4 ms·

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

by 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
  - jamesbritt 16y ago
    "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." I absolutely agree, and offered the explanation as one I've often heard, but it isn't one I can get my heart into. But even if it's true in general principal, the idea of trying to do good by roundabout methods is indeed tricky, and if you cannot accurately measure the results you're doing witchcraft not statecraft.
patio11 16y ago
Why are there laws against age discrimination? As a strictly positive rather than a normative statement: because "old" people vote, and "old" people see value in not getting thrown out of their jobs in favor of cheaper young people, and instruct their elected representatives as to their preferences in that regard. In a parallel universe where young people voted and old people did not, one could imagine a law which made it illegal to pay 20 year olds and 40 year olds different amounts of money for the same job. Hah hah hah, hah hah hah, hahahaha. What a quirky universe that would be. That parallel universe might also have very interesting discussions about, e.g., health care financing. I rush to note that I am not necessarily in favor of the status quo policies of either our world or the parallel universe.
_delirium 16y ago
The historical reason, more or less, is that for several decades a large portion of the people who controlled almost all the jobs in a large region of the U.S. decided that they didn't want any black people in their companies, or at least not in any non-menial jobs. Eventually, resentment boiled over into the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited employment discrimination along with a bunch of other things. To make it not solely about race, and build a broader coalition over nondiscrimination, the Civil Rights Act included other categories. The original set was: "race, color, religion, sex or national origin". Age was added later, because once the original principle was established, it seemed like by analogy firing someone solely on the basis of their age was vaguely similar to firing someone solely because they were Romanian, or Buddhist. I do think there's an alternate-history scenario where nondiscrimination laws might not have been passed in the US, if discrimination were mostly random and idiosyncratic. But when a huge portion of companies uniformly discriminated in the same way and ended up creating what amounted to a permanent underclass, it became a fairly unsustainable situation, and was eventually overturned. And it's fairly hard to go back now, because race relations haven't reached a point of sufficient trust: a lot of African-Americans believe that if the Civil Rights Act were overturned, companies would go back to not hiring them due to racism (at the very least, many would interpret overturning the Civil Rights Act as an action with unfriendly intent).
jacquesm 16y ago
To make sure that those things that you can not change in life (age, race, sex, beauty and so on) are not going to be used to disenfranchise large swaths of the population.
yason 16y ago
If you're a striptease club owner, you pretty much have to hire pretty young women, competent or otherwise.
- kikibobo69 16y ago
  I suspect that's why they are usually contractors, not employees.
  - devinj 16y ago
    No, that's probably so that they can pay below minimum wage (or, indeed, have the strippers pay the club).
    - kikibobo69 16y ago
      Then, what DOES prevent age and sex discrimination lawsuits?
      - jamesbritt 16y ago
        Self-interest? Why would fire a good employee for something as stupid as sex or age? Yes, there are people who would do that, but if they're that brainless I don't think their business is going to be long-lived.
rsheridan6 16y ago
Would you apply that some logic with regard to race?

by garply 16y ago

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
- jamesbritt 16y ago
  "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." I absolutely agree, and offered the explanation as one I've often heard, but it isn't one I can get my heart into. But even if it's true in general principal, the idea of trying to do good by roundabout methods is indeed tricky, and if you cannot accurately measure the results you're doing witchcraft not statecraft.

patio11 16y ago

Why are there laws against age discrimination? As a strictly positive rather than a normative statement: because "old" people vote, and "old" people see value in not getting thrown out of their jobs in favor of cheaper young people, and instruct their elected representatives as to their preferences in that regard. In a parallel universe where young people voted and old people did not, one could imagine a law which made it illegal to pay 20 year olds and 40 year olds different amounts of money for the same job. Hah hah hah, hah hah hah, hahahaha. What a quirky universe that would be. That parallel universe might also have very interesting discussions about, e.g., health care financing. I rush to note that I am not necessarily in favor of the status quo policies of either our world or the parallel universe.

_delirium 16y ago

The historical reason, more or less, is that for several decades a large portion of the people who controlled almost all the jobs in a large region of the U.S. decided that they didn't want any black people in their companies, or at least not in any non-menial jobs. Eventually, resentment boiled over into the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited employment discrimination along with a bunch of other things. To make it not solely about race, and build a broader coalition over nondiscrimination, the Civil Rights Act included other categories. The original set was: "race, color, religion, sex or national origin". Age was added later, because once the original principle was established, it seemed like by analogy firing someone solely on the basis of their age was vaguely similar to firing someone solely because they were Romanian, or Buddhist. I do think there's an alternate-history scenario where nondiscrimination laws might not have been passed in the US, if discrimination were mostly random and idiosyncratic. But when a huge portion of companies uniformly discriminated in the same way and ended up creating what amounted to a permanent underclass, it became a fairly unsustainable situation, and was eventually overturned. And it's fairly hard to go back now, because race relations haven't reached a point of sufficient trust: a lot of African-Americans believe that if the Civil Rights Act were overturned, companies would go back to not hiring them due to racism (at the very least, many would interpret overturning the Civil Rights Act as an action with unfriendly intent).

jacquesm 16y ago

To make sure that those things that you can not change in life (age, race, sex, beauty and so on) are not going to be used to disenfranchise large swaths of the population.

yason 16y ago

If you're a striptease club owner, you pretty much have to hire pretty young women, competent or otherwise.

kikibobo69 16y ago
I suspect that's why they are usually contractors, not employees.
- devinj 16y ago
  No, that's probably so that they can pay below minimum wage (or, indeed, have the strippers pay the club).
  - kikibobo69 16y ago
    Then, what DOES prevent age and sex discrimination lawsuits?
    - jamesbritt 16y ago
      Self-interest? Why would fire a good employee for something as stupid as sex or age? Yes, there are people who would do that, but if they're that brainless I don't think their business is going to be long-lived.

rsheridan6 16y ago

Would you apply that some logic with regard to race?