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It's one thing to protect a person from themselves (we shouldn't in most cases), and another entirely to protect a person from someone else (we absolutely should).
If a potential employer is attempting to render someone unemployable for something that in no way hinders their job performance, government should absolutely step in just as they would for the deaf person who wants to do a job that only requires good visual observation.
You absolutely have to consider a slippery slope when making those decisions, because by allowing one company to engage in that behavior, you have also allowed every other company to do the same. It's nothing at all like the slippery slope bullshit that is used for gay marriage, drug legalization, etc.
The question is whether any particular right is being trampled on BY someone else. If I pay for someone to cut me, should I be protected by big daddy? By supporting big corporations to become bigger, I don't see how that's much different. We have agreed to the terms, and given the money over willingly. The government is still protecting us primarily from ourselves, because we hold the power and we(as a society) made the decisions. If some outside entity made a big corporation big - then ok, maybe.
I still don't see why job performace should be the only thing that people can decide to reject someone on. It should be a free choice for someone to hire. I mean it's that person's business, they created it, they could destroy it in an instant if it came down to it... but they have to be told that they MUST hire someone? That just makes no sense to me.
What's more, job performance is a very broad topic. Fribur brought up an excellent point - you suggested that someone being a hater on blacks or homosexuals would not be a "personality conflict" - maybe not by that definition, but it COULD potentially affect the company's performance if everyone in the business is a bigot. Obviously the problem is with the workers, not the potential hire in that situation - but why would a company need to kick itself in the ass like that if it came to that point? I believe they should have the right to do so on account of productivity(and whatever a company views that THAT word entails), even if they are prejudiced losers.
Well with regard to the slippery slope obviously all corporations would be allowed to do such - however, the conclusion seems to be that BECAUSE they are allowed to do it, then ALL companies will do it. I don't draw that conclusion, personally. I believe certainly some would try, but I don't think it would be the norm because I think the backlash would be too strong and they'd simply run themselves out of business by shunning customers and potentially great employees.
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No, that point doesn't exist and never will because we, as individuals and as a group, don't give a shit about others. Because of that, we require government to step in and make sure that we don't go around helping ourselves at everyone else's expense.
You can make all the bad decisions on your own behalf that you want to, but generally you're not allowed to make bad decisions that are going to negatively impact me.
Society as a whole makes bad decisions every day that will eventually impact you, yet government does not intervene and rightfully so. There are some things that we willingly sign onto as a society - not as individuals - but individuals still pay the price for those decisions. The majority of people being lazy workers? Nope, not a damned thing we can do about that, and there's no reason for government to step in to "protect" the individuals that may be hard workers that suffer as a result. The bad decisions we make on our "own behalf" most of the time have an affect on others, that's just life.
Most of them, of course, are indirect. If someone attacks you, that's direct and a direct infringement of your rights. If people collectively decide that they want corporations to run their lives and they submit to it and keep paying them, that's indirect. There are naturally some laws that cannot be overruled by the majority and the minority must be protected, but making big business big is not one of them.
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Because fucking other people over so that we *might* learn a lesson is such a great idea. Especially when you take into the numerous mistakes that we tend to make over and over again without ever actually learning. Instead, we say the decision was sound, but that other factors screwed it up.
Unfortunately that's sometimes what it takes for society to learn. Fascism and communism fucked over too many to count, but we ended up rejecting them not when we learned of them in concept, but when we saw them in action. Fortunately in this situation, millions of people need not die over realizing that keeping huge corporations in constant power is a bad thing. I would prefer in this situation that shape our own destiny rather than be handheld through it. We are definitely doomed to repeat mistakes if we have less from history to glean lessons from. By handholding to avoid these decisions that were already made by the people, we have sustained ignorance. "Government will bail me out when I fuck up" will simply remain in the subconscious.
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It doesn't matter whether the business will change their hiring practices en masse, it matters whether or not that is even a valid option.
Don't think for a second that if we allowed employers to discriminate based on gender and race, that none would do it. They absolutely would. Racism and sexism is alive and well in America today. Sure people would boycott, but others would happily continue purchasing from them because they're closer, cheaper, like-minded, whatever.
Per what I said above about the slippery slope, I just don't see that happening nearly as much in this day and age. A racist organization probably wouldn't last too long, but I wouldn't necessarily dismiss the possibility of anti-homosexual(and sexist) policies taking root more often. I still think there's a large enough crowd of rational people that aren't bigots that the political firestorm resulting from either of those policies would be enough to knock them down. I just don't think the "sky is falling" scenario is very likely.
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It can? Can you think of an example where society has actually regulated itself to the people's benefit without government mandate? Go ahead and think about it, I've got time.
I think you're right in that there aren't many obvious examples. However I would still suggest things like the fact that we have made significant progress with regard to racism in the past 50 years - I believe most of that is due to our OWN regulation rather than the government forcing people to hire workers and so forth. There were very large movements and boycotts that took place which encouraged change at a faster pace, and grassroots organizations popped up all over the place to combat racism.
I'd also point to our political system - as innately and horribly flawed as it is, frankly I am intrigued by the fact that we still have a 2-party system as opposed to a 1-party system. It seems to me that there should be a high likelihood of one party eventually attaining enough power to dominate the competition, but that has not been the case and both parties have maintained a relative equilibrium throughout the years. Even with our population, voting has come down to the wire in many a circumstance. It's not a lot, but it's one example of where we haven't completely signed off something that benefits us - and of our own will.
Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly for anarchy here, but I think there's a distinctive line when you start to tell businesses that they cannot hire who they choose. We should be able to choose who we want to give our money to in exchange for a service or work, especially since it's our property in the first place.
