We don't NEED government. We CAN have change without initiating direct force.
Um... That depends on how long you want to wait. How many generations of people have to suffer under the old system before society wises up and decides that a new system would be better for everybody? The British Empire institutionalized the slavery of Africans for centuries. They finally abolished it but by then the USA was no longer part of the empire and it was still legal here until the 1860s when the government finally outlawed it. How many generations of people of African ancestry would be "fair" to keep enslaved while waiting for the people of European ancestry to decide that it's time to free them?
After slavery was abolished, Jim Crow laws were better only in comparison to slavery. Once again the government stepped in and began the much messier job of outlawing ethnicity-based discrimination. If it weren't for that, Jim Crow would still be the law in the South and most of the Bible Belt, and even in the rest of the country, outside the big cities discrimination of one degree or another would still be practiced. How long should these people have to wait for the majority to get its act together?
Why don't they just reduce the hourly wage of the older worker in line with their productivity?
This is a knowledge-work business, not physical labor. The older workers are more productive, particularly the ones who have worked for the company for a long time and really know how everything works. The company is simply willing to let the older, more productive workers go, and replace them with younger, less productive workers, and assumes that the difference in productivity can be compensated by the much lower pay the younger workers will accept. This has not proven to be true, but the people who run the company aren't very good at their jobs. The company is not doing well for a variety of reasons and it's difficult for them to figure out which ones need to be fixed.
What sort of work agreement do these older workers have with this employer?
Termination-at-will. Either party can give two weeks' notice and it's over. That's become standard throughout the country since the demise of the union movement. I'm no fan of unions but I can't quibble with the old saw, "Any company that gets a union probably needed it."
Why do the local community continue to send business their way? Why not send business to the local competitor?
It's not a local business. It's one of the largest in its industry. Probably every American on this forum has seen their TV commercials, and statistically probably at least 10% of them have bought their products.
I won't say any more because many of my friends work there. It's a large employer in the community.
Sex isn't even a legal trade in the vast majority of the country, and even if it were, I imagine there would be different rules applied because everyone (except you, apparently) understands that selling sex is not like selling vacuum cleaners.
As I noted earlier, prostitution is legal in Nevada except in the population centers. (No woman wants her husband going to a convention in a city with legal prostitutes.) It's treated very much like renting out a room in your home. The law does indeed maintain the distinction between
public business and
private business. Renting out part of your body is like renting out part of your home and you have considerably more discretion than if you're on a street corner selling tacos.
This thread is degrading into a slug fest. Maybe I should ask the moderator to close it before it gets ugly?
The reason is that you're not participating fairly. You continue to avoid telling us who exactly you would like to be able to discriminate against. Whether you like it or not, in the USA and most of the Western world, this issue is not cut-and-dried and hinges
entirely on that point. We can't discuss it rationally because that Elephant In The Room gets in the way. I've explained to you why, in the USA and other countries, discrimination for certain reasons is illegal, whereas discrimination for
any other reason is not. You have never picked up this point in the argument, which is now the key point, so the argument is going nowhere.
If you ask Tiassa to close this thread, be sure and tell him the reason is that you're too chicken-poop to be honest with us.
Much like the One Ring, the State is a nearly unstoppable power...criminals are drawn to so much power - it's irresistible, but for even the few who think they're doing good, it corrupts them right along with everything else it touches. At a fundamental level you should know, if you're using force - it's wrong. The State is all about using force.
I've noted before that a government is a sort of organism. Look at biology and you'll notice that as organisms get larger, they move more slowly, react less quickly and with less effort to external stimuli, and devote more of their energy to their own internal metabolism instead of to the external environment. Is that biological analogy a perfect metaphor for today's too-big-for-their-britches governments?
I think that line gets drawn if my freedom causes them suffering and misery. I don't mean inconveniences them- I mean suffering. I don't mean that they might have to be tolerant that there's a cigarette being smoked in my backyard. Or that they don't like the height of my lawn. Or that they may have to pay taxes.
You sound like an incipient libertarian. I'm not an ultra-libertarian but I do vote for the party. We non-ultra-libertarians believe that there are no absolutes in life, so yes there are a few issues so important and so difficult that the only way to handle them is for the government to step in and curtail the liberty of one class of people so that another class is not caused to suffer unduly.
But in other cases, tort law should be sufficient. If your smoke gets in my lungs and increases my medical expenses while shortening my lifespan, then you should be required to pay me the million dollars that your actions will cause me. (I didn't look this figure up in an actuarial table but the order of magnitude is about right.)
How can I take comfort in my freedom to vote for officials if a woman cannot?
If my grandfather were still alive, I'd ask him. Millions of guys took that comfort without giving it a second thought.
How can I take comfort in my freedom to get married when a gay couple must tolerate financial disruption, social stigmas, inability to visit each other in the hospital?
You don't have to go back to 1910 for that answer, just hop the next flight to Utah.
How much freedom can I enjoy when others don't even have the freedom to walk down the street without harassment, bigotry, abuse? I can shop at Macy's but if blacks cannot, then why am I free to, when others are not free to?
My parents were remarkably un-racist in the 1940s when I was young and impressionable, and they treated people who didn't look like us with exactly the same courtesy as people who did. Nonetheless, they didn't lose any sleep over the fact that Afro-Americans were not allowed to shop in the department stores in Chicago. Cognitive dissonance is an amazing phenomenon.
We cannot, we are physically not capable of really caring about people outside of our community.
I've written on this topic at great length. We have spent the last twelve thousand years overriding our instinctive behaviors with reasoned and learned behaviors. Our "community" was once an extended family of a few dozen people whom we'd depended on and cared for since birth. Then after the Agricultural Revolution we managed to enlarge that community to include the people of a few other tribes whom we were personally acquainted with, but not intimately. Then when we began building cities we found a way to include in our community anonymous strangers who spoke the same language, practiced the same customs, and respected the same authorities.
States -- nations -- countries -- empires -- transnational hegemonies -- this trend kept going until today a huge segment of the human race regards our community as including people on the other side of the planet who are no more than abstractions. Remember Americans weeping over the death of Neda Aga Soltan in Tehran as if she were our own daughter/sister/friend? (You can thank the internet for that.)
So even though we're not programmed to care about people outside of a small cozy group, we are able to use our uniquely massive forebrains to override instinctive behavior with reasoned and learned behavior.
I hear that a black man is forbidden from visiting his commonlaw husband of 35 years in the hospital before he dies, and afteward, the estate they shared is taken away from the living and given to the estate and I say, "That's sad." And I go on about my business.
I wonder if you really feel that way. A lot of people wept for Neda and a lot of people would weep for the man in this situation.
There are entire sections of the newspaper that bring tears to my eyes.
What I will give you is that we are programmed to feel empathy more easily for an individual than a large group. If you want to raise money to help the earthquake victims in Berzerkistan, produce a TV ad showing one hungry child, not fifty.
So who will really stand up- fight for them? A few might- the few... and most would say, "That's sad" and go on about their business. The business would go on about its business and the sufferers would go on suffering.
We fought for a lot of people in the 1960s. I never risked by life by riding a bus to Mississippi but I carried a lot of picket signs that forced a lot of businesses in California to keep our state easily distinguished from Mississippi. My wife and I integrated a neighborhood by renting to the first Afro-American family. We were cursed at by some of the neighbors.