is that everyone codes here. There is an attitude that some people get after decades in the working world. That attitude is, "I'm so senior and experienced that it makes no sense for me to actually do something so menial as write code." If you have that attitude, then Google won't have a place for you. There is no such thing as a non-coding software architect here. But if you have experience, ability, understand algorithms, and are willing to code, then Google can be a very friendly place indeed. People here are very aware of the difference between one year of experience 10 times, and 10 years of experience. The former has no place here. The latter is highly valued. And 20 years of experience is even more highly valued. (Disclaimer: I'm only 40, and have only been in the software world a dozen years.)

mhansen 16y ago
Can you elaborate on the difference between 1 years of experience 10 times, and 10 years of experience? I don't follow. Do you mean 10 separate one-year projects in different technologies?
- philk 16y ago
  What he means is the difference between someone who's been a programmer for ten years but has learned very little (and done the same easy stuff over and over) and someone who's been a programmer for ten years and has done really impressive stuff and learned a lot.
  - nailer 16y ago
    When I was involved in the Unix world I used to see this a lot: someone with 'x years of experience' who knew the 5-10% of the system they work with day to day really well, with no understanding, no interest, and no awareness of the rest of the system.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

garply 16y ago

Let me ask a possibly unpopular question because the answer is not immediately obvious to me: Why are there laws against age discrimination? For example, if I want to fill my company with pretty young women, competent or otherwise, why should the law prohibit me from doing so?

exit 16y ago
similarly, why shouldn't an electorate act in its own self interest by empowering a government which prohibits you from doing so?
shabda 16y ago
If there are laws against discriminating on racial grounds, why should there be no laws against discrimination on age?
jamesbritt 16y ago
Let me ask a possibly unpopular question because the answer is not immediately obvious to me: Good enough reason. Here's an explanation I've heard: Yes, it's your business, your property, and in most things you're free to do as you like with it. But it doesn't exist in a vacuum. You can have a business and a good life because you live in a particular society, so you have some obligations back to that society. That can take the form of, well, taxes (for example), but also as special protections for select groups of people.
- kiba 16y ago
  I don't think an "obligation" or obeying the law is necessary a good qualifier. Let look at this way. Each law we made will have potential side-effects, which is most likely to be negative. Thus, the law of unintended consequence. For example, a business deciding who to hire might decide on only the merit/performances of employees. However, this end up with lot of white people, because white people are disproportional represented in the tech industry. Any minority in the tech industry have to swim against lot of talented white people. So what we end up with is a firm with mostly white people. However, discrimination against race is prohibited in our law and it looks like the firm is engaged in favoring white people over other type of colors. So people either sue the firm for racial discrimination, or the firm decided a quota of people from each race to hire. Thus, we end up with the strange situation of a color-blind company being sued for discrimination that it never engaged in, or forced to take a racist route to avoid lawsuits. So we better be careful of how we make our laws. A law with good intentions and made with great moral conviction may end up doing the opposite. "It is a saying among Divines, that Hell is full of good Intentions, and Meanings." -- 1654 R. Whitlock Observations on Manners of English 203